The picture – they're all wearing cowboy hats and UT Longhorn t-shirts and

baseball caps.

Yeah, let's get – just to be frank here.

First of all, it's the world's most populous democracy.

You know, democracy may be in scare quotes, but it really is.

So and to get into UT, you have to be, you know, you're mostly a Texas resident.

I mean, that's and you get in.

Rob, I know you always like this analysis of things, right? How crazy it all is.

The picture – they're all wearing cowboy hats and UT Longhorn t-shirts and

baseball caps.

Yeah, let's get – just to be frank here.

First of all, it's the world's most populous democracy.

You know, democracy may be in scare quotes, but it really is.

So and and to get into UT, you have to be you know, you're mostly a Texas resident.

I mean, that's and you get in.

Rob, I know you always like this analysis of things, right? How crazy it all

And now, just as we worry that there's something going on in America where, uh, social mobility is at risk and, uh, entrepreneurship is at risk because, uh, income inequality is leading to all sorts of weird valences, it, it, it unnerves me a little, I have to say, sort of watching this.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean [laughs] I'm, with, with, with the, the Dolly part of that is, I, as I, I, I separate all those components 'cause she's just too big to think of as a unified thing.

The money part is really interesting 'cause she grew up, she had to have been in the, the lowest 1%.

I mean, I mean, you know, at that point, she, she was in Appalachia in the '40s.

That's broke.

That's like, you know, uh, old, those old photographs you see, um, documentary photographs, how do people live this way? Um, and she made a whole pot of money, and she knew how to do it, knew how to run it, and knew how to give it away too.

So that's something.

He'll never, he's never left Hanoi as far as I'm concerned.

But your paper is called "Studying AI Welfare Empirically." So you think that there's some way we can start to get our hands around, uh, these questions in an empirical way.

That's right.

We think there are a lot of angles of attack.

So consciousness is this very philosophically difficult topic, but that hasn't stopped us from making scientific progress on understanding it in non-human animals, for example.

So that's a parallel we often, uh, use.

So how do we think about if, if animals are conscious, if they're somewhat different from humans? Uh, well, we basically think we can look at three kinds of evidence about AI systems to get a better handle on this, and that's behavior, internals, and their development.

So we can-- and we really need to triangulate these three things.

So what's going on there? Wh- why might that matter in terms of consciousness?

You mentioned Florida being one of the, the, the busiest space ports as kind of a draw for the company to come here and do this, but, but i- is that also motivation for Florida to have something like this set up? I'm asking, are we out of launch pads? [laughs] Is, is that what the, what the driving factor is?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we're not out of launch pads, and there's, there's a lot of land area that could still theoretically be, uh, developed, uh, whether that's at Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

But over time, as the demand signal rises with any transportation, um, activity, whether it's an airport or a seaport or, in our case, a space port, um, you're naturally gonna, uh, uh, come up against, uh, constraints.

And so this is the time where we aren't constrained necessarily at the moment, but-This is where you wanna start looking at those alternative options, doing the, um, smart things strategically to find those innovative ideas that allow you to then take advantage of, uh, what we already have from a statewide infrastructure perspective, but more importantly, blend, you know, a really, um, innovative group of people that are looking at, uh, a new way of doing business, and then take advantage of that.

You know, for example, a couple years ago, Space Florida led the study to help look at wharf expansion for maritime support, right, directly at Cape Canaveral, um, in Port Canaveral there, and one of the things that we incorporated in that study was this potential for some sort of sea-based platform, um, that could be integrated into the space port, uh, directly.

So while you might have all of the supporting infrastructure still resident, uh, someplace like at Cape Canaveral, for example, um, the actual launches then would happen out to sea.

And, and, and on top of just the, the land constraints that we may or may not come up with, uh, up against sometime in the future, um, getting out and away from the land also frees you up from a safety perspective, right? There's not as many safety constraints, right? So you have more flexibility.

Um, I'm gonna ask you to pull out your crystal ball here, um, and say, you know, in 10 years with, um, with all of the launch infrastructure that we have at land with something like, you know, sea launches, um, how many launches are we going to see in 2036?

Um, what's changed for Baz to kind of turn things in the right direction the last couple weeks?

Baz is doing a lot of side work.

And, and a- again, another, uh, pitch command.

If you look at early in his games, he had a lot of walks.

Uh, walking way too many batters.

And I know that sounds like a broken record, but y- you know as well as I know that's the key to pitching, especially in the American League East, getting ahead in the count.

Um, he was nibbling too much for me.

How have they been trying to navigate, you know... how, how is Albernaz trying to kind of piece together a, a bullpen that's a little shaky here?

And if it's somebody who's really good, they take it personally

when you cut it.

And so you have to say to them, look, you could not sell this material.

The material didn't work.

We needed to write you better material.

And it's a great feeling when you have this kind of relationship with your cast and your team where they don't think that you made a mistake.

You think they think they made a mistake and you are trying to explain to them, no, no, no, no.

What specifically happened when you were in that church?

Who are your favorite people you've worked with?

Definitely the entire cast of Cheers was fantastic, but then I've done much other shows.

I worked with Bob Newhart.

Judd Hirsch was great.

Judd Hirsch was also this incredibly intuitive actor who, when something wasn't working, which it happens, that's why you have rehearsals, a little like Ted Danson, he would try to help you by explaining what wasn't working for him, and it was always nonsense.

It's always just gibberish.

But it didn't matter because that's not his job is to tell me how to fix it or what's wrong.

What, what is, what is your way?

And if it's somebody who's really good, they take it personally

when you cut it.

And so you have to say to them, look, you could not sell this material.

The material didn't work.

We needed to write you better material.

And it's a great feeling when you have this kind of relationship with your cast and your team where they don't think that you made a mistake.

You think they think they made a mistake and you are trying to explain to them, no, no, no, no.

What specifically happened when you were in that church?

Yes.

Well, I mean, look, I think that, um, I think that whenever you have a large bureaucracy, right, and you have these sort of large, essentially socialist countries, although a lot of, some of them, like Denmark, are, are really kind of build, trying to build out of that, you end up creating a bureaucratic class.

And the thing about all bureaucrats, no matter who they are, no matter what side they're on, eventually they have contempt for the people they serve.

If you don't believe me, just go to the DMV, [laughs] okay? They eventually...

The, the, the government clerk doesn't know why you are in the office and doesn't know why you haven't filled out all the 19,000 forms he's given to you.

And that attitude goes all the way up to the top.

And you kind, you get farther and farther away from people, and then pr- pretty soon you have bureaucrats in Brussels telling people in Dusseldorf what, you know, size, you know, chewing gum they can getAnd, um, and they just find the people to be really, really, uh, you know, annoying, you know? And, and, and when the people get that, uh, get that impression, the people decide to get populist.

Yeah

But how do we get out of this? Well, I

love the idea.

People can't afford homes right now.

So let's make sure they can't afford them for 20 more years.

Look, it's every borrower's dream really when they get right down to it to die owing a lot of money that cannot be recouped, right? That is kind of what you want, right? I want the money now and you can come and knock on my closed casket for the payment and you're not going to get it, right? That's everybody.

That's what credit cards are.

Credit cards, spend, spend, spend, spend and you die and they can't get you.

But what do you make of, you know, you get this political phenomenon, and it's only after the fact where the hangover's worn off where you're like, oh, yeah, this doesn't look like a very good idea.