Scott Aaronson

You know, at some point the ideas were really coming around that we wanted to show that a quantum computer could be powerful.

So there was Scott Aaronson and, um, um, with Photonics.

I forget the name of it, but there was a Photonics things.

And then- In, in China? Generally brand or? No, no.

This is Scott A- Jeremy O'Brien? No, Scott Aaronson, um- Arkhipov ...

I, I forget the name of the- Uh-huh ...

the, the way, uh, that what they were doing.

[upbeat music] Time for the Weekend Long Read's suggestions.

A theoretical computer scientist named Scott Aaronson says he has heard rumors that AI labs are sitting on major solutions to math problems after a hostile response to that whole Navier-Stokes proof.

Quote, "Let me try to convey the mood in the mathematical community right now, at least as far as my experience reaches.

Nearly every conversation is about the AI tsunami or eventually circles around to the tsunami, even if it's originally about something else.

I was like, "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Uh, he's right And it's gonna be really, really hard for some people to come around to this way of thinking, both because of his abrasive personality and both because they didn't get there themselves first.

Scott Aaronson, who is one of the smartest people alive, quantum physicist, incredible contributions to quantum physics, worked at OpenAI, very on top of all of this stuff.

I would say I've estimated-- I've read like 10,000 takes on AI this week.

It's all I do.

Uh, I, I mean, realistically, I, I think I've read between three and five hundred.

That many.

Uh, Scott Aaronson has the best take, and his take is like, "Look, I have to be-- I'm intellectually humbled by somebody I didn't take seriously for a long, long time." He compared it to evangelical Christians promising the Second Coming and the way you would dismiss somebody like that.

Yeah.

I wasn't aware of how, how much this can-- I don't wanna say religious, but these ideas can underplay so much of what's going on.

And Steve, I'm curious, as a Ridley Scott fan, do you feel like as a Blade Runner fan, do you feel like it's these mega corporations on steroids, you know? Weyland-Yutani and all of these things that are just, um...

I don't know.

That's what I think about.

... foreboding thing you can't stop.

I think that-- So, you know, earlier I was saying, oh, we're realizing some memes from science fiction like the superintelligence, the super robot, stuff like that, and, and, and finally we've reached the point where our, you know, uh, compute capabilities can instantiate something like that, like a superintelligence, and we're building it right now.

But also the vision that Ridley s- for those of you that are Ridley Scott fans, uh, Alien and Blade Runner are the same universe [chuckles] actually.

Ridley has said that many times.