How many alien civilizations are out there _ Yuval Noah Harari and Lex Fridman

13.8 billion years ago is the origin of our universe .

3.8 billion years ago is the origin of life here on our little planet .

The one we call earth , let's say 200,000 years ago is the appearance of early Homo sapiens .

So let me ask you this question .

How rare are these events in the vastness of space and time or put it in a more fun way ?

How many intelligent alien civilizations do you think are out there in this universe as being one of them ?

I suppose there should be some statistically , but we don't have any evidence .

But I do think that , you know , intelligence in any way , it's a bit overvalued .

We are the most intelligent entities on this planet and look what you're doing .

So , intelligence also tends to be self destructive , which implies that if there are or were intelligent life forms elsewhere , maybe they don't survive for long .

Do you think there's a tension between happiness and intelligence ?

Absolutely .

Intelligence is definitely not something that uh is directed towards amplifying happiness .

I I would also emphasize the huge , huge difference between intelligence and consciousness which uh many people , certainly in the tech industry and in the A I industry tend , tend to miss .

Intelligence is simply the ability to solve problems uh to attain goals and you know , to , to win a chess , to uh win a struggle for survival , to win a war , to drive a car , uh to diagnose a disease .

This is intelligence .

Consciousness is the ability to feel things like pain and pleasure and love and hate in humans and other animals , intelligence and consciousness go together , they go hand in hand , which is why we confuse them .

We solve problems , we attain goals by having feelings .

But uh other types of intelligence , certainly in computers , computers are already highly intelligent .

And as far as we know , they have zero consciousness when a computer beats you at chess or go or whatever , it doesn't feel happy if it loses , it doesn't feel sad .

And uh there could be also other highly intelligent entities out there in the universe that have zero consciousness .

And I think that consciousness is far more important and valuable than intelligence .

Can you see me on the case that consciousness and intelligence are intricately connected ?

So not just in humans but anywhere else they , they have to go hand in hand .

Is it possible for you to imagine such a universe ?

It it could be .

But we don't know yet again , we have examples .

Certainly we know of examples of high intelligence without consciousness .

Computers are one example .

Um as far as we know , um , plants , er , are not conscious yet , they are intelligent , they can solve problems , they can attain goals in very sophisticated ways .

Um So , um the other way around to have consciousness without any intelligence , this is probably impossible , but to have intelligence without consciousness .

Yes , that's possible .

A bigger question is whether any of that is tied to organic biochemistry , we know on this planet only about carbon based life forms , whether you're an amoeba , a dinosaur , a tree , a human being , you are based on organic biochemistry .

Um Is there an essential connection between organic biochemistry and consciousness ?

Do all conscious entities everywhere in the universe or in the future on planet Earth have to be based on carbon ?

Is there something so special about carbon as an element that an entity based on silicon will never be conscious ?

I don't know , maybe .

But um again , this is a key question about computer and computer consciousness that can computers eventually become conscious even though they are not organic .

Uh The jury is still out on that .

I , I don't know .

I mean that we have to take both options into account .

Well , a big part of that is , do you think we humans would be able to detect other intelligent beings , other conscious beings ?

Another way to ask that , is it possible that the aliens are already here and we don't see them ?

Meaning are we very human centric in our understanding of one , the definition of life to the definition of intelligence and three , the definition of consciousness .

The aliens are here .

They are just not from outer space A I uh which is usually stands for artificial intelligence .

I think it stands for alien intelligence because uh A I is an alien type of intelligence .

It solves problems attains goals in a very , very different way in an alien way from human beings .

Yeah , I'm not implying that A I came from outer space , it came , came from Silicon Valley , but it is alien to us .

If there are alien , intelligent or conscious entities that came from outer space already here .

I've , I've not seen any evidence uh uh for it , it's not impossible .

But um you know , in science , evidence is everything .

Well , I mean , I guess instructive there is uh just having the humility to look around , to think about living beings that operate at a different time scale , a different spatial scale .

And I think that's all useful when starting to analyze artificial intelligence .

It's possible that even the language models , the larger language models we have today are already conscious .

I I highly doubt it , but I think consciousness in the end , it's a question of social norms because we cannot prove consciousness in anybody except ourselves .

We know that we are conscious because we are feeling it .

We have direct access to our subjective consciousness .

We have , we can not have any proof that any other entity in the world .

Any other human being , our parents , our best friends , we don't have proof that they are conscious .

You know , this is , this has been known for thousands of years .

This is the , this is Buddha , this is Plato .

We , we don't , we can't have this sort of proof what we do have is social conventions .

It's a social convention that all human beings are conscious .

It's also applies to animals .

Most people who have pets are firmly believe that their pets , pets are conscious .

But a lot of people still refuse to acknowledge that about cows or pigs .

Now , pigs are far more intelligent than dogs and cats .

And according to many measures yet , when you go to the supermarket and , and , and , and buy it a AAA piece of frozen pig meat , you don't think about it as , as a conscious entity .

Why do you think of your dog as conscious but not of the of the uh bacon that you buy ?

Because you build a relationship with the dog and you don't have a relationship with the bacon .

Now , relationships , they are , they don't constitute a logical proof for consciousness .

They are a social test that the turing test is a social test .

It's not a logical proof .

Now , if you establish AAA mutual relationship with an entity where when you are invested in it emotionally , you are almost compelled to feel that the other side is also conscious .

And when it comes again , to A I and computers .

I think again , I don't think that at , at the present moment , computers are conscious , but people are already forming intimate relationships with a is and are therefore almost irresistible .

It's almost irresistible .

They are compelled to , to increasingly feel that these are conscious entities .

And I think we are quite close to the point when the legal system will have to take this into account that even though I don't think computers have consciousness , I think we are close to the point , the legal system will start treating them as conscious entities because of this social convention .

What do you as a social convention ?

Just a funny little side effect , a little artifact ?

Or is it the fundamental to what consciousness is ?

Because if it is fundamental , then it seems like A I is very good at forming these kinds of deep relationships with humans .

And therefore , it will be able to be a nice catalyst for integrating itself into these social conventions of ours .

It , it was built to accomplish that we are design again , you know , all this argument between uh and natural selection and uh uh creationism , intelligent design .

Um As far as the past go , all entities evolve by natural selection .

The funny thing is when you look at the future , more and more entities will come out of intelligent design , not of some God above the clouds , but of our intelligent design and the intelligent design of our clouds .

Of our computing clouds , they will design more and more entities .

And this is what is happening with A I , it is designed to be very good at forming intimate relationships with humans .

And uh um in many ways , it's already doing it almost better than , than human beings in some situations , you know , when two people talk with one another , one of the things that kind of uh um makes the conversation more difficult is our own emotions .

You're saying something and I'm not really listening to you because there is something I want to say and I'm just waiting until you finish .

I , I can put in a word or I'm so obsessed with my anger or irritation or whatever that I don't pay attention to what you're feeling .

This is one of the biggest obstacles in human relationships and computers don't have this problem because they don't have any emotions of their own .

So , you know , when a computer is talking to you , it can be the most , it can focus 100% of its attention is on your , what you're saying and what you're feeling because it has no feelings of its own .

And paradoxically this means that computers can fool people into feeling that uh oh there is a conscious entity on the other side , an empathic entity on the other side because the one thing everybody wants almost more than anything in the world is for somebody to listen to me , somebody to focus all their attention on me .

Like I want it for my spouse , for my husband , for my mother , for my friends , for my politicians , listen to me , listen to what I feel and they often don't .

And now you have this entity which 100% of its attention is just on what , what I feel .

And this is a huge , huge temptation and I think also a huge , huge danger .

Well , the interesting catch 22 there is you said somebody to listen to us , yes , we want somebody to listen to us .

But for us to respect that somebody , they sometimes have to also not listen .

It's like um they kind of have to be an asshole .

Sometimes they have to have mood , sometimes they have to have like self importance and confidence and , and um we should have a little bit of fear that they can walk away at any moment .

There should be a little bit of that tension .

So it's like , but , but even that , I mean , the thing is that if , if social scientists and psychologists establish that , I don't know , 17% intention is good for a conversation because then you feel challenged .

Oh , I need to grab this person's attention .

You can program the A I to have 17 , exactly 17% in attention , not 1% more or less or it can by trial and error .

Discover what is the , the , the , the ideal percentage .

Again , you , you , you can create over the last 10 years , we have creating machines for grabbing people's attention .

This is what what has been happening on social media .

Now we are designing machines for grabbing human intimacy , which in many ways is much , much more dangerous and scary .

Already the machines for grabbing attention .

We've seen how much social and political damage they could do uh by in , in any way kind of distorting the public conversation machines that are super human in their abilities to create intimate relationships .

This is like psychological and social weapons of mass destruction .

If we don't regulate it , if we don't train ourselves to deal with it , uh it could destroy the foundations of human society .

Well , one of the possible trajectories is uh those same algorithms would become personalized and instead of uh manipulating us at scale , there would be assistance that guide us to help us grow , to help us understand the world better .

I mean , just even interactions with the with large language models .

Now , if you ask them questions , it doesn't have that stressful drama , the tension that you have from other sources of information , it has a pretty balanced perspective that it provides .

So it just feels like that's uh the potential is there to have a really nice friend who's like an encyclopedia that just tells you all the different perspectives , even on controversial issues .

The most controversial issues to say these are the different theories .

These are um the not widely accepted conspiracy theories .

But that here's the kind of backing for those conspiracy .

It just lays it all out and with a calm language without the , without the words that kind of um presume there's some kind of manipulation going on under underneath it all .

It's , it's quite refreshing .

Of course , those are the early days and you know , uh people can step in and uh start to censor to manipulate those algorithms to start to input some of the human biases in there .

As opposed to the , what's currently happening is kind of the internet is input uh compress it and have a nice little output that uh gives an overview of the different issues .

So , I mean , there's a lot of promise there also .

Right .

Absolutely .

I mean , if there was no promise , promise , there was no problem , you know , if this technology could not accomplish anything good , nobody would develop it .

Now , obviously , it has tremendous positive potential in things like what you just described in , you know , better medicine , better health care , better education , so many promises .

And , but this is also why it's so dangerous because uh the the the the drive to develop it faster and faster is there and it has some dangerous potential also .

And we shouldn't ignore it again .

I'm not advocating banning it .

Uh just to be , you know , careful about how we not , not so much develop it , but most importantly , how we deploy it into the public sphere .

This , this is the key question .

And you know , you look back at history and one of the things we , we know from history , humans are not good with new technologies .

I hear many people now say , you know , a I it's uh we've been here before we had the radio , we had the printing press , we had the industrial revolution .

Every time there is a big new technology , people are afraid and it will take jobs and , and they do the bad actors .

And in the end it's OK .

And as a historian , my tendency is yes , in the end it's OK .

But uh in the end , there is a learning curve .

There is a kind of a lot of failed experiments on the way to , to learning how to use the new technology .

And these failed experiments could cost the lives of hundreds of millions of people .

If you think about the last really big revolution , the industrial revolution , yes .

In the end , we learned how to use the powers of industry , electricity , radio trains , whatever to build better human societies .

But on the way , we had all these experiments like European imperialism , which was driven by the industrial revolution .

It was the question , how do you build an industrial society ?

Oh , you build an empire and you take you , you , you control all the resources , the raw materials , the markets and then you had communism , another big experiment on how to build an industrial society .

And you had fascism and Nazism which were essentially an experiment in how to build an industrial society , including even how do you exterminate minorities using the powers of , of industry ?

And we had all these failed experiments on the way .

And if we now have the same type of failed experiments with the technologies of the 21st century with A I with bioengineering , it could cost the lives of again , hundreds of millions of people and maybe destroy the species .

So um as a historian , when people talk about the examples from history , from , from , from new technologies , I'm not so optimistic .

We need to , to , to think about the failed experiment which accompanied every major new technology .

So this intelligence thing like you were saying is a double edged sword is that every new thing it helps us create , it can uh both save us and destroy us .

And it's unclear each time which will happen and that's maybe why we don't see any aliens .

Um Yeah , I mean , I think each time it does both things .

Each time it does both good things and bad things and the more powerful the technology , the greater , both the positive and the negative outcomes .

Now we are here because we are the descendants of the survivors of the surviving cultures , the surviving uh uh civilizations .

So when we look back , we say in the end , everything was OK .

Hey , we are here but the people for whom it wasn't OK .

They are just not here .