SPEAKER_01 0:00

Suffer from that. Call it a Everest Conquering Syndrome. But I would like to say unhappiness is a driver of everything we do or of everything people do. There are no predators, no threats, uh excellent climate conditions. Uh within a few months this community is deteriorated completely.

SPEAKER_04 0:32

So welcome to the world in 2029, a podcast where we explore how today's innovations are shaping our future. I'm your host, Lars. I'm on a mission to spread positive insights into how today's pressing issues like climate change, hunger, and disease are being addressed by exponential technologists that most people don't know about. I worked in the AI space for ten years and have helped numerous tech startups. So this is a topic I know well and is extremely close to my heart. Today's episode is different. Most discussions about AI focus on technology. How smart will AI become? What jobs will disappear? How much productivity can we unlock? But today we are asking a deeper question. A question that may ultimately matter more than any technological breakthrough. What gives human life meaning to AI? And what happens if AI removes the need for most human work? Joining me today is Igor Kopsov, author of The Three Laws of Psychology. And he has spent years trying to understand human behavior through the lens of engineering, system thinking, and first principles. And together we will explore happiness, purpose, identity, work, freedom, and perhaps the biggest question of all Will the world of 2029 move us closer to heaven or closer to hell? Welcome, Igor.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Thank you, Lash. Thanks a lot for having me.

SPEAKER_04 2:15

Thanks for being here, Igor. It's it's fantastic. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Um I I have to start with showing you my t-shirt. Because I I took on this t-shirt today. T-shirt for my uh Universal Basic Income episode is Scott Sentence. So that was uh that was really good. You know, I thought um yeah, I I don't use it that much, but uh for these two episodes I think it's uh spot on.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

So I expect that your collection of t-shirts will expand and to give away the success of your podcast, you will you will run out of space for t-shirts.

SPEAKER_04 2:55

Yeah, if I had one for every one new one for every episode, that would be true. That would be cool. It's a good idea, actually. Yeah, I'll I'll pick you up on that one. Fantastic. So but you know, let's let's start with happiness, you know, because there's there's this thing called the happiness paradox. No. We are arguably living in the safest, richest, healthiest period in human history. Yes. And anxiety is rising, depression is rising, loneliness is rising, and there's something wrong here. Something doesn't really add up.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

So if if progress is is making life better, why aren't we becoming happier? What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 3:39

We actually becoming happier. It uh it it's it's a rather bold statement because normally you're supposed to dwell on how challenging the life is. But I'm not just sharing with you my uh my thoughts or what what I think. Uh when I say that we are the happiest generation in the history of humankind, I say it as a researcher, uh as you said, I spent so many years uh looking into a question of happiness. And you also mentioned happiness paradox, but the whole notion of happiness is full of paradoxes. So you can say paradox number one, paradox number two, paradox number ten. So maybe we'll manage to address some of them. But the probably the most basic, if not paradox, but misunderstanding related to happiness is that humans really don't know what happiness is, or maybe more precisely we put a slightly incorrect meaning to the word of happiness. And it all originates from the perception that happiness has been around throughout the whole history of humankind, which is hundred percent true. That also brings us to the idea that whatever Aristotle or Socratos said about happiness, we can just read it and implement it in our lives, which is probably also true. I'm not challenging that. But what people don't understand is that the idea of the pursuit of happiness is a very, very modern idea. Most of the human history has been lived by us on the idea that happiness is not attainable and it's just a dream. And only very, very recently, and I like your approach that you are talking about with what happens to humankind in 2029, it's just such a precise reference and very unusual one, because normally we try to put a horizon of what we're talking about somewhere more further away. And in the same manner, also with a little bit of course uh simplification, I would like to say that the notion of the pursuit of happiness arose in in a human society in 1870. Obviously, the whole process started many, many hundreds years before. But just for the simplicity of the discussion, it's fair to say that 1870, that's when people started to persuade happiness as a cause of their life compared to just hoping or experiencing happiness with no particular reasons for that. And that's a huge, huge leap in a way how we live.

SPEAKER_04 6:52

Yeah. So wh why 1870s and what happened at that?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Uh as I said, again, it's kind of I use it as a symbolic yeah, easier to remember. It's more precisely to talk about the end of the 19th century. But a lot of things started to happen. Feminism, suffragist fight for for women's rights, fight for social justice, uh, revolution, Marxism, and so forth, dramatic changes in the art. The Impressionists they completely re-rolled the handbook of art. And impressionists, they were governing the world just for a decade or two, and when expressionists came and all the other uh the kind of modern art, new music, uh new understanding of freedom, demise of religion. That's kind of I think it's a negative development, but it also goes into the same domain. And when scientists uh analyze this uh phenomena, they normally uh approach them separately. Oh, that's feminists because they started to feel more empowered, or these are the artists because they felt more dangerous, or these are the workers because they wanted to have better living conditions, but there is one common denominator between all these multiple sides of human living, and this common denominator is the pursuit of happiness. Suddenly, society changed, and women, workers, artists, normal people started to feel differently, and they started they acquired this idea that they actually can attain happiness within the course of their life. Until that period of time, Webster Dictionary was mid mid of the eighteenth century. Webster dictionary defined happiness as a feeling of exuberation, blah blah blah. And when Comer and they wrote real happiness is not attainable throughout the course of a human life.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

So that's that's that they wrote that. That's actually in the dictionary.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

It is in the text. You don't need to do any research. So that's if you read Dickens or Hugo or Dostoevsky, what are their novels about? Are they about happiness? They are about the ideal happiness through suffering. You know, suffering was the way of living. And now we are not suffering too much. Uh you know, uh we are in in a in a very good shape actually.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

So uh but I'm talking too much, so maybe I should give you uh should give you a chance to uh reflect on what I just said.

SPEAKER_04 9:51

Yeah, but it's super interesting because you know it's uh it's a fairly new concept and and it changed dramatically. And and so you think we are actually, you know, we're we're chasing the wrong thing. We have a wrong understanding of what happiness is. No, no, no, that's not what I meant.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

I I meant that we we do not understand the difference between the notion of happiness and the notion of the pursuit of happiness. You know, until 1870. I I can give you another reference to a Webster dictionary. That was a revision of the same dictionary published at the end of the 18th century, and they gave two definitions of happiness. One is happiness is the feeling of exuberation, and the second one, they said happiness sometimes is synonymized with the word luck, and they put archaic in brackets. So what they said that in the past happiness was equated to luck, but not anymore at the end of the nineteenth century. So between two revisions of Webster dictionary, something happened. Unachievable, achievable, happiness equals luck, is becoming an archaic definition by the end of the nineteenth century, and that's what I'm trying to say. That happiness is has been around uh throughout the whole history of humankind. But the pursuit of happiness is a very, very new modern idea. Because until 1870, people could only achieve happiness through luck. But uh the la the the the odds were always against you, you know. So don't even try to act, um hope for it, maybe it will it will it maybe the dice will fall in the right uh in the right order for you. But from 1870, it you can become a master of your life.

SPEAKER_04 11:52

Is that also related to let's say the uh you know the uh the evolution of mankind and society, and of course getting more and more affluent, moving up the uh the ladder, uh um and and having more spending less time just surviving and you know wanting to realize ourselves is is that part of the whole thing?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Beautiful third life, beautiful thoughts, and I was not planning to talk about it, but thanks a lot for raising that idea. Because what also happened is uh uh it's a it's a hundred percent evolutionary phenomena, and uh humans have a dual nature. We are biological beings, but uh through biological nature we need to protect our existence, we need to reproduce, we need to feed ourselves, and that was the system of coordinates for our existence till the middle of the end of the nineteenth century. But the second duality, the second part of our duality is we are mental creatures, and what we don't understand when you say I'm lush, I think so and so, you normally don't separate you lush as a biological body or being as a mental being. If you have a tooth fake, it secretly hurts you biologically and mentally. So you're all integrated in one in one lush, I'm one eager, but it's actually much more accurately to look at ourselves as uh two separate worlds, and what happened is at the end of the nineteenth century, our biological existence, which was primary, it's all about just food, getting enough nutrition, getting shelter. That was EVB because of human existence. Survival. Exactly. And we went from biological survival into intellectual pursuit of our life. We started to look at ourselves more like until 1870, brain was just uh a function allowing to improve our odds of survival. It was a servant of the body, and when it all shifted, the capacity of the brain power or or brain uh mental activity in our life started to play a much, much more prominent uh part in our living, and that resulted in us started moving from biological uh priorities into mental intellectual priorities. And that's where the idea of happiness, because mentally you can actually dream about happiness. So biologically, if you don't have enough food, and it's not up to you, it's for the society to decide how much food uh all billions of people can get. So it's very challenging. But if you are an impressionist artist and suddenly you get an idea, I'm not creating my painting just to reflect the reality. I want to paint because I want to project my feelings, my mental state, my understanding of the world. Very different approaches. You know what Leonardo da Vinci created and what uh Impressionists, it's a completely different approach. But what happens later is that not only we started to dissuade happiness as individuals, but another major thing happened, and I think it happened throughout the course of yours and my generational life, is not only we acquired a sense that we can be happy through in our living, during the course of our life, it doesn't necessarily mean that we are happy. It's just the idea that we can be happy. No, I'm not saying that we are all happy, but we have an idea that we can achieve happiness before we die. But what also happened, and that happened even more recently, it just happened several decades ago. We started to care not only about our own happiness, we started to care about the happiness of other people. Let me give you an example. If your son or daughter goes to primary school, would you mind if a teacher will be unhappy? Or if you go and uh have a surgery, a small surgery, just very minor thing. Would you be okay if the surgeon going through an nasty divorce or just lost his near relative? I think I would care. I would like the teacher of my children to be happy, but it wasn't the case uh when I went to school. When I was at school, our my my relations with the teachers were very transactional. There were professionals, I was a good pupil, and there were good professionals, and that was good enough. I did not really care about their lives, and they didn't care much about mine, they just had a task to educate me in math, for example, and I had a task to be well behaved, reasonably progressive in education. That's it. But now, if you if if you take Norwegian school, Norwegian school is a master of caring for happiness of the pupils.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

No?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

So maybe maybe too much. Maybe, maybe. I told you that I'm going to tell you that we are the happiest generation in the history of mankind. And now I can close kind of this uh preposition by saying it's not because we are actually we we are not happier, happier, but we are the first generation where society around you, maybe in Norway, maybe in the Western world, maybe it's different in other countries, where the society started to care about your happiness. And it's much much you you start better chances to become happy. No you you need to do two things. We we uh we are enjoying two things. First, we get the idea that we can get happy on ourselves, but the other major, major things, which is very recent, that the society started to care about our happiness.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

And when we come to your happiness paradox, both these things do not necessarily mean that we feel happy. And the explanation for that is quite straightforward. In order to become happy, you need to develop a certain set of skills which reflect the challenges of your life. If you are failing in being protected, if you are failing in having a sex partner, if you are failing in needs, you are getting unhappy. So you need to satisfy your needs, and that's what makes you happy. And if you don't, you are unhappy. And what what's what's you can say what's our problem is that our skills in satisfying our needs are always behind, we are always chasing the new needs which we were not uh trained for, brought up for, learned for at school. The life always keeps on bringing new challenges and we simply lack the toolbox for them. You know, the the you and I we've got a good education, but our education does not allow us to address the challenges of our society. We're getting more lonely, we are getting more spread apart, we are getting bombarded by conflicting uh informations. So we we our brains were not wired for that. So we have to face the new reality. So if the world was as it was thirty years ago, we would be probably very happy because we were very well trained for for for that old reality. But the new reality always brings something which we are not ready. And that's why we are complaining about depression, loneliness, and I'm sure that in 20 years we will sort of the humankind will find the ways how to deal with that, but in 20 years something new will turn up, and a new uh lack of skills will arise, and we will always be uh unhappy, but never because the idea is that the implication of what you're saying, right?

SPEAKER_04 20:52

Because that is the implication of what you're saying, that since since society and everything around us is always changing, and you might argue that these days it's changing more rapidly than ever before. Yeah, yeah. And and that means that the gap widens between what you are actually in control of, how you manage your life. Exactly. Exactly. And what you and what is expected of you. But but uh I'm I'm I'm thinking also that that there must be something more here as well. I mean, related to how people actually regard or think about happiness. Because if you I mean if you take the American dream, you know, you you might say that the American dream is is more or less equal to you know the search for happiness in that continent or in that country or whatever you would like to call it. And of course the American dream is is is ultimately very focused on money and wealth. And that's also my understanding of you know a lot of Americans. My understanding is that they're there's so much more. focused on money and wealth and position and status uh more than more than anyone else in the world at least to my to my knowledge my personal knowledge you know it's it's limited but still so wealth and happiness you know seems to be quite disconnected and perhaps more and more so increasingly i is that is is that right yes it is right there is a a rather famous piece of research uh in psychology which was conducted a few decades ago but uh it's still used as a as a reference basically the research was done on uh the happiness score versus income and this research shows that there is a very significant correlation between happiness and income until you reach a certain threshold and after that the happiness continues to increase but on a very very marginal what whenever you hear about a research in psychology you need to be very careful psychology is a very special branch of knowledge research is not necessarily the same research as you and I put a meaning into research in engineering or in physics and so forth but nevertheless let's take that as a starting point and it became a common reference point in psychological community I have I uh I have my own uh explanation or understanding of how wealth correlates to happiness.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Uh first of all happiness has measurements uh you know you've heard uh I'm sure about the happiness reports United Nations they measure it on different parameters so i the the the the it it i i it's it's measurable whether or not the system used in this report is the right one it's a it's a different uh story but each of us has their own uh measurement of happiness it's uh it sounds a bit cruel happiness is such a kind of uh word which implies you know uh emotional content and suddenly you and I were talking about measurement m measuring it but uh yes it can be measured and it it's measured uh towards particular KPIs key performance indicators and you can measure it uh towards for example your social skills or towards your sex life or towards your knowledge your degree or your la your your your your your relations with your children so different KPIs sometimes very easy to identify to put a number if I'm a billionaire so it's very easy how do you uh quantify your relations with your children it's it's more challenging yeah and money is is a thing which actually it's not about money money brings you very many benefits it brings you power yeah it brings you maybe social connections it brings you a lot of benefits security shelter uh improves your sex life perhaps it depends on how you define it so uh money is is not necessarily a just parameter to uh relate to however what I think is very often happens in this very specific thing like I want to become rich I want to live at that I want to leave at buggy doy or cheerholmen I want to have Porsche and so forth it's not actually bad the thing happens is what happens next you know so you've got your Porsche you have a deal at Bigidoy what next? It's similar to I compare to climbing Everest it's a very good profound dream to have the problem happens is you are on top of the Everest. You are the happiest person in the world at that particular moment but what happens next? Yeah from there on everything goes downhill exactly literally yeah but what what becomes very important is how you define your dream of the conquering Everest if it's just a moment to be there on top of the world I think that's a recipe for disaster you go down your your the the best achievement of your life is behind there is no at all a mountain what's next but if you define your uh free to everest as your satisfaction of your passion for rock climbing or being in the nature or overpowering yourself then it's just a gate into the next uh Everest and it will not be called Everest it will be called something else you know but it's like another example and of course maybe I'm historically here a little bit kind of twitching the the the the the the the life to the way how I would like it sort of my understanding should match it but take Michael Jackson you know Michael Jackson when he he finished the thriller his album which I think to the date remains the best album in the world he took yellow stickers and he put them all around his dwellings of places where he lived and he just wrote my next album shall be better than the thriller and his next album was Band which is an amazing album but it was not so well received as The Freela so from his perspective how he was brought up it was a disaster and at the end of the day his dramatic death looks for me more like a suicide because he became a victim of his own success which drove him into this relentless never ending pursuit of KPIs rather than pursuit of singing bringing happiness to yourself to the people thank you for the music abba sings to us you know and that's that's that's what what happens with the will in my opinion if you are rich for not just having a billion or a million or a villa at a Porsche area if if you're richness but very often these people they are like an American dream is so much about money you know yeah if they had an explanation I need this money in order to do the following I think these people will be happy and I'm sure that will be something else rich people are happy but if they are narrow minded and they just think happiness it's like a blank check and it will make me it will make sort of everybody will treat me with respect women will love me and whatever and you are there and you're just on your own with your billion of dollars and and and many many people suffer from that. I call it the Everest conquering syndrome. So happiness is not a particular achievement or achievement can generate a lot of kind of momentary happiness but proper happiness is in the process which regenerates itself and in that regard a farmer who likes farming can be much much more happy person than a Nobel Prize winner who just got the best award in the world of scientists and this award ruined his future life because he does not know what to do next and how to cope with this comparison between being a Nobel prize winner and being just a a human being in his own apartment or in his own house having breakfast.

SPEAKER_04 30:20

Yeah absolutely what to digest yeah yeah I think it goes back to what you said about you know managing your life if you feel as you are in control. You have a you have enough money so you you're not in financial problems because I guess if you are in financial problems you're not very happy because you have a lot of anxiety etc but if you have enough money like you said there's a certain threshold probably different in different countries then that's okay because you have you have that under control. It's not a problem anymore and if I mean becoming a little bit philosophical so if if humanity actually solved every material problem tomorrow would we automatically become happy or would we simply discover that happiness was never about material problems in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 31:16

You opened this conversation uh with reference to happiness parody is a is is is a difficult subject and a difficult product. It's a product of many things it's a product of your inner self of the social impacts and and so forth and we were just discussing how wood is that we are living in the society which is the first society in the history of mankind which cares about the happiness of ordinary people. It has never been the case it has never been the case society was not into happiness society was into efficiency achieving something and so forth but I will I will I I would say something now which probably should have been a conclusion of my my my third but I would like to say unhappiness is a driver of everything we do or of everything people do. Everything humans do is driven by the unhappiness no that's the only incentive we have in order to uh create economical growth in order to paint new paintings in order to persuade any ideas write books and so forth I might be wrong I'm just uh giving you my my perspective uh and again that's a happiness paradox we said we would like to be as happy as we can we would like our society and the score of happiness increases worldwide or at least in some countries continuously but if we reach hundred percent happiness it means that all our needs are satisfied and it means that we you have nothing to do but next so you you you wake up what what I'm going to do today nothing because your needs are satisfied in a way if you if if one is dead it means that none of your needs are satisfied needs for but if your all your needs are satisfied that's that's I think that's that brings to the same to to to the same outcome. Well what's the purpose of life and the purpose of life of the human being is to be happy through satisfaction of needs. No needs no need to leave uh that that's I think uh the overall theme not only for human existence it's like why why the earth uh endlessly moves in the space why all the stars are shining or whatever imagine if they just uh shrined all their shrine and that's it that's the end of the life for a star that's the end of the life for a physical matter and in nineteen sixties there was a very interesting a series of very interesting experiments were conducted in the United States where a scientist built uh a rat heaven or rat euphoria or topia rat utopia they called it I call it rat heaven so basically they just brought several several mouses or rats into a lab into a very large confined space and they provided them with everything with water with food they screened their health if it was an unhealthy mouse it would be removed carefully immediately so they had absolutely everything no predators no threats excellent climate conditions and their population expanded significantly to several thousand and within a few months these communities deteriorated completely so they uh they all the social interactions or social net networking broke down they lost interest in sexual activities they lost interest in reproducing they cared mostly about themselves and because the researcher who was doing that experiment he was examining the problem of all the population so this the b the outcome that basically the the the the the the community imploded so first they grew grew grew and then they imploded and it was really disastrous. They they were all all the animals were really suffering. They started to lose fur they lost interest in their life but the funny thing is that they did not reach the maximum capacity for the population so they could have grew more much more the space allow was allowing them. So there are two thirds of thinking one is said that all these problems because of the overpopulation and breakdown of the social connections where they say losers were not able to leave the community as they do it in a normal world and it's kind of ruined all social interactions between genders, between generations, leaders and followers but there is another line of thought that basically it it all happened because all all their needs were satisfied they lost the drive they have no reason to live for so what's what's the actual what's what's the right answer why this this this happened I think it would be premature to say maybe it was overpopulation by but for me this is a very interesting example of what may happen if all your needs are satisfied. So we need to be very very careful to to to dream or to engineer society which is 100% happy maybe it will bring the demise of society.

SPEAKER_04 37:02

Yeah no but I I think that's um it's it's a super interesting area and of course it it's also a really good segue to to talk about meaning. Yeah you know that there's so many people who who tell me that you know um their meaning is their job that they identify with the job with with the position they have what they do uh what they accomplish and it's it's it's absolutely impossible for them to imagine not having a job or that job or at least a very meaningful or important job. Of course it goes back to my t-shirt as well you know which is kind of put putting it out there that you know jobs are for machines life is for uh human beings so I mean it's a it's an interesting question is are humans really designed for work and you know that um happiness you know changed dramatically in the 1870s or thereabouts and of course work also changed dramatically in the first you know with the coming of the first industrial revolution yeah where people for the first time took jobs moved into the cities worked in factories from a distinct time from a distinct hour to another distinct hour doing very distinct tasks at a distinct place yeah yeah so um so you know a lot of a lot of people you know they kind of fear that without work they would become useless and I I get this so much because you know I'm I'm doing keynotes just about every week talking about do you really need to work? And people say of course we need to work I mean have you thought through that completely of course it is uh a very at least these days it's a very uh you know um familiar way to think about your life but you know did you talk to both men and women which is you know it that that's also a super interesting angle because it's usually men who say that you know I need to have this position you know I'm so powerful I'm so good at my job uh etc etc women are you know more open to spending more time with their children or more time with their elderly parents or you know um but you know I I I'm not I don't have you know this is just you know anecdotes I've talked to you know some people and they say this or that you know so there's no statistics no uh significance in in this just anecdotes but you know I that a lot of people are actually very afraid of that especially these days you know yeah they would they're afraid that they would become useless and you you also have you know the uh the the Israeli author Juval Harari who talks about the uh not the unemployed but the unemployable which is really a useless set of human beings they possess a skill set that is it's not attractive anymore no one is willing to pay for their skill sets anymore and of course you become useless not just poor not hungry not but actually useless which is uh it's a really hard work I agree so so yeah so what what if work is not merely how we make money and what if it's where we derive identity so what are your thoughts on on this topic I mean do human beings really need work or do we just need purpose like your like your rats from that experiment in the 60s?

SPEAKER_01 40:41

We need purpose but as you said many of us or at least most of the men acquire purpose for work so that's a paradox like we talked about that dissuasion of happiness is a very very modern invention if I may use this word and people we humans we really don't understand we don't we lack a historical perspective on human living we don't understand how modern most of the foundations of our life if you take romantic love it's 200 300 years old uh like obviously you'll find romantic love in Greek poems and so forth but ninety-nine percent of marriages in the past were arranged marriages uh you know and the idea is that you and marriage based on a feeling rather than on circumstances is a very very new idea hospitals, schools, universities very new and jobs, you know uh occupations like a farmer or I don't know. Interesting like in in Russian language when you ask a person uh what he or she does you ask where do you walk?

SPEAKER_04 42:02

Yes but in English language you ask what do you do for living and also I'm not a linguist but maybe a question of what do you do for living is a question you would ask four hundred years ago because at that time you you were not in in job you were in occupation you're older peasant and aristocrat and so forth but yeah yeah I actually find it I actually find it a little bit sad because you have yeah I think you have the same thing in in a lot of different languages even though it it might not be so specific. If you ask someone uh I mean it could be just quite open what do you do not for a living you you skip that part but what do you do but they'll still answer you know 99% of people will still answer with their job I'm an architect or I I'm a dentist or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

But that that's our identity it's very difficult for me to reflect because reflections can be only personal and I was blessed that I I I I had an amazing job. I really love the job and also for me happiness and job and social everything was uh uh in into into into win but when I talk to some colleagues of mine and they just say oh I'm a slave so we sit like next our de desks are next to each other I'm saying why the hell are they paying me for what I do because I enjoy it so much you know uh you you would do it for free. Yeah yeah and when um sort of a person same age same same similar life circumstances they say oh I'm I'm just a slave you know so we probably have we probably have different attitudes to the jobs.

SPEAKER_04 43:52

Probably yeah but also I saw some statistics the other day which is quite shocking. Almost 70% of the global workforce Hates the job. It's horrible. It might not be hate, you know, dramatically, but from dislike to to hate, at least on the very negative side. 70%.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

In a modern society, uh you spend one third of your life sleeping, and one third of your life at work, and one third of the life in in bit somewhere in between. Yeah. So if you dislike or have some reservations about one third of your life, that's really very, very challenging to live like.

SPEAKER_04 44:40

Yes, absolutely. But I thought I also think that this kind of points back to I'm I'm guessing, you know, that these people who say that, you know, I dislike my job or I hate it intensely, they uh they don't get, you know, they they're not fulfilled by their job, they don't see a sense of purpose in the job. Maybe the job is a little bit meaningless, you know. I mean that there's a lot of bullshit jobs out there. And you also have that book, is it is it David Graeber? I think it's David Graeber. David Graeber has this book called Bullshit Jobs.

unknown 45:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:15

And of course, uh you have them in in different, you know, different uh varieties for around the world, probably more of them in low-cost countries than in high-cost countries. I mean, you have the the guy at the hotel opening the door for you when you come to the hotel.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:31

I mean, really, I don't need that. I can open the door myself.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 45:36

So what kind of purpose, uh what kind of meaning do you think you get from that kind of job?

SPEAKER_01 45:42

It's uh it's it's it's it's it's it's interesting. And well, I just ask you, I uh like you went you w did you talk to men or did you talk to women? And I think uh men and women probably react differently because uh I think women are much better in creating social networks in communicating because they are more emotional, they are more open to sharing their their lives, and men tend to put their basket, all the eggs into a job basket with the status, with a little bit of that, and men become very much because job is not only about money, job is also in my life it was a gigantic part. 90% of my social interactions were from from the job, you know. So if if if that is gone, uh what one does, and when I when I reflect on the life of my relatives, I I saw that men were really my grandparents, my dad, you know, they were really different it was difficult for them to to move into retirement. As my grandmams and my mom, they uh they they they they just carry on living because they had a lot of other interests beyond. I'm not talking about collecting post stamps or playing golf as an interest. The interest in in the people around them. And that that allowed them to have uh a meaningful and you don't need to have this at a very high level. You don't need to be uh a lecture on philosophy. It's just enough to be, as we talked about, a peasant can be a farmer can be more happy than a Nobel Prize winner. So if you just love your grandchildren or happy to see your children, that's good enough, perhaps, to make your life fulfilled. But Meg, we uh we are either by nature or by nurture, we we uh we are very much job dependent.

SPEAKER_04 47:50

Yeah, and we spend a lot of time, so maybe it's not just one-third of your life either, it could be a lot more, actually. You see a lot of people spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day at work.

SPEAKER_03 48:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:04

Um of course then then it becomes the central of gravity in your life.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

And when I'm sure you will, since you are uh very interested in artificial intelligence, uh kind of I'm expecting that you'll probably uh start talking about the AI as as as as the uh 2029 feature of living, uh you know how it will how it will all happen. So that's that goes back to where we were talking about the never-ending pursuit of happiness because happiness at the end of the day evades us because we develop a skill, so now, like in a decade, we will be perfect in terms of addressing the social media challenges, uh, you know, harassment on the social media. We'll tick all these boxes, we'll develop all the tools in order to address that. And after we've done it, there is no time to relax. We can't just say, okay, now I conquered the social media, I don't care about it anymore. I'm happy, I know how to deal with these challenges. Suddenly a bloody AI arrives and it just wrecks your world completely, and you don't know how to respond to that.

SPEAKER_04 49:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah definitely, definitely. You know, let's let's jump over to AI because you know that's underlying a lot of the things that we talk about. But I think it's it's very important to to discuss AI not in uh in a technological lens, but in a societal and psychological lens. I think that's a lot more interesting, really.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

I agree.

SPEAKER_04 49:43

But just you know, just just finishing off the meaning part. I'm here doing this podcast. It it doesn't earn me a dime, you know. It doesn't provide food on the table for me, it doesn't provide uh clothes for my body. It's just because I I think it's really interesting to meet interesting people like yourself, to have you know stimulating discussions about things that you perhaps don't know too much about and you might learn something and perhaps also get some some learning out to the wider audience. Which is, you know, for me, that's that's good enough.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

Well, not probably not only good enough, that's I don't see the alternative to happy living rather than doing what you do, if you know what I mean. If we if if you either you are married to your job or even you have something beyond the job, you know, so to to to to to to in in you you see this painting. So I painted that again, not for money, not for any other reasons, but just to do something I I love to do, which a lot to s everything to do with creativity, you know, and uh what you do is probably flourishing your drive for creativity, for being and and it it also fosters your social interactions. So again, money is not everything, you know. No, absolutely not. If you were a billionaire, you would probably still do the same podcast.

SPEAKER_04 51:11

Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. But of course, I I also need some some income to to live by, but you know, uh but we'll we'll probably get to that. But of course, as you mentioned, AI is here, of course, it's been here for for a number of years. No, it didn't start in 2022, like a lot of people think, when ChatGPT came. Of course, it's been since 1955, a long time ago. Yeah. And of course, we we human beings have, of course, for centuries defined ourselves through intelligence. We are the most intelligent species on the planet, we are the rulers of the planet. Exactly. But now we are building machines that may surpass us intellectually, and even though it's it's really silly, yeah, you know, um, they also put these AI models uh into you know IQ tests, which is of course they meant for human beings, might not even be too good for human beings still. But the last models, you know, had 157 in IQ, so that's uh I I I might uh admit that a little bit more than me. Uh Among the Scotch, the chess grandmaster, has 160.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

So he so he's better than AI now for for for a few weeks at least. For a few weeks.

SPEAKER_04 52:31

Next year, his IQ is going to be exactly the same. AI is going to be maybe double. And of course, what happens what happens then? And this is not just your like calculation, it's not just a calculator, I mean it's also reasoning, creativity, maybe every cognitive task. So what what happens to to our ego, the human ego, when we are no longer the smartest entity on earth?

SPEAKER_01 52:57

Yeah, ego ego is a key word, I think.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

As a humankind, we have a huge ego.

SPEAKER_04 53:04

Yeah. But can we actually feel valuable if if we're outperformed by machines?

SPEAKER_01 53:11

I think that's very interesting. And again, uh I commented on on the theme of your podcast 2029. I think we our generation is just a magnificent generation, and we don't understand how special we are. Not only because, as I mentioned to you, we are the happiest generation in in in in the history of mankind. But also I suspect and uh this I I I I I am I'm perfectly fine that many people will think differently. But I suspect we are the generation which lives through the time of dramatic uh evolutionary changes. Many many years ago not so some years ago, uh archaeologists they found the skeleton of the old fish in the Arctic Canada. And that fish lived many, many years ago, and that was a very prominent discovery because uh they discovered the fish where uh some of the they saw the evolvement of the slips into legs. So they say that this is a kind of a connection link between a fish population and a mammal uh population. And I I I would expect that if indeed that's that that's right, that was a very long string of reproducing fishes or kind of cats, just the rudiment feature of the leg and when proper leg and blah blah it probably took them tens of thousands of years. But we are like that fish, but only within the span of one generation. Instead of spreading the evolutionary change into tens of thousands or maybe sometimes perhaps millions of years, it will all happen uh within the lifespan, at least my children, our children, I think they will they will see an incredible change, it might be a very challenging time for them. And it's it's it's I I I approach AI not as a technical revolution, I approach it as evolutionary uh change. I don't like the word singularity because uh scientists are masters of producing ground-sounding words which are very difficult to understand or so. My my personal opinion that AI is not AI, it's intelligence. That humans we are anthropocentric. We are anthropocentric. What means that we put ourselves into the center of the universe, the same as the uh astronomers six hundred years ago thought all the stars rotating about the earth. And when a couple of gentlemen uh started to claim differently, they had a lot of problems because of that, but they proved to be right. So I don't think we are the center of the universe, we are just a part of the journey. The journey will continue in terms of the evolutionary development, and we will keep on occupying our niche. And I don't think artificial intelligence is the theme here. The key word is intelligence, and what happened is that we as humans we deserve a lot of rewards, awards for developing intelligence within our minds. Uh, in 8070, our intelligence overpowered our biological bodies, but it's now time for intelligence to leave our brain. Intelligence outlived the capacity of the brain, and it will now move into something well beyond the human human domain, and we will just remain either in the current shape or either we'll somehow get modified to to the future. But the singularity I was mentioned to you. Singularity is uh just a confusing word, which basically means that the whole world is reformatting, and the rules which were applicable and gathering until that point do not work anymore. So a new set of rules is is going to be established. And there were several singularities within the known history of the universe for us, and that's that's that's that's basically a very very unique event where a single generation will produce a gigantic evolutionary change. Maybe that's how the Big Bang happened. I don't know how the Big Bang happened. Maybe it just happened like that. You weren't around. Yeah, so so so that might be an equivalent to how quickly it all happens. And uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:05

Of course there's the singularities. Yes, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 58:09

The only thing in my defense I would like to say, if people will start criticizing my position, is that I'm not sharing with you my opinion. I'm an engineer. Engineering is not an opinion-driven science. I cannot have an opinion if this building is strong or will it collapse. I have a theory, I have a hypothesis, I have a model which explains that. So we're not going to dig deep into into into this model, at least today, but I I have an evolutionary model, and I don't need artificial intelligence to happen in order to predict that next step. Um it just happens that it's here now, it's so convenient, I can kind of put it into into my into my model, and it matches it 100%. But I would have produced this model regardless of the artificial intelligence.

SPEAKER_04 59:03

So of course of course, um, you know, I I was just about to say that the singularity is of course, you know, uh it's a term from physics, as you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. And uh and uh you know all physicists hate that that the AI community has kind of adopted that term. And I think it was Ray Kurtweil actually who actually started using that because he I think he said something like that. It's it's it's the best explanation for when you know the intelligence explosion happens, yeah. Which is you know not not at the rate we're seeing today, which is you know it's kind of staggering. I mean, you see it now, new front frontier models every six weeks.

SPEAKER_02 59:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 59:49

Which is pretty pretty intense, so it's it's hyper exponential. But you know, but it's this is the slowest it's ever going to be. You know, it's it's just increasing. Exactly. And you you're seeing you're seeing you know recursive self-improvement, like with the Anthropics last model, 80% of that model was actually made by AI itself. So it's it's not 100% yet, but you know, we we're moving towards that kind of position, and then it will be even more rapid and more rapid and more rapid. So who knows, at least singularity or no singularity. I think we can say that it will be really hard to predict what that kind of world would look like. Very good. Yeah, very very very hard. Ray Kurtzweil says or predicts as that the singularity will happen in 2045, according to his definition. And of course, the 2029 specific year is is that's that's the year of the artificial general intelligence. AI, you know, surpassing human intelligence kind of changes a lot of things, of course, and especially the things that we're talking about now, because that means that AI, at least in theory, can do all the cognitive tasks that a human being can do. But you know, that doesn't mean that all jobs, all at least all cognitive jobs just disappear because you still probably need human beings to interact with other human beings, establishing trust, establishing you know inspiration and you know ambition, all of those kind of things. But of course, there will be you know a lot of people that we we both know, and some of the people I talk to that say I said you know they're they're married to the job, they can't imagine having meaning in their life without the job. And what what do you do while you know I'm I'm in insurance? Well, it's a fairly fairly straightforward job to to automate, at least a lot of it. It's a lot of calculations. AI is probably going to do that better. So it's I think it's a really interesting question. What happens to uh human ambition you know at that time? You know, I I believe that we still will have possibilities to have you know really worthwhile ambitions. Some of them might be job-related within what we call a job today, but some of them might also be within stuff that we don't call a job today, like being a football coach to young children. It's unpaid today, at least in this country.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:26

Is that any more worthwhile uh or or valuable for society than driving a bus? I don't know. I think I think it's very valuable.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:38

And also taking care of our small children, you know, I mean, instead of just putting them in a kindergarten. Because kindergartens were developed because we had to have both parents doing work, going to work. Exactly. And of course, the same things with you know home for the elderly. That's also, I mean, we kind of just shove away our elderly into those kind of homes so that we can work.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:04

Remember that most of the world doesn't lead in this framework. People in other countries uh have different uh pattern of cleaning.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:12

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, what what what what do you think? What what will happen to you know human ambition and self-worth meaning in in that kind of society?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:24

I I I I think I think about it in terms of forks. Uh so the first fork is what we just discussed. What is AI? Is it a technical industrial revolution? When we have many examples of that from the history where we can try to get some lessons learned, or if it's an evolutionary singularity, these are completely different scenarios. And in former one, uh AI uh will remain as an instrument of human existence, the changes it will implement, be that the changes for good, like for example, an abundance of resources or abundance of products and so forth, it will create a lot of personal struggles, as at the beginning of our conversation, when we were talking about happiness and we were talking about how feminism, the fight for female rights, women's rights, for as an as an example, you know, so and now I think society in is a much better place. There is still a lot can be done to improve but the rights of women, especially in cantralic knowledge, uh respected compared to how it was one and a half centuries ago. But it did not happen just because somebody changed the rules, it happened through real struggles of real people. That's how the society changes. Society doesn't change by making new constitutions. Constitutions are written by blood. So if there will be technological change and the next generation will have to live to learn how to live without jobs, or at least men had to live, it will go from there in uh because they are not equipped with the knowledge of such living. They had examples like you and me, my son, for example, or even my daughter, how they're going to develop the new set of skills to make them happy in this completely new setting of the needs. It will be a struggle, it will be personal suffering, it will not happen just because something good is brought into the society. Oh, you don't need to walk now, just sit at home, you'll have your universal income and whatever. It will be uh it will be a struggle, but sooner or later, within several generations, we will acquire uh and maybe artificial intelligence will will even help us to resolve that. The artificial intelligence is the evolutionary development. That means that very soon we will lose contact with artificial intelligence or with whatever intelligence will exist. It will leave the brain, we will lose capacity to comprehend what the f future forms of AI do. We will not understand its logic and this logic may be deprimental for the existence of AI, maybe uh of us, sorry, maybe we will compete for the sources of power or access to the sun or whatever. I don't know. But uh in the same way as trees do not know about existence of humans, we humans know that the trees exist, but trees do not know that we are around uh but they are on the receiving end of our activities. So that's and and I think what you and I we are discussing now, it used to be a subject for science fiction, and science fiction is always somewhat far away and partially right and mostly wrong. But a funny thing that it will be all checked uh within the next uh ten, fifteen years, uh, whether you and I are correct on what we're discussing uh now. So we can be held responsible through through this. Responsible I mean in a way that people can say, Oh, you were talking this rubbish, look how it all turned up. It's not how you said so. So it's and and that's why I say uh our generation and generation of our children is just uh going to leave a completely different completely different existence. Never happened like that to uh not only humans but to like to this fish in in Arctic Canada, which evolved into a mammal.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:59

So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:00

It never saw the final result of its suffering, you know. But we are probably going to see how how it all evolves within the span of just a single day.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:11

Yeah, yeah. No, I I expect to get a lot of phone calls on on New Year's Eve on 2029. Because I've been I've been talking about this for I've been talking about this you know for eight years. The interesting thing is that I haven't changed anything. So I've I've just you know kind of plotted in every every development within the curve that I was expecting to see it. Even today, you know, I saw this LinkedIn post by some uh university professor, very smart guy, and he talked about um autonomous cars. Yeah, because there was suddenly a Tesla who who delivered itself to its uh new owner. I know the a guy I had bought the Tesla, the Tesla just drove to him and said, Hey, I'm here, you're in your car. Yeah. And of course, and he asked, you know, that of course that would happen. And and he asked, What does this really mean? What does it mean for like parking lots? And I said, My God, I've been talking about this for eight years. Of course, parking lots is going to go away. Why would you need parking lots? Because you know, the autonomous cars will you know drive you from A to B and then they'll drive out of the city to charge. And we won't need parking lots. Parking lots, I mean, just in San Francisco, parking lots actually consist of 17% of the city area. That's a lot of real estate.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:41

That's like two central parks in the middle of uh in the middle of San Francisco. But you know, that's so that's 2029. I'm I'm writing the book, you know, almost finished, having the podcast, you know, doing the Pikinotes. But of course, you know, I I might be wrong. I think they you know that regarding the technological development, I think that's pretty much spot on. Just because it's technologically possible doesn't mean it happens. You know, I mean you you you add human beings to the equation and then just everything breaks, you know, uh because you have politicians who do the wrong things, or you have regulation that might be too tight or misleading, or it could be you know, just that we won't adopt these uh these new technologies. So you don't know. That's the beauty of the future. You know, it's it's a it's a book that's not written yet. But I'm I'm trying to write it though.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:38

Exactly. And I think you you and I, we are not generating uh recipes or prescriptions, we are just uh talking.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:50

And that the the this talk is a contribution to like uh an understanding, and I think that we are fairly transparent in a way that we we we might be wrong. So I would be even happy if I'm wrong in some of the things. I I just uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:08

Of course, I mean that that you're an engineer, uh you have a PhD, you're doing fantastic work at Technip uh FMC. You know, uh of course you are you know a m uh you know perfect kind of guy. Of course, I mean the scientific uh method uh is is uh is is always wrong. You know, that's uh hypothesis. It gets challenged, it gets peer-reviewed. It's uh it's you know it's it's the best method to to develop new understanding because you will be challenged, and you're also open that you might be wrong, which is totally different than most political systems or religious systems, you might also add. Of course, any a deeply religious person might disagree with that. But hey, when when have they ever you know acknowledged that they were wrong? It just doesn't happen. But of course, maybe we're just discussing, you know, which is I think trying to raise the level of discussion about our lives, about you know what's happening around us, about the possible future. I think that's again, you know, I think it's quite worthwhile. You know, it gives me meaning instead of people just scrolling, you know, looking at social media and what did uh you know this and that celebrity do yesterday. I I really don't care. And I think that people should spend time thinking about something else. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:37

And it's the world needs deep conversations, the world can enjoy deep conversations. I was attending a webinar by a philosopher, French philosopher, I think it was uh last year, and he said something like free thinking is better than sex. So one can argue about the comparison, but free thinking is really something we lack around us. The world evolved in a stra as you said, we were evolving around strange subjects which has no interest and meaning for uh most of the human beings. And very peculiar why conversation you and I are having now, why is it not on front pages of Dark Blood or the guy? I'm not saying our conversation, similar discussions, that's these are the most interesting things really to talk about. Yes. And for some strange unknown reason that's not the case.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:43

I'll uh I'll make sure to notify CNN. But you know, another interesting topic I think that I also write about in in the upcoming book, hopefully due in in August. It's also related to this because you know I I think that you know uh having automation, maybe automating also a lot of jobs that we don't have to do anymore. Could actually be a really good concept, but some some people think it it might be horrible. Of course, it probably relates back to what kind of understanding and relationships you have to your job and your your um identity, etc.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:26

But But not now, Lars, you're talking about industrial revolution, aren't you?

SPEAKER_04 1:14:31

Well, yes. Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, um and maybe you know maybe that could be uh some kind of utopia. We also touched uh briefly into utopia and dystopias uh a little while back here. You know, one one thing, you know, one thing I found really interesting is that people are people are very happy to believe in dystopia. Technological dystopia, you know, I mean just about every science fiction movie is is some kind of technological dystopia. But if you if you mention technological utopia, people roll their eyes and think that you're very stupid. And uh so it's very easy to imagine disaster, but imagining success is really really hard. So this is this is like believing in hell but not in heaven. How is that possible? I mean, if you if you have one, you surely must have the other. There must be some kind of balance, there must be some yin and yang, dark and light, etc. What what what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:46

I I I agree uh with your sentiment and with your reflections. We humans tend to be pessimistic, but I would not blame humans or human nature for that. I think it's just very natural. We have a certain built-in behavioral uh call it algorithm, and it consists of specific sequence of behavioral steps we need to undergo, and one of them is risk analysis. So any any any activity you do when you when you say this word or that word, when you talk to me, sub somewhere on the background you always do a risk analysis, you know, and risks uh are predominantly about negative things, because this is the right way to secure your prosperous future, you know. So yeah, exactly. So if things happen good, it's good, you're you're kind of, but there is no point in improving it, it's already achieved, it's in your done list. But in your to-do list, you need to continuously go through the risk analysis, and that's why we are kind of pessimistically minded, it's it's our algorithm, it's not because we are pessimistic brought up people, it's not because our parents induced us into this way. That is how a normal operating unit should should should should should should should analyze.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:22

So so this actually goes back to our ancestors living in the plains in Africa. And you know, uh, if you pay attention to any risks, you might survive and continue, you know, the um yeah, but if you if you don't pay attention, you'll be eaten. Yeah, by uh yeah, by a lion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:43

And I I think that it's tempting to blame people for being pessimistic and being more heel orientated, but I don't think it's our fault, it's just how we are wired.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:55

Of course, our life has changed dramatically since we wanted the planes in Africa, but our brains has not had an update.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:02

And I I think that the media and the risks, the risks change instead of facing Kalian, we're now facing an AI, but it's still the same kind of situation, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:13

Yeah, but I also think that the media uh they know this, of course. Uh yeah, we are much more focused on negative uh information than on positive information, and they feed us just about 99.9% you know negative news.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:32

Exactly. It's modern media or mainstream media is very manipulative, but they do it either on purpose or just of consciously.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:42

It's interesting. When you when you ask people on the streets, you think that the world is getting better or worse. People say, well, it's getting worse. We we see all this all those negative uh news in the in the paper, you know. And and the opposite is definitely true. But but you never see you know, like a news headline saying that today we had 0.012% less poverty. Because that's that's not that's not news. But that's that's the way it goes. And if you compound that, you have a lot, you know, a lot of reduction in poverty. But that's not news.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:16

People don't know about so this is different because this is not a risk assessment by individuals, this is social engineering by elites or whoever who prefers to have a certain uh way of presenting uh reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:33

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:34

So I I still stand by my statement that we are the happiest generation in the world, you know. But that's compared not to our challenges we're facing now, that's compared to the challenges we faced 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:50

No, I I totally totally agree. You know, it's I mean, in all my talks, and of course, also this upcoming book, you know, in all my talks, it it's very optimistic. You know, I'm I'm focusing on the most positive outcome of the let's call it the technology revolution. Uh of course there's a darker had the back side of the metal, so to speak, and that's that's pitch black. I don't want to go down that route. You know, it's it's there. It's it's definitely uh uh one impossible option as well. But you know, I I would like to focus on you know the the positive side, but you know, I I have to start quite early in the talks stating that this is going to be pure optimism. You might think it's uh it's not borderline naive. And you know, and and people uh and then of course I explain why this is the more likely scenario and why all of this is happening. And people think it's just science fiction, but you know, it's we we we all know that it's just science. Uh and it's uh a lot of it is happening right now, which is quite quite interesting. But I sometimes I feel a little bit vulnerable standing there on stage. You know, you have a thousand people. You're exposing yourself. I am, I am. You know, thousand people in the audience, and this they're thinking he's very naive. But you know, okay, I'll uh I'll uh I'll take the stance, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:20

So I wish you all all all the luck. Uh we talked about happiness, equal luck, or whatever. So I wish you uh happiness plus also plus luck uh in pursuing uh this uh these ideas of yours are not only just ideas, the dreams. I think uh this book is a dream of you. It's an Everest for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:44

It is. Yeah, I I would also like to go to Everest, maybe. But I'm a mountain kind of guy, you know, I'm very outdoorsy, I always have been. But but Everest is after my risk assessment, yeah. I probably won't go to Everest.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:01

You've you've seen you've seen the photographs with the queue, which is like several hundred people long.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh yeah. It's a cue. Uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:19

So um you know, we we're talking about 2029, of course, and um this this podcast is called The World in 2029. And I will always ask, you know, at the end of the podcast, I always ask the guests, you know, to to look ahead and to to imagine, you know, the towards the end of the uh decades. And it's it's only three and a half years till the end of 2029, you know. So uh time is time is rushing. So what what do you think? What what if you look back on the on the previous few years? What happened that surprised you the most? If you're standing in 2029, you're looking back at you know the last three and a half years.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:04

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:06

What I I I want to share with you first of all what surprises me here now in 2026. It's the strange disconnect between how intellectually I perceive the changes in in the society around me compared to how common everything, how common my existence and uneventful, you know. Uh so nothing is happening in a way, and at the same time everything is happening. You know, very I don't know if you feel the same, but there is uh this d disconnect. So with that in mind, maybe in 29 you and I will be more or less similar people with the same kind of uh understanding and comprehension. But uh older twenty-nine so Magnus Carlson is definitely uh less less smarter than the I guess IQ it will remain, hopefully, on whatever one hundred and sixty you said. AI I don't know, two hundred, three hundred, five hundred Yeah. I also expect that another very interesting subject, and maybe we can talk about it one day. I'm writing a paper on it uh right now, uh the uh new ethic uh the new uh the new ethics of uh AI era. That's interesting. Because uh AI is in my opinion not is not only technological development, but it's a change in a way how the uh nature uh functions, the new rules, new norms, and it will definitely bring a change in the morals and ethics. And we we have a wrong understanding. We normally say oh his behavior is unethical, or he is a highly moral person, saying that he or she satisfies the moral requirements. This is a very narrow time gap, but in a big time gaps actually it's opposite, it's morals which trying to catch up with behavioral changes in our behavioral so what is moral is what is developed for try and error or for different behavioral patterns and develops as the best possible way for humankind or whatever society survival. And digital development moving away from biological more and more into intellectual domains will reformat our society completely. Will it happen by twenty nine? Not necessarily, but we will see more and more strong things which are related to the continuous domination of the intellectual mental part of the humans compared to physical and so forth. And all these processes we observe now child believing, reduced reproduction rates. I think these are not just social developments, I think these are the changes in a way that reproduction moves away from biological reproduction into reproduction of uh kilobytes, megabytes and so forth. And that that that that that that that will change our society and will continue to move into the uh the the birth rates will will just drop dramatically, people will start reproducing, population will start demy uh diminishing, of course not by twenty-nine, but very, very quickly. So uh a lot of elderly people, very few younger people. All this will create a new dynamics in the society. How the relations here between couples, how the we talked about romantic love, that will evolve, you know. So all these anecdotes that somewhere in that particular country men stop chasing women because they are so afraid of actual physical interactions.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:17

Because they spent all their time on their phones. It it's all presented as as an anecdote, you know, all these silly men. But make i what if it's not an anecdote? What's it what is a major valuation ready to go, but will change the way how we behave. But in 29, you and I will feel exactly the same as now. So nothing will will change the way you will still be interested in your rock climbing, you will be probably thinking about another book, hopefully you'll have your podcast. But the world will be uh very much AI dominated. We'll probably still don't see a lot of AI in our kind of day to day life because it's strange that AI is everywhere and nowhere it at the same time, if you know what I mean. But uh I think we will start seeing more and more tangible AI things, you know, in a way how we communicate. Maybe we will develop some patterns of AI friendship friendship. I don't know. But it it will be more tangible. But I I am not able to say you in which in which way. Do you think we the world around us will change a lot in two years? You and I we will not change at all and there will be more increase of the tangible AI input into our lives and the there will be continuous change in our morals and ethics which we will continue to receive as anecdotes about students in Massachusetts university refusing to have babies or whatever. But if you learn how to read the the the the visionary things into into news like that you would be able to spot it.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:04

So I don't know if I gave you an honest and what was my answer to the I don't I always try to get to the point in this I think it's uh definitely an honest answer. Do you think we will be more happy in 2029 than we are today or less happy?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:25

In a way how I just see the projection how the happiness develops uh yes I think we will because I don't think the these challenges of AI I I I just described to you in sort of as as as I foresee I don't think by 29 they will be obvious. It it will take a little bit more of time. Yeah. It will still happen historically very quickly but 29 will be a good year compared to 2080.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:54

Yes that's um that's absolutely my my hope as well I do believe in a utopia I don't believe in heaven and hell but I do believe in in utopia and dystopia I think it's logical that you must believe in both of them if you believe in one of them and I would much rather have uh us going towards a utopia than towards a dystopia but Igor it's it's been it's been a pleasure discussing things with you. I think that we we could sit here for uh for five hours straight that would be no likewise so that's uh that's excellent and we'll we'll have to we'll have to catch up on that one but anyway also to the audience thank you for joining us on on yet another episode of the world in in 2029 and if you enjoyed today's uh discussion please subscribe share the episode leave a review make some kind of mark and of course the goal of this podcast is not to predict the future with certainty I mean nobody can do that but it's to explore you know the forces shaping our future and help us imagine what kind of world we want to create that's the utopia the future is not something that just happens to us you know it's something that we build together it's I think it's by design. So until next time keep questioning keep learning keep imagining a better future this is larger than in you've been listening to the world in 2029. And remember the future is better than you think. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:22

Thank you thank you life