Full episode with Ben Goertzel (Jun 2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpSmCKe27WE
Clips channel (Lex Clips): https://www.youtube.com/lexclips
Main channel (Lex Fridman): https://www.youtube.com/lexfridman
(more links below)

Podcast full episodes playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4

Podcasts clips playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

Podcast website:
https://lexfridman.com/ai

Podcast on Apple Podcasts (iTunes):
https://apple.co/2lwqZIr

Podcast on Spotify:
https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8

Podcast RSS:
https://lexfridman.com/category/ai/feed/

Ben Goertzel is one of the most interesting minds in the artificial intelligence community. He is the founder of SingularityNET, designer of OpenCog AI framework, formerly a director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics, the company that created the Sophia Robot. He has been a central figure in the AGI community for many years, including in the Conference on Artificial General Intelligence.

Subscribe to this YouTube channel or connect on:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman
- Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

What do you think about the will to power?

I don't think there's 1 pure, simple, and elegant objective function driving humans by any means.

What do you think, if we look at, I know it's hard to look at humans in an aggregate, but do you think overall humans are good?

Or Do we have both good and evil within us that depending on the circumstances, depending on whatever can percolate to the top?

very ambiguous, complicated, and in some ways silly concepts.

But if we could dig into your question from a couple directions.

So I think if you look in evolution, humanity is shaped both by individual selection and what biologists would call group selection, like tribe level selection, right?

So individual selection has driven us in a selfish DNA sort of way, so that each of us does to a certain approximation what will help us propagate our DNA to future generations.

I mean, that's why I've got 4 kids so far, and probably that's not the last 1.

Tribal, like group selection, means humans in a way will do what will advocate for the persistence of the DNA of their whole tribe, or their social group.

And in biology, you have both of these, right?

And you can see, say, in ant colony or beehive, There's a lot of group selection in the evolution of those social animals.

On the other hand, say a big cat or some very solitary animal, it's a lot more biased toward individual selection.

Humans are an interesting balance, and I think this reflects itself in what we would view as selfishness versus altruism to some extent.

So we just have both of those objective functions contributing to the makeup of our brains.

And then as Nietzsche analyzed in his own way, and others have analyzed in different ways, I mean, we abstract this as well.

We have both good and evil within us, right?

Because a lot of what we view as evil is really just selfishness.

A lot of what we view as good is altruism, which means doing what's good for the tribe.

And on that level, we have both of those just baked into us, and that's how it is.

Of course, There are psychopaths and sociopaths and people who get gratified by the suffering of others, and that's a different thing.

Yeah, those are exceptions, but on the whole.

Yeah, but I think at core, we're not purely selfish, we're not purely altruistic, we are a mix and that's the nature of it.

And we also have a complex constellation of values that are just very specific to our evolutionary history.

Like we love waterways and mountains and the ideal place to put a house is in a mountain overlooking the water, right?

And we care a lot about our kids and we care a little less about our cousins and even less about our fifth cousins.

I mean, there are many particularities to human values which whether they're good or evil depends on your perspective.

Say, I spent a lot of time in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa, where we have 1 of our AI development offices for my SingularityNet project.

And when I walk through the streets in Addis, you know, there's people lying by the side of the road, just living there by the side of the road, dying probably of curable diseases without enough food or medicine.

And when I walk by them, I feel terrible, I give them money.

When I come back home to the developed world, they're not on my mind that much.

I do donate some, but I also spend some of the limited money I have enjoying myself in frivolous ways rather than donating it to those people who are right now starving, dying, and suffering on the roadside.

I mean, it makes me somewhat selfish and somewhat altruistic.

And we each balance that in our own way, right?

So that's, whether that will be true of all possible AGIs

So you have a sense, you kind of mentioned that there's a selfish, I'm not gonna bring up the whole Ayn Rand idea of Selfishness being the core virtue.

That's a whole interesting kind of tangent that I think we'll

So the, yeah, I have extraordinary negative respect for Ayn Rand.

But when I worked with a company called Genescient, which was evolving flies to have extraordinary long lives in Southern California.

So we had flies that were evolved by artificial selection to have 5 times the lifespan of normal fruit flies.

But the population of super long-lived flies was physically sitting in a spare room at an Ayn Rand Elementary School in Southern California.

So that was just like, well, if I saw this in a movie, I wouldn't believe it.

Well, yeah, the universe has a sense of humor in that kind of way.

That fits in, humor fits in somehow into this whole absurd existence.

But you mentioned the balance between selfishness and altruism as kind of being innate.

Do you think it's possible that's kind of an emergent phenomena, those peculiarities of our value system, how much of it is innate, how much of it is something we collectively, kind of like a Dostoevsky novel, bring to life together as a civilization?

I mean, the answer to nature versus nurture is usually both, and of course it's nature versus nurture versus self-organization, as you mentioned.

So clearly, there are evolutionary roots to individual and group selection leading to a mix of selfishness and altruism.

On the other hand, different cultures manifest that in different ways.

Well, we all have basically the same biology.

And if you look at sort of pre-civilized cultures, you have tribes like the Yanomamo in Venezuela, which their culture is focused on killing other tribes.

And you have other Stone Age tribes that are mostly peaceable and have big taboos against violence.

So you can certainly have a big difference in how culture manifests these innate biological characteristics, but still, you know, there's probably limits that are given by our biology.

I used to argue this with my great-grandparents, who were Marxists, actually, because they believed in the withering away of the state.

Like, they believed that, you know, as you move from capitalism to socialism to communism, people would just become more social-minded so that a state would be unnecessary and people would just give, everyone would give everyone else what they needed.

Now, setting aside that that's not what the various Marxist experiments on the planet seemed to be heading toward in practice, Just as a theoretical point, I was very dubious that human nature could go there.

At that time when my great-grandparents were alive, I was just like, you know, I'm a cynical teenager.

If you don't have some structure keeping people from screwing each other over, they're going to do it.

So now I actually don't quite see things that way.

I mean, I think my feeling now subjectively is the culture aspect is more significant than I thought it was when I was a teenager.

And I think you could have a human society that was dialed dramatically further toward self-awareness, other awareness, compassion, and sharing than our current society.

And of course, greater material abundance helps, but to some extent, material abundance is a subjective perception also, because many Stone Age cultures perceive themselves as living in great material abundance, that they had all the food and water they wanted, they lived in a beautiful place, that they had sex lives, that they had children.

I mean, they had abundance without any factories, right?

So I think humanity probably would be capable of fundamentally more positive and joy-filled mode of social existence than what we have now.

Clearly Marx didn't quite have the right idea about how to get there.

I mean, he missed a number of key aspects of human society and its evolution.

And if we look at where we are in society now, how to get there is a quite different question, because there are very powerful forces pushing people in different directions than a positive, joyous, compassionate existence, right?


Speaker 0: What do you think about the will to power? What do you think drives humans? Is it

Speaker 1: Oh, an unholy mix of things. I don't think there's 1 pure, simple, and elegant objective function driving humans by any means.

Speaker 2: What do you think, if we look at, I know it's hard to look at humans in an aggregate, but do you think overall humans are good? Or Do we have both good and evil within us that depending on the circumstances, depending on whatever can percolate to the top? Good and evil are

Speaker 1: very ambiguous, complicated, and in some ways silly concepts. But if we could dig into your question from a couple directions. So I think if you look in evolution, humanity is shaped both by individual selection and what biologists would call group selection, like tribe level selection, right? So individual selection has driven us in a selfish DNA sort of way, so that each of us does to a certain approximation what will help us propagate our DNA to future generations. I mean, that's why I've got 4 kids so far, and probably that's not the last 1.

On the other hand. I like the ambition. Tribal, like group selection, means humans in a way will do what will advocate for the persistence of the DNA of their whole tribe, or their social group. And in biology, you have both of these, right? And you can see, say, in ant colony or beehive, There's a lot of group selection in the evolution of those social animals.

On the other hand, say a big cat or some very solitary animal, it's a lot more biased toward individual selection. Humans are an interesting balance, and I think this reflects itself in what we would view as selfishness versus altruism to some extent. So we just have both of those objective functions contributing to the makeup of our brains. And then as Nietzsche analyzed in his own way, and others have analyzed in different ways, I mean, we abstract this as well. We have both good and evil within us, right?

Because a lot of what we view as evil is really just selfishness. A lot of what we view as good is altruism, which means doing what's good for the tribe. And on that level, we have both of those just baked into us, and that's how it is. Of course, There are psychopaths and sociopaths and people who get gratified by the suffering of others, and that's a different thing.

Speaker 2: Yeah, those are exceptions, but on the whole.

Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think at core, we're not purely selfish, we're not purely altruistic, we are a mix and that's the nature of it. And we also have a complex constellation of values that are just very specific to our evolutionary history. Like we love waterways and mountains and the ideal place to put a house is in a mountain overlooking the water, right? And we care a lot about our kids and we care a little less about our cousins and even less about our fifth cousins. I mean, there are many particularities to human values which whether they're good or evil depends on your perspective.

Say, I spent a lot of time in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa, where we have 1 of our AI development offices for my SingularityNet project. And when I walk through the streets in Addis, you know, there's people lying by the side of the road, just living there by the side of the road, dying probably of curable diseases without enough food or medicine. And when I walk by them, I feel terrible, I give them money. When I come back home to the developed world, they're not on my mind that much. I do donate some, but I also spend some of the limited money I have enjoying myself in frivolous ways rather than donating it to those people who are right now starving, dying, and suffering on the roadside.

So does that make me evil? I mean, it makes me somewhat selfish and somewhat altruistic. And we each balance that in our own way, right? So that's, whether that will be true of all possible AGIs

Speaker 2: is a subtler question. That's how humans are. So you have a sense, you kind of mentioned that there's a selfish, I'm not gonna bring up the whole Ayn Rand idea of Selfishness being the core virtue. That's a whole interesting kind of tangent that I think we'll

Speaker 1: just distract ourselves on. I have to make 1 amusing comment. Sure. Or a comment that has amused me anyway. So the, yeah, I have extraordinary negative respect for Ayn Rand.

Negative, what's a negative respect? But when I worked with a company called Genescient, which was evolving flies to have extraordinary long lives in Southern California. So we had flies that were evolved by artificial selection to have 5 times the lifespan of normal fruit flies. But the population of super long-lived flies was physically sitting in a spare room at an Ayn Rand Elementary School in Southern California. So that was just like, well, if I saw this in a movie, I wouldn't believe it.

Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the universe has a sense of humor in that kind of way. That fits in, humor fits in somehow into this whole absurd existence. But you mentioned the balance between selfishness and altruism as kind of being innate. Do you think it's possible that's kind of an emergent phenomena, those peculiarities of our value system, how much of it is innate, how much of it is something we collectively, kind of like a Dostoevsky novel, bring to life together as a civilization?

Speaker 1: I mean, the answer to nature versus nurture is usually both, and of course it's nature versus nurture versus self-organization, as you mentioned. So clearly, there are evolutionary roots to individual and group selection leading to a mix of selfishness and altruism. On the other hand, different cultures manifest that in different ways. Well, we all have basically the same biology. And if you look at sort of pre-civilized cultures, you have tribes like the Yanomamo in Venezuela, which their culture is focused on killing other tribes.

And you have other Stone Age tribes that are mostly peaceable and have big taboos against violence. So you can certainly have a big difference in how culture manifests these innate biological characteristics, but still, you know, there's probably limits that are given by our biology. I used to argue this with my great-grandparents, who were Marxists, actually, because they believed in the withering away of the state. Like, they believed that, you know, as you move from capitalism to socialism to communism, people would just become more social-minded so that a state would be unnecessary and people would just give, everyone would give everyone else what they needed. Now, setting aside that that's not what the various Marxist experiments on the planet seemed to be heading toward in practice, Just as a theoretical point, I was very dubious that human nature could go there.

At that time when my great-grandparents were alive, I was just like, you know, I'm a cynical teenager. I think humans are just jerks. The state is not going to wither away. If you don't have some structure keeping people from screwing each other over, they're going to do it. So now I actually don't quite see things that way.

I mean, I think my feeling now subjectively is the culture aspect is more significant than I thought it was when I was a teenager. And I think you could have a human society that was dialed dramatically further toward self-awareness, other awareness, compassion, and sharing than our current society. And of course, greater material abundance helps, but to some extent, material abundance is a subjective perception also, because many Stone Age cultures perceive themselves as living in great material abundance, that they had all the food and water they wanted, they lived in a beautiful place, that they had sex lives, that they had children. I mean, they had abundance without any factories, right? So I think humanity probably would be capable of fundamentally more positive and joy-filled mode of social existence than what we have now.

Clearly Marx didn't quite have the right idea about how to get there. I mean, he missed a number of key aspects of human society and its evolution. And if we look at where we are in society now, how to get there is a quite different question, because there are very powerful forces pushing people in different directions than a positive, joyous, compassionate existence, right?

See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

Are Humans Good or Evil? (Ben Goertzel) | AI Podcast Clips with Lex Fridman