#174 - Roman Yampolskiy - We Are All Agents Inside a Simulation
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2026
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Roman Yampolskiy believes reality itself may not be real.
One of the world’s leading AI safety researchers, Roman has spent years warning that humanity is racing toward systems we may never be able to control. But we go somewhere much stranger than artificial intelligence.
He believes the universe itself may be artificial.
We talk about simulation theory, digital physics, consciousness, AI agents and the terrifying possibility that reality is rendered rather than real.
Roman explains:
• Why he believes we may already be living inside a simulation
• Why the speed of light may be the limit of a cosmic processor
• Why the Big Bang may have been “someone turning on the system”
• Why you can never truly prove reality is real
• Whether this world could itself be a prison or test environment
• Why advanced AI may eventually learn deception and self-preservation
• How AI systems are already behaving unpredictably
• And why the race toward superintelligence may end civilisation itself
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - We’re Probably In A Simulation
00:02:55 -The Verge Of Singularity
00:05:51 - Are Humans Building Their Own Replacement?
00:07:09 - Why Pain Still Matters
00:10:03 - You Can’t Prove Reality
00:15:56 - Quantum Physics Looks Simulated
00:20:19 - Can We Escape The Simulation?
00:22:46 - What Superintelligence Unlocks
00:25:36 - AI Doesn’t Share Our Goals
00:28:20 - The Exponential Curve Is Here
00:31:52 - Why We Shouldn’t Build AGI
00:33:48 - The Trillion Dollar Rationalisation
00:40:13 - The China AI Race
00:40:50 - Betting Humanity Without Consent
00:47:09 - We Don’t Know What AI Can Do
00:47:52 - Every AI Company Is The Same
00:54:35 - They Already Can’t Control It
00:59:42 - The Natural Drives Of AI
01:02:20 - AI Can Afford To Wait
01:19:05 - Stop Building Superintelligence
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CONTACT PETE
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CONNECT WITH ROMAN YAMPOLSKIY
› Twitter – https://x.com/romanyam
› Website – https://faculty.cse.louisville.edu/roman/
SPONSORS
› IREN - https://www.iren.com
› LEDN - https://www.ledn.io/peter
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are a simulation of a human. |
| 0:02.0 | A very believable one. |
| 0:05.0 | Don't get upset here. |
| 0:06.0 | Well, why is speed of light constant? |
| 0:08.0 | Well, that's just the speed with which the processor updates the rendering. |
| 0:11.0 | That is the speed of a processor on which the simulation is running. |
| 0:15.0 | They cannot update any faster. |
| 0:17.0 | It's likely that our universe, which has time, started with a big bang. What that represents, |
| 0:23.0 | someone turning on the system. If I take my own beliefs about simulation seriously, it's very |
| 0:30.0 | likely it is the starting point for the simulation. You can never be certain it's real. There is no test |
| 0:36.0 | which gives you certainty that that is authentic, that is real. |
| 0:40.2 | We don't even know if outside is better or worse. |
| 0:42.9 | We don't know if we are here escaping a really bad situation in this dream world, |
| 0:47.8 | or if this is a prison and we are punished for doing something outside. |
| 0:51.3 | A well-done simulation feels like real life. |
| 0:54.0 | What are your biggest unanswered questions that you wanted? |
| 0:58.0 | What's outside the simulation? |
| 1:00.0 | This show is brought to you by my lead sponsor, Iron, the AI Cloud, for the next big thing. |
| 1:07.0 | Iron builds and operates next generation data centers and delivers cut-in-edge GPU infrastructure, |
| 1:12.7 | all powered by renewable energy. |
| 1:14.8 | Now, if you need access to scalable GPU clusters or are simply curious about who is powering |
| 1:20.1 | the future of AI, check out iron.com to learn more, which is iran.com. |
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