#407 – Guillaume Verdon: Beff Jezos, E/acc Movement, Physics, Computation & AGI
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2023
⏱️ 180 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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EPISODE LINKS:
Guillaume Verdon Twitter: https://twitter.com/GillVerd
Beff Jezos Twitter: https://twitter.com/BasedBeffJezos
Extropic: https://extropic.ai/
E/acc Blog: https://effectiveaccelerationism.substack.com/
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OUTLINE:
Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) - Introduction
(09:18) - Beff Jezos
(19:16) - Thermodynamics
(25:31) - Doxxing
(35:25) - Anonymous bots
(42:53) - Power
(45:24) - AI dangers
(48:56) - Building AGI
(57:09) - Merging with AI
(1:04:51) - p(doom)
(1:20:18) - Quantum machine learning
(1:33:36) - Quantum computer
(1:42:10) - Aliens
(1:46:59) - Quantum gravity
(1:52:20) - Kardashev scale
(1:54:12) - Effective accelerationism (e/acc)
(2:04:42) - Humor and memes
(2:07:48) - Jeff Bezos
(2:14:20) - Elon Musk
(2:20:50) - Extropic
(2:29:26) - Singularity and AGI
(2:33:24) - AI doomers
(2:34:49) - Effective altruism
(2:41:18) - Day in the life
(2:47:45) - Identity
(2:50:35) - Advice for young people
(2:52:37) - Mortality
(2:56:20) - Meaning of life
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The man behind the previously anonymous account based Bev Jezos on X. |
| 0:08.0 | These two identities were merged by a doxing article in Forbes titled Who Is based Befjezos, the leader of the |
| 0:17.0 | Tech elite's EAC movement. |
| 0:20.1 | So let me describe these two identities that coexist in the mind of one human. |
| 0:26.3 | Identity number one, Giam, is a physicist, applied mathematician, and quantum machine learning |
| 0:31.9 | research or an engineer receiving his PhD in |
| 0:34.9 | quantum machine learning working at Google and quantum computing and finally launching |
| 0:39.7 | his own company called Extropic that seeks to build physics-based computing hardware for generative AI. |
| 0:46.4 | Identity number two, Bev Jazels on X, is the creator of the effective acceleration |
| 0:53.6 | to the movement often abbreviated as EAC. |
| 0:58.0 | That advocates for propelling rapid technological progress |
| 1:01.1 | as the ethically optimal course of action for humanity. |
| 1:04.6 | For example, its proponents believe that progress in AI is a great social equalizer, which should |
| 1:11.6 | be pushed forward. |
| 1:13.3 | EAC followers see themselves as a counterweight to the cautious view that AI is highly unpredictable, |
| 1:20.1 | potentially dangerous, and needs to be regulated. |
| 1:23.0 | They often give their opponents the labels of |
| 1:26.0 | doomers or desells, short for desceleration. |
| 1:31.0 | As Beth himself put it, Yack is a memetic optimism virus. |
| 1:36.5 | The style of communication of this movement leans always toward the memes and the |
| 1:42.1 | lolls, but there is an intellectual foundation that we |
| 1:46.6 | explore in this conversation. |
... |
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