We MUST Save Earth Because We Can’t Live on Mars - Adam Becker - #503

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 What if the future tech billionaires keep promising us isn’t the answer, but part of the problem? In this episode of Into the Impossible, I talk with Adam Becker, author of More Everything Forever, about the big dreams coming out of Silicon Valley—especially when it comes to AI and the future of humanity. We take a hard look at the idea that AI is going to fix everything, launch us into space, and solve all our problems along the way. It’s a powerful story, and a lot of very smart, very rich people believe it. But what if they’re getting the science—and the big picture—wrong? Becker argues that people like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen are chasing a future that ignores some pretty basic realities: limits on energy, physics, and even society itself. Instead of creating a better world, their vision might actually make things worse, deepening inequality, spreading bias, and putting even more power into the hands of a few. If you’re excited about AI, curious about space, or just wondering where all this is heading, this is a conversation you’ll want to hear. — Key Takeaways: 00:00 Intro 00:44 AI boom or AI doom? 03:40 What are tech billionaires wrong about? 06:10 Influence of science fiction on tech billionaires 11:05 Religious parallels in AI and space exploration 15:37 The search for extraterrestrial intelligence 24:16 Effective altruism and long-termism 35:28 Optimism and skepticism about AI 44:46 Judging a book by its cover 47:53 Impact of AI on underrepresented communities — Additional resources: Learn more about Adam: 💻 Website: https://freelanceastrophysicist.com/ 📚 More Everything Forever: https://a.co/d/ajlYHvZ — ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/ 🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	They don't see that as the problem. They think, oh, this is the only example of advanced life in the entire universe.
0:08.0	And so therefore, it's really, really important that we get off of this planet in order to secure a future out in space.
0:17.0	They say it's more important than anything else. It's more important than preserving the
0:20.8	environment here. It's more important than civil rights. They also overlook that space is pretty
0:27.7	bad for humans to live. This is the best place we've got. We're going to talk a lot about what I call
0:33.7	the eschatology, the end times fantasies of tech billionaires, some of whom have been on the show and I've talked to in the past, including people like Peter Thiel and Mark Andreson.
0:43.5	Let's open with something that's really been a hot topic lately, which is the potential for AI boom or AI doom.
0:50.4	In this book, you come down relatively hard on the billionaires that are not only shaping our economy through their inventions or technology, but also on their desire for control, manipulation, power and perhaps even, as you call it, a threat to democracy.
1:04.7	Yeah.
1:05.0	What is going on with AI?
1:06.3	How do you see it now?
1:07.7	And what do you really see is the number one danger the audience would be
1:11.9	keen to pay attention to yeah if not panic let us know when we should start panicking sure yeah
1:16.9	so you know like you said there's the AI boomers who think that uh you know like a lot of these
1:21.9	billionaires who like Andresen specifically is a great example who think that really we just
1:27.0	need to make AI go as fast as
1:29.2	possible, scale up as big as possible, as quickly as possible, and it will solve all of our problems for us.
1:34.1	And then on the other side, you have these AI Dumers. People like this guy, Eliasor Yudkowski,
1:40.2	who I think we're probably going to talk about a bit more as we go on, and also the effect of altruists,
1:44.8	people from the same camp as like Sam Bankmanfried, or if we want to pick a currently active
1:51.3	tech billionaire Dustin Moskowitz, who believe that AI in all likelihood is going to lead to
1:58.5	total extinction of humanity in the end of the world.
	...

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