Ready or Not
The Last Invention
The episode begins with a reporter's investigation into a tip regarding a Silicon Valley conspiracy to replace government functions with AI. Th
Key takeaways
- Former executive Mike Brock shared claims of a Silicon Valley faction aiming to use AI to overhaul government structures via initiatives like DOGE.
- Industry insiders suggest that AGI, capable of performing almost all human cognitive tasks, could arrive within the next two to five years.
Main topics
- Silicon Valley conspiracy theories
- The timeline of AGI development
Notable quotes
With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.
Conclusion
The episode serves as a sobering look at the high-stakes tension betwe
Transcript preview
Speaker 4 (0:11) This is The Last Invention. I'm Gregory Warner. And our story begins with a conspiracy theory. Speaker 2 (0:18) So, Greg, last spring, I got this tip via the encrypted messaging app Signal. This is reporter Andy Mills. From a former tech executive. And he was making some pretty wild claims. And I wanted to talk to him on the phone, but he thought his phone was being tapped. But the next time I was out in California... I went to meet with him. Speaker 1 (0:41) I'm really kind of contending with, like, who I am in this moment. Up until a few months ago, I was an executive in Silicon Valley. And yet here I am sitting in a living room with you guys. Talking about what I think is one of the most important things that needs to be discussed in the whole world, right? Which is the nature in which power is decided in our society. Speaker 2 (1:07) And he told me this story, that a faction of people within Silicon Valley had a plot to take over the United States government. And that the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, under Elon Musk, was... really phase one of this plan, which was to fire human workers in the government and replace them with artificial intelligence. And that over time, the plan was to replace all of the government and have artificial intelligence make all the important decisions in America. Speaker 1 (1:46) I have seen both the nature of the threat from inside the belly of the beast, if it were, in Silicon Valley. and seeing the nature of what's at stake. Speaker 2 (2:00) Now this guy, his name is Mike Brock, and he had formerly been an executive in Silicon Valley. He'd worked alongside some big-name guys like Jack Dorsey. But he'd recently started a sub-stack. And he told me that after he published some of these accusations, he had become convinced that people were after him. Speaker 1 (2:18) I have reason to believe that I've been followed by private investigators. For that and other reasons, I traveled with private security when I went to D.C. and New York City last week. Speaker 2 (2:30) He told me that he had just come back from Washington, D.C., where he had met with a number of lawmakers, including Maxine Waters, and debriefed them about this threat to American democracy. We Speaker 1 (2:44) are in a democratic crisis. This is a coup. This is a slow motion, soft coup. Speaker 4 (2:51) And so this faction, who is in this faction? What is this, like the Masons or something? Or is it like a secret cult? Speaker 2 (2:58) Well, he named several names, people who are recognizable figures in Silicon Valley. And he claimed that this quote-unquote conspiracy went all the way up to J.D. Vance, the vice president. And he called the people who were behind this coup. The Speaker 1 (3:14) accelerationists. The Speaker 2 (3:16) accelerationists. Speaker 2 (3:22) It was a wild story. Yeah. But, you know, some conspiracies turn out to be true. And it was also an interesting story. So I started making some phone calls. I started looking into it. And some of his claims I could not confirm. Maxine Waters, for example, did not respond to my request for an interview. Other claims started to somewhat fall apart. And, of course, eventually Doge itself somewhat fell apart. Elon Musk ended up leaving the Trump administration. And for a while, it felt like, you know, it was one of those tips that just doesn't go anywhere. But in the course of all these conversations I was having with people close to artificial intelligence, I realized that there was an aspect of his story that wasn't just true, but in some ways, it didn't go quite far enough. Because there is indeed a faction of people in Silicon Valley. who don't just want to replace government bureaucrats, but want to replace pretty much everyone who has a job with artificial intelligence. And they don't just think that the AI that they're making is going to upend American democracy. They think it is going to upend the entire world order. Speaker 1 (4:38) The world as you know it is over. It's not about to be over. It's over. I Speaker 5 (4:43) believe it's going to change the world more than anything in the history of mankind, more Speaker 2 (4:47) than electricity. But here's the thing. They're not doing this in secret. This group of people includes some of the biggest names in technology. Bill Gates, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, most of the leaders in the field of artificial intelligence. Speaker 1 (5:02) AI is going to be better than... Almost all humans at almost all things. A kid born today will never be smarter than AI. It's the first technology that has no limit. Speaker 4 (5:13) So wait, so you get a tip about like a slow motion coup against the government and then you realize, no, no, no, this is not just about the government. This is pretty much every human institution. Speaker 2 (5:22) Well, yes and no. Many of these accelerationists think that this AI that they're building is going to lead to the end of what we have come to think of as jobs, the end of what we traditionally thought of as schools. Some would even say this could usher in the end of the nation state. But they do not see this as some sort of. shadowy conspiracy, they think that this may end up literally being the best thing to ever happen to humanity. Speaker 1 (5:50) I've always believed that it's going to be the most important invention that humanity will ever make. Imagine that everybody will now in the future have access to the very best doctor in the world, the very best educator. The world will be richer and can work less and have more. this really will be a world of abundance. Speaker 2 (6:14) They predict that their AI systems are going to be the thing that helps us to solve the most pressing problems that humanity faces. Speaker 1 (6:22) Energy breakthroughs, medical breakthroughs. Maybe we can cure all disease with the help of AI. They Speaker 2 (6:28) think it's Speaker 1 (6:28) going Speaker 2 (6:28) to be this hinge moment in human history where soon we will be living to maybe be 200 years old, or maybe we'll be visiting other planets, where we will look back in history and think, oh my God, how did people live before this technology? Speaker 1 (6:42) should be a kind of era of maximum human flourishing where we travel to the stars and colonize the galaxy. I think a world of abundance really is a reality. I don't think it's utopian given what I've seen that the technology is capable of. Speaker 4 (7:00) So these are a lot of bold promises, and they come from the people who are selling this technology. Why do they think that the AI that they are building is going to be so transformative? Speaker 2 (7:12) Well, the reason that they're making such grandiose statements and these bold predictions about the near future, it comes down to what it is they think that they're making when they say they're making AI. This is something that I recently called up my old colleague. Kevin Roos to talk about. Kevin, how is it that you describe what it is that the AI companies are making? Am I right to say that they're essentially building like a super mind, like a digital super brain? Speaker 5 (7:43) Yes, that is correct. Speaker 2 (7:45) He's a very well-sourced tech reporter and a columnist at the New York Times. Also co-host of the podcast Hard Fork. And he says that the first thing to know is that this is far more of an ambitious project than just building something like chatbots. Speaker 5 (7:58) Essentially, many of these people believe that the human brain is just a kind of biological computer, that there is nothing, you know, special or supernatural about human intelligence, that we are just a bunch of neurons firing and learning patterns in the data that we encounter. And that if you could just build a computer that sort of simulated that, you could essentially create a new kind of intelligent being. Speaker 2 (8:26) Right. I've heard some people say that we should think of it less like a piece of software or a piece of hardware and more like a new intelligent species. Speaker 5 (8:34) Yes. It wouldn't be a computer program exactly. It wouldn't be a human exactly. It would be this sort of digital supermind that could do anything a human could and more. Speaker 2 (8:47) The goal, the benchmark that the AI industry is working towards right now is something that they call AGI. artificial, general intelligence. The general is the key part because a general intelligence isn't just really good at one or two or 20 or 100 things, but like a very smart person, can learn new things, can be trained in how to do almost anything. I Speaker 4 (9:11) guess this is where people get worried about jobs getting replaced because suddenly you have a worker, like a lawyer or a secretary, and you can tell the AI to learn everything about that job. Speaker 2 (9:22) Exactly. I mean, that is what they're making. And that's why there's a lot of concerns about what this