Achieve Peak Creativity: Merging Flow States with AI Technology w/ Steven Kotler | EP #151

“AI is now a very real thing we're talking about AI forever.”

“I want you to notice”

“an AI system that is a thousand times smarter than me can't be as creative in every discipline as a human being that's not the question the answer to that is yes probably the question is is that AI going to be more creative without a human in the chain or with a human in the chain”

“The Singularity I'm paying the most attention to is when VR gets to the point that it can produce the full Suite of a when we can have more pleasurable more exciting more interesting experiences inside the simulation than in reality do we migrate into Virtual Worlds.”

“is this going to be true 50 years from now 30 years from now I don't know but is it going to be true for the next 10 to 15 years absolutely for sure”

“I can imagine AI in our world doing things that has never been seen or conceived of before and creating some fundamental challenges for us for sure”

“I for one would much rather live in a world where this digital super intelligence at this Godlike abilities is there to help us because we humans are still animalistic in all of our Natures we make stupid decisions all these cognitive biases you know we are we are short-term thinkers and a digital super intelligence almost like in a parental fashion is there if the head of some large country says I want to you know says to his AI let's go destroy that country over there um at some level of wisdom the AI says that's a ridiculous thing to do uh why would you want to do that you know I'm just going to talk to the other AI and we're going to work out a collaboration”

“I do think that that is a a viable end State it's the interim stages between now and then that's the of the greatest concern um how would you train up an AI do you have any sense from your work that's an interesting question I mean there's as a mob's three laws of robotics right there's you know maximal kindness but at the end of the day kindness in some circumstances means weakness which could mean you know making the wrong decisions that maximizes what was Spock's statement in in Star Trek for you know the good of the one cannot supersede the good of of the many like that all yeah said the good it all um I have to think back to my Star Trek for I only see them just so I can talk to you about I appreciate that um yeah the they're they're remarkably the training nobody's asked me the training AI question before I'm going to think about that you're training people you're training you know uh meat sacks all the time all the time yeah yeah so how would you how would you train an AI the the interesting question is I mean you're asking essentially like a question about leadership right that also how do you how can a human lead in a world because I mean I think you're one of the points you made is uh is part of it is we're not just looking at one AI we're looking at millions of AIS possibly you know billions if everybody ends up with their individual AI like if we end up with a personal tutor right the Neil Stevenson Diamond age idea that we we both love yeah both love I've talked about in education for a really long time that AI is going to be with you for your whole life so everybody's going to have you know my Jarvis my version of J your version of Jarvis so um it's really a question of like Cooperative Ai and Cooperative Humanity it's not just a singular concept I don't think I still don't have any any ideas um maybe the next novel will be a crack at that one I really think that that you should think about that I'm going to think about that I'm not kidding I think maybe uh maybe the next sci-fi book is going to be around how do you do that all right my next question for you buddy um how will the development of AI creative capabilities impact research in neuroscience and creativity so I'd like you if you don't mind because I every time you you speak about this it's like uh it's like biotech porn um what's going on in the brain what's the dance of the neurochem talk about creativity um so this is really interesting the difference so one creativity is a trainable skill so everything I'm talking about like this is a developmental process as you become more creative this is what happens in the brain but I'm going to speak about it as if it was a fixed thing but I'm not it's a but by the way the fact that you're making that statement I think is really important having a creative mindset and we'll talk about mindsets right like I am being first of all saying to yourself that you're a creative person like a lot of people say I'm not creative and they shut it down and once you shut it down yes you're not cre absolutely so it's important people to realize that it is it's an innately human skill we're all born with it and I mean and you'll hear about it neurobiologically yeah so this is what's Wild um if you're just looking at sort of male and female for example the differences between and this people ask this all the time with flow are the differences between men and women and flow are and everybody wants those differences to be really great and they're not they're microscopic like if you look at the brains between men and women men have more interhemispheric connectivity and women have more connectivity between the hemispheres um”

“I've seen three Trends I see the trend with like a lot of creatives were just like this I want nothing to do with it”

“The Curiosity monster is your cure here because until you play with it, it's scary. Once you start playing with it, you're like oh wow I see how this is working I see how this is augmenting what I can do.”

“you can eventually turn on and say you know Jarvis uh turn on cognitive bias alert and it will have heard everything you've ever seen you're going to give I think personally you're going to give your AI permission to read all your emails listen to your conversations”

“now we know what it is we know the order of the sequence with like it the data is getting really really robust for training these things”