书童按：本篇是Guillaume Verdon接受Lex Fridman播客采访实录的第三部分。在前两篇奠定理论根基之后，本篇探入更具思辨性的议题：外星智能的可能性与意义、量子引力的优美图景、黑洞信息悖论的最新进展、卡尔达舍夫等级的文明愿景，以及e/acc运动的核心纲领与文化基因。Verdon纵论从热力学驱动的生命起源到跨星际文明扩张的宏大叙事，批判去增长主义（degrowth）与ESG路径，主张以技术创新而非管理手段应对文明挑战。访谈亦涉及Jeff Bezos与Elon Musk等企业家的资本配置智慧、模因文化的传播策略、Extropic公司的热力学计算机愿景等话题。理论深度与实践洞察并重，视野恢宏，启人深思。初稿采用Claude Code机器翻译及排版，书童仅做简单校对及批注，以飨诸君。
Lex Fridman (01:35:11) 精度会随着你能力的降低而下降，但还是可以的。不过既然你提到了UAP（书童注：Unidentified Aerial Phenomena，不明空中现象），我们谈到了智能，我忘了问：你对可能存在于介观尺度上的其他智能有什么看法？你认为存在其他智能外星文明吗？思考这个问题有用吗？你多久想一次这个问题？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:35:11) The precision decreases in terms of your ability, but still. But since you mentioned UAPs, we talked about intelligence, and I forgot to ask, what’s your view on the other possible intelligences that are out there at the Meso scale? Do you think there’s other intelligent alien civilizations? Is that useful to think about? How often do you think about it?
Guillaume Verdon (01:35:36) 我认为思考这个问题是有用的。之所以有用，是因为我们必须确保自己具有反脆弱性，并且正在尽可能快地提升我们的能力。因为我们可能被颠覆。物理定律并不禁止别处存在生命，那些生命可能进化并成为先进文明，最终来到我们这里。我认为他们现在就在这里吗？我不确定。关于这个话题，我读过的东西和大多数人读过的差不多。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:35:36) I think it’s useful to think about. It’s useful to think about because we got to ensure we’re anti-fragile, and we’re trying to increase our capabilities as fast as possible. Because we could get disrupted. There’s no laws of physics against there being life elsewhere that could evolve and become an advanced civilization and eventually come to us. Do I think they’re here now? I’m not sure. I’ve read what most people have read on the topic.
Guillaume Verdon (01:36:14) 我认为值得考虑，对我来说，这是一个有用的思想实验，用来灌输一种紧迫感——发展技术、提升我们的能力，确保我们不被颠覆。无论是某种形式的AI颠覆我们，还是来自不同星球的外来智能。无论哪种方式，提升我们的能力、让人类变得强大，我认为这非常重要，这样我们才能对宇宙向我们抛来的任何东西都保持鲁棒性。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:36:14) I think it’s interesting to consider and to me, it’s a useful thought experiment to instill a sense of urgency in developing technologies and increasing our capabilities, to make sure we don’t get disrupted. Whether it’s a form of AI that disrupts us, or a foreign intelligence from a different planet. Either way, increasing our capabilities and becoming formidable as humans, I think that’s really important, so that we’re robust against whatever the universe throws at us.
Lex Fridman (01:36:51) 但对我来说，这也是一个有趣的挑战和思想实验——如何感知智能。这与量子力学系统有关，也与任何不像人类的系统有关。对我来说，思想实验是：假设外星人就在这里，或者他们是可以直接观察到的。只是我们太盲目、太以自我为中心、没有合适的传感器，或者没有对传感器数据进行正确的处理，因而看不到我们周围显而易见的智能。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:36:51) But to me, it’s also an interesting challenge and thought experiment on how to perceive intelligence. This has to do with quantum mechanical systems. This has to do with any kind of system that’s not like humans. To me, the thought experiment is, say, the aliens are here or they are directly observable. We’re just too blind, too self-centered, don’t have the right sensors, or don’t have the right processing of the sensor data to see the obvious intelligence that’s all around us.
Guillaume Verdon (01:37:26) 嗯，这就是我们为什么要研究量子传感器。它们可以感知引力。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:37:26) Well, that’s why we work on quantum sensors. They can sense gravity,
Lex Fridman (01:37:31) 是的。这很好，但可能还有其他东西，甚至不在当前已知的物理力量之中。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:37:31) Yeah. That’s a good one, but there could be other stuff that’s not even in the currently known forces of physics.
Guillaume Verdon (01:37:43) 对。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:37:43) Right.
Lex Fridman (01:37:43) 可能有其他的东西。对我来说最有趣的思想实验是，那是显而易见的其他东西。不是我们缺乏传感器。它就在我们周围，意识可能就是其中之一。但可能有些东西就是明显地在那里。一旦你知道了它，就会说：”哦，对了。对了。我们认为以某种方式从物理定律中涌现出来的东西，我们理解它们，实际上是宇宙的基本组成部分，可以被纳入物理学。最被理解的。”
LEX FRIDMAN (01:37:43) There could be some other stuff. The most entertaining thought experiment to me is that it’s other stuff that’s obvious. It’s not like we lack the sensors. It’s all around us, the consciousness being one possible one. But there could be stuff that’s just obviously there. That once you know it, it’s like, “Oh, right. Right. The thing we thought is somehow emergent from the laws of physics, we understand them, is actually a fundamental part of the universe and can be incorporated in physics. Most understood.”
Guillaume Verdon (01:38:18) 从统计学上讲，如果我们观察到某种外星生命，它最有可能是某种病毒式的、自我复制的、类似冯·诺依曼探测器的系统。而且有可能存在这样的系统，我不知道它们在海底做什么——据说是这样——但也许它们在从海底收集矿物。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:38:18) Statistically speaking, if we observed some sort of alien life, it would most likely be some sort of virally, self-replicating, von Neumann-like probe system. And it’s possible that there are such systems that, I don’t know what they’re doing at the bottom of the ocean, allegedly, but maybe they’re collecting minerals from the bottom of the ocean.
Lex Fridman (01:38:44) 是的。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:38:44) Yeah.
Guillaume Verdon (01:38:45) 但这不会违反我的任何先验假设。但我确定这些系统在这里吗？我很难这么说。我只有关于存在数据的二手信息。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:38:45) But that wouldn’t violate any of my priors. But am I certain that these systems are here? It’d be difficult for me to say so. I only have secondhand information about there being data.
Lex Fridman (01:38:59) 关于海底的？是的。但它可能是像模因这样的东西吗？可能是思想和观念吗？它们可能在那个媒介中运作吗？外星人可能就是进入我脑海的那些想法吗？想法的起源是什么？在你的脑海中，当一个想法进入你的脑海时，告诉我它从哪里来。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:38:59) About the bottom of the ocean? Yeah. But could it be things like memes? Could it be thoughts and ideas? Could they be operating at that medium? Could aliens be the very thoughts that come into my head? What’s the origin of ideas? In your mind, when an idea comes to your head, show me where it originates.
Guillaume Verdon (01:39:25) 坦率地说，当我想到我现在正在建造的那种计算机的想法时——我想那是八年前了——感觉真的像是从太空中传来的光束。我躺在床上，浑身颤抖，只是在思考它。我不知道。但我真的相信这个吗？我不这么认为。但我认为外星生命可以采取多种形式，我认为智能的概念和生命的概念需要更广泛地扩展，变得不那么以人类为中心或以生物为中心。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:39:25) Frankly, when I had the idea for the type of computer I’m building now, I think it was eight years ago now, it really felt like it was being beamed from space. I was in bed, just shaking, just thinking it through. I don’t know. But do I believe that legitimately? I don’t think so. But I think that alien life could take many forms, and I think the notion of intelligence and the notion of life needs to be expanded much more broadly to be less anthropocentric or biocentric.
Lex Fridman (01:40:04) 在量子力学上再停留一会儿，通过你在量子计算上的所有探索，你遇到过的最酷、最美丽的想法是什么——已经解决的或尚未解决的？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:40:04) Just to linger a little longer on quantum mechanics, through all your explorations on quantum computing, what’s the coolest, most beautiful idea that you’ve come across that has been solved or has not yet been solved?
Guillaume Verdon (01:40:19) 我认为是理解一种叫做AdS/CFT的东西的旅程。也就是通过这样一幅图景来理解量子引力：一个维度较低的全息图实际上与一个额外维度的量子引力的体理论对偶或完全对应，而这种对偶性来自于试图学习边界的类似深度学习的表示。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:40:19) I think the journey to understand something called AdS/CFT. So, the journey to understand quantum gravity through this picture, where a hologram of lesser dimension is actually dual or exactly corresponding to a bulk theory of quantum gravity of an extra dimension, and the fact that this sort of duality comes from trying to learn deep learning-like representations of the boundary.
Guillaume Verdon (01:40:59) 至少，我的旅程中有一部分——有一天在我的愿望清单上——是将量子机器学习应用于这类系统，这些CFT（书童注：Conformal Field Theory，共形场论），或者它们被称为SYK模型（书童注：Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev模型），并从边界理论学习一个涌现的几何。所以，我们可以有一种形式的机器学习来帮助我们理解量子引力，这仍然是一个圣杯，我希望在离开这个世界之前达到。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:40:59) At least, part of my journey someday on my bucket list is to apply quantum machine learning to these sorts of systems, these CFTs, or they’re called SYK models, and learn an emergent geometry from the boundary theory. And so, we can have a form of machine learning to help us understand quantum gravity, which is still a holy grail that I would like to hit before I leave this earth.
Lex Fridman (01:41:35) 你认为黑洞正在发生什么？作为信息存储和处理单元，你认为黑洞正在发生什么？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:41:35) What do you think is going on with black holes? As information-storing and processing units, what do you think is going on with black holes?
Guillaume Verdon (01:41:46) 黑洞是非常迷人的物体。它们处于量子力学和引力的界面上，所以它们帮助我们测试各种想法。我认为几十年来，一直存在这个黑洞信息悖论——落入黑洞的东西，我们似乎失去了它们的信息。现在，我认为有这个火墙悖论，据称在近年来被我的一位前同行解决了，他现在是伯克利的教授。在那里，似乎当信息落入黑洞时，有一种沉积作用。当你从外部观察者的角度越来越接近视界时，物体会无限减速。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:41:46) Black holes are really fascinating objects. They’re at the interphase between quantum mechanics and gravity, and so they help us test all sorts of ideas. I think that for many decades now, there’s been this black hole information paradox that things that fall into the black hole, we’ve seem to have lost their information. Now, I think there’s this firewall paradox that has been allegedly resolved in recent years by a former peer of mine, who’s now a professor at Berkeley. There, it seems like, as information falls into a black hole, there’s a sedimentation. As you get closer and closer to the horizon from the point of view, the observer on the outside, the object slows down infinitely as it gets closer and closer.
Guillaume Verdon (01:42:46) 从我们的角度来看，所有落入黑洞的东西都会沉积并附着在近视界处。在某个时刻，它离视界如此之近，以至于处于量子效应和量子涨落重要的邻近或尺度上。在那里，下落的物质可能会干扰传统图景，它可能会干扰真空中粒子和反粒子的产生和湮灭。通过这种干涉，其中一个粒子与下落的信息纠缠在一起，其中一个自由并逃逸。这就是外出辐射和下落物质之间存在互信息的方式。但正确计算这个，我认为我们才刚刚开始把碎片拼在一起。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:42:46) Everything that is falling to a black hole, from our perspective, gets sedimented and tacked on to the near horizon. At some point, it gets so close to the horizon, it’s in the proximity or the scale in which quantum effects and quantum fluctuations matter. There, that infalling matter could interfere with the traditional pictures, that it could interfere with the creation and annihilation of particles and antiparticles in the vacuum. Through this interference, one of the particles gets entangled with the infalling information and one of them is now free and escapes. That’s how there’s mutual information between the outgoing radiation and the infalling matter. But getting that calculation right, I think we’re only just starting to put the pieces together.
Lex Fridman (01:43:43) 有几个像”瘾君子”一样的问题我想问你。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:43:43) There’s a few pothead-like questions I want to ask you.
Guillaume Verdon (01:43:46) 当然。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:43:46) Sure.
Lex Fridman (01:43:46) 一个是，我们银河系中心有一个巨大的黑洞，这让你感到恐惧吗？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:43:46) One, does it terrify you that there’s a giant black hole at the center of our galaxy?
Guillaume Verdon (01:43:52) 我不知道。我只是想在它附近建立基地，以便快进，遇见未来的文明——如果我们的寿命有限，如果你可以去绕黑洞轨道运行然后出现。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:43:52) I don’t know. I just want to set up shop near it to fast-forward, meet a future civilization, if we have a limited lifetime, if you could go orbit a black hole and emerge.
Lex Fridman (01:44:08) 如果有一项特殊任务可以带你去黑洞，你会自愿去旅行吗？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:44:08) If there’s a special mission that could take you to a black hole, would you volunteer to go travel?
Guillaume Verdon (01:44:13) 去轨道运行，显然不是掉进去。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:44:13) To orbit and obviously not fall into it.
Lex Fridman (01:44:15) 这是显而易见的。你显然认为黑洞里面的一切都被摧毁了？构成Guillaume的所有信息都被摧毁了？也许在另一边，Beff Jezos出现了，而且就像它以某种深刻的模因方式联系在一起。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:44:15) That’s obvious. It’s obvious to you that everything’s destroyed inside a black hole? All the information that makes up Guillaume is destroyed? Maybe on the other side, Beff Jezos emerges and it’s just all like it’s tied together in some deeply memeful way.
Guillaume Verdon (01:44:32) 是的，这是一个很好的问题。我们必须回答黑洞是什么。我们是在时空中打一个洞并创造一个口袋宇宙吗？这是可能的。那么，这意味着如果我们攀登卡尔达肖夫等级到III型以上，我们可以设计具有特定超参数的黑洞，将信息传输到我们创造的新宇宙。所以，我们可以有后代——
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:44:32) Yeah, that’s a great question. We have to answer what black holes are. Are we punching a hole through space-time and creating a pocket universe? It’s possible. Then, that would mean that if we ascend the Kardashev scale to beyond Kardashev Type III, we could engineer black holes with specific hyperparameters to transmit information to new universes we create. And so, we can have progeny that our new…
Guillaume Verdon (01:45:00) ……拥有作为新宇宙的后代。所以即使我们的宇宙可能达到热寂，我们也可能有一种留下遗产的方式。所以我们还不知道。我们需要攀登卡尔达舍夫等级来回答这些问题，窥视更高能量物理的那个领域。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:45:00) … have progeny that are new universes. And so even though our universe may reach a heat death, we may have a way to have a legacy. And so we don’t know yet. We need to ascend the Kardashev Scale to answer these questions to peer into that regime of higher energy physics.
Lex Fridman (01:45:25) 也许你可以向不知道的人介绍一下卡尔达舍夫等级。所以e/acc运动的一个类似模因的原则和目标就是攀登卡尔达舍夫等级。什么是卡尔达舍夫等级，我们什么时候想要攀登它？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:45:25) And maybe you can speak to the Kardashev Scale for people who don’t know. So one of the sort of meme-like principles and goals of the e/acc movement is to ascend the Kardashev Scale. What is the Kardashev Scale and when do we want to ascend it?
Guillaume Verdon (01:45:43) 卡尔达舍夫等级是对我们能源生产和消耗的一种度量。实际上，它是一个对数尺度。卡尔达舍夫I型是一个里程碑，我们生产的瓦特数相当于太阳照射到地球上的所有能量。卡尔达舍夫II型将是利用太阳输出的所有能量。我想III型就像整个银河系的等价——
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:45:43) The Kardashev Scale is a measure of our energy production and consumption. Really, it’s a logarithmic scale. Kardashev Type 1 is a milestone where we are producing the equivalent wattage to all the energy that is incident on earth from the sun. Kardashev Type II would be harnessing all the energy that is output by the sun. And I think Type III is like the whole galaxy equivalent-
Lex Fridman (01:46:13) 银河系，我想[听不清]是的。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:46:13) Galaxy, I think [inaudible 01:46:14] yeah.
Guillaume Verdon (01:46:15) 是的，然后有些人有一些疯狂的IV型和V型，但我不知道我是否相信那些。但对我来说，从热力学的第一原理来看，似乎又有这个概念——热力学驱动的耗散适应——生命在地球上进化，因为我们有来自太阳的这种能量驱动，我们有入射能量，生命在地球上进化以找出最佳捕获那种自由能以维持自身和增长的方法。我认为这个原则，它不是我们地球-太阳系统所特有的。我们可以将生命扩展到远远超出。我们有责任这样做，因为正是这个过程把我们带到了这里。所以我们甚至不知道它为我们储存了什么。它可能是我们今天甚至无法想象的美丽的东西。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:46:15) Yeah, and then some people have some crazy Type IV and V, but I don’t know if I believe in those. But to me, it seems like from the first principles of thermodynamics that, again, there’s this concept of thermodynamic- driven dissipative adaptation where life evolved on earth because we have this energetic drive from the sun, we have incident energy, and life evolved on earth to figure out ways to best capture that free energy to maintain itself and grow. And I think that that principle, it’s not special to our earth-sun system. We can extend life well beyond. And we kind of have a responsibility to do so because that’s the process that brought us here. So we don’t even know what it has its store for us in the future. It could be something of beauty we can’t even imagine today.
Lex Fridman (01:47:18) 所以这可能是一个谈论e/acc运动的好地方。在一篇题为《What the F* is e/acc?》（《e/acc到底是什么鬼？》）的Substack博客文章中，你写道：”从战略上讲，我们需要努力实现几个相互依存的总体文明目标。这四个目标是：增加我们作为一个物种可以利用的能量（攀登卡尔达舍夫梯度）。短期内，这几乎肯定意味着核裂变。通过支持人口增长的政策和支持经济增长的政策来增加人类繁荣。创造通用人工智能，人类历史上最伟大的力量倍增器。最后，发展行星际和星际运输，以便人类可以扩展到地球之外。“你能在此基础上进一步说明，也许说一下，对你来说e/acc运动是什么？目标是什么？原则是什么？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:47:18) So this is probably a good place to talk a bit about the e/acc movement in a Substack blog post titled, What the Fuck is e/acc? Or actually, What the F* is e/acc?, you write, “Strategically speaking, we need to work towards several overarching civilization goals that are all interdependent. And the four goals are, increase the amount of energy we can harness as a species, (climb the Kardashev gradient). In the short term, this almost certainly means nuclear fission. Increase human flourishing via pro-population growth policies and pro-economic growth policies. Create artificial general intelligence, the single greatest force multiplier in human history. And finally, develop interplanetary and interstellar transport so that humanity can spread beyond the earth. Could you build on top of that to maybe say, what to you is the e/acc movement? What are the goals? What are the principles?
Guillaume Verdon (01:48:20) 目标是让人类技术-资本-模因机器变得（拥有）自我意识，并以超迷信的方式设计自己的增长。让我们拆解一下。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:48:20) The goal is for the human techno-capital memetic machine to become self-aware and to hyperstitiously engineer its own growth. So let’s decompress that.
Lex Fridman (01:48:33) 定义其中的每一个词。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:48:33) Define each of those words.
Guillaume Verdon (01:48:35) 所以你有人类，你有技术，你有资本，然后你有模因、信息，所有这些系统都相互耦合。人类在公司工作，他们获取和分配资本，人类通过模因和信息传播进行交流。我们的目标是拥有一种病毒式的乐观主义运动，它意识到系统是如何运作的——从根本上说，它寻求增长——我们只是想顺应系统为自己的增长而适应的自然倾向。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:48:35) So you have humans, you have technology, you have capital, and then you have memes, information, and all of those systems are coupled with one another. Humans work at companies, they acquire and allocate capital, and humans communicate via memes and information propagation. And our goal was to have a sort of viral optimistic movement that is aware of how the system works, fundamentally it seeks to grow, and we simply want to lean into the natural tendencies of the system to adapt for its own growth.
Lex Fridman (01:49:18) 所以从这个意义上说，你是对的，e/acc字面上是一种模因式乐观主义病毒，它不断漂移、变异并以去中心化的方式传播。所以模因式乐观主义病毒。所以你确实希望它成为一种病毒以最大化传播，而且它具有超迷信性，因此乐观主义将激励其增长。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:49:18) So in that way, you’re right, the e/acc is literally a memetic optimism virus that is constantly drifting, mutating, and propagating in a decentralized fashion. So memetic optimism virus. So you do want it to be a virus to maximize the spread, and it’s hyperstitious, therefore the optimism will incentivize its growth.
Guillaume Verdon (01:49:43) 我们将e/acc视为一种元启发式，一种非常薄的文化框架，从中你可以有更多有主见的分支。从根本上说，我们只是说，把我们带到这里的是基于热力学的整个系统的这种适应，这个过程是好的，我们应该让它继续下去。这就是核心论点。其他一切都是，好吧，我们如何确保我们保持这种可塑性和适应性。嗯，显然不要压制变异，保持言论自由、思想自由、信息传播自由和进行AI研究的自由对我们来说很重要，以便我们能够最快地收敛到导致这种增长的技术、想法等空间。所以最终，已经有相当多的分支。有些只是模因，但有些更严肃。Vitalik Buterin最近创建了一个d/acc分支。他有他自己对e/acc的某种微调。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:49:43) We see e/acc as sort of a meta-heuristic, sort of very thin cultural framework from which you can have much more opinionated forks. Fundamentally, we just say that what got us here is this adaptation of the whole system based on thermodynamics, and that process is good and we should keep it going. That is the core thesis. Everything else is, okay, how do we ensure that we maintain this malleability and adaptability. Well, clearly not suppressing variants, and maintaining free speech, freedom of thought, freedom of information propagation, and freedom to do AI research is important for us to converge the fastest on the space of technologies, ideas, and whatnot that lead to this growth. And so ultimately, there’s been quite a few forks. Some are just memes, but some are more serious. Vitalik Buterin recently made a d/acc fork. He has his own sort of fine-tunings of e/acc.
Lex Fridman (01:50:59) Vitalik的那个分支有什么独特特征让你印象深刻吗？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:50:59) Does anything jump out to memory of the unique characteristic of that fork from Vitalik?
Guillaume Verdon (01:51:05) 我会说它试图在e/acc和EA（书童注：Effective Altruism，有效利他主义）以及AI安全之间找到一个中间地带。对我来说，拥有一个与接管硅谷的主流叙事相反的运动，对于改变意见的动态范围很重要。这就像中心化和去中心化之间的平衡，真正的最优点总是在中间的某个地方。但对于e/acc，我们推动熵、新颖性、颠覆、可塑性、速度，而不是保守、压制思想、压制言论、增加约束、增加过多法规、放慢速度。所以，我们试图为力量带来平衡。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:51:05) I would say that it’s trying to find a middle ground between e/acc and EA and EI safety. To me, having a movement that is opposite to what was the mainstream narrative that was taking over Silicon Valley was important to shift the dynamic range of opinions. And it’s like the balance between centralization and decentralization, the real optimum is always somewhere in the middle. But for e/acc, we’re pushing for entropy, novelty, disruption, malleability, speed, rather than being conservative, suppressing thought, suppressing speech, adding constraints, adding too many regulations, slowing things down. And so, we’re trying to bring balance to the force.
Lex Fridman (01:52:00) 为人类文明的力量带来平衡。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:52:00) Balance to the force of human civilization.
Guillaume Verdon (01:52:02) 这字面上是约束的力量与让我们探索的熵之间的张力。系统在处于秩序与混沌之间的临界边缘时是最优的，在约束、能量最小化和熵之间。系统想要平衡这两样东西。我认为平衡是缺失的，所以我们创建了这个运动来带来平衡。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:52:02) It’s literally the forces of constraints versus the entropic force that makes us explore. Systems are optimal when they’re at the edge of criticality between order and chaos, between constraints, energy minimization and entropy. Systems want to equilibrate, balance these two things. I thought that the balance was lacking, and so we created this movement to bring balance.
Lex Fridman (01:52:31) 嗯，我喜欢想法通过分支进化的视觉效果。所以在历史的另一部分，把马克思主义看作原始仓库，然后苏联共产主义是其中一个分支，然后_主义是马克思主义和共产主义的一个分支。所以这些都是分支。它们在探索不同的想法。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:52:31) Well, I like the visual of the landscape of ideas evolving through forks. So on the other part of history, thinking of Marxism as the original repository, and then Soviet Communism is a fork of that, and then the M__ism is a fork of Marxism and Communism. And so those are all forks. They’re exploring different ideas.
Guillaume Verdon (01:53:02) 把文化几乎看作代码。现在，你在LLM中提示什么或你在LLM的宪法中放入什么，基本上就是它的文化框架，它相信什么。你现在可以在GitHub上分享它。所以试图从在软件的这台机器中起作用的东西中获得灵感，以适应代码空间，我们能否将其应用于文化？我们的目标不是说”你应该这样生活，X、Y、Z”，而是建立一个过程，让人们总是在亚文化中搜索并竞争思想份额。我认为创造这种文化的可塑性对我们收敛到适应现代的文化和关于如何生活的启发式方法非常重要。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:53:02) Thinking of culture almost like code. Nowadays, what you prompt in the LLM or what you put in the constitution of an LLM is basically its cultural framework, what it believes. And you can share it on GitHub nowadays. So trying to take inspiration from what has worked in this machine of software to adapt over the space of code, could we apply that to culture? And our goal is to not say, “You should live your life this way, X, Y, Z,” it’s to set up a process where people are always searching over subcultures and competing for mind share. I think creating this malleability of culture is super important for us to converge onto the cultures and the heuristics about how to live one’s life that are updated to modern times.
Guillaume Verdon (01:53:59) 因为真的存在一种精神性和文化的真空。人们觉得他们不属于任何一个群体，而且有一些寄生性的意识形态已经利用机会填充这个思想的培养皿。Elon称之为思想病毒。我们称之为减速思想病毒综合体，这是所有这些之间的总体模式的减速。也有许多变种。所以如果有一种病毒式的悲观主义、减速运动，我们需要的不仅仅是一个运动，而是许多许多变种，所以很难精确定位和停止。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:53:59) Because there’s really been a sort of vacuum of spirituality and culture. People don’t feel like they belong to any one group, and there’s been parasitic ideologies that have taken up opportunity to populate this Petri dish of minds. Elon calls it the mind virus. We call it the decel mind virus complex, which is the decelerative that is kind of the overall pattern between all of them. There’s many variants as well. And so if there’s a sort of viral pessimism, decelerative movement, we needed to have not only one movement, but many, many variants, so it’s very hard to pinpoint and stop.
Lex Fridman (01:54:45) 但总体来说，它仍然是一种模因式乐观主义大流行。好吧，让我问你，你认为e/acc在某种程度上是一个邪教吗？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:54:45) But the overarching thing is nevertheless a kind of mimetic optimism pandemic. Okay, let me ask you, do you think e/acc to some degree is a cult?
Guillaume Verdon (01:55:01) 定义邪教？
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:55:01) Define cult?
Lex Fridman (01:55:03) 我认为很多人类进步是在你有独立思考时取得的，所以你有能够自由思考的个体。而非常强大的模因系统可能会导致群体思维。人性中有一些东西会导致大规模催眠、大规模歇斯底里。每当有一个性感的想法抓住我们的思想时，我们就开始思考相似。所以实际上很难把我们分开，拉开我们，多样化思想。所以在这种程度上，每个人都在像《动物农场》里的羊一样高呼”E/acc, e/acc”到什么程度？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:55:03) I think a lot of human progress is made when you have independent thought, so you have individuals that are able to think freely. And very powerful mimetic systems can kind of lead to group think. There’s something in human nature that leads to mass hypnosis, mass hysteria. We start to think alike whenever there’s a sexy idea that captures our minds. And so it’s actually hard to break us apart, pull us apart, diversify a thought. So to that degree, to which degree is everybody kind of chanting “E/acc, e/acc” like the sheep in Animal Farm?
Guillaume Verdon (01:55:46) 嗯，首先，这很有趣。这是反叛的。有这个元讽刺的概念，处于”我们不确定他们是否认真”的边界上。而且它更有趣和更好玩得多。例如，我们谈论热力学是我们的上帝，有时我们做类似邪教的事情，但没有仪式和长袍之类的。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:55:46) Well, first of all, it’s fun. It’s rebellious. There’s this concept of meta-irony, of being on the boundary of, “We’re not sure if they’re serious or not.” And it’s much more playful and much more fun. For example, we talk about thermodynamics being our god, and sometimes we do cult-like things, but there’s no ceremony and robes and whatnot.
Lex Fridman (01:56:19) 还没有。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:56:19) Not yet.
Guillaume Verdon (01:56:19) 还没有，没有。但最终，是的，我完全同意，人类似乎想要感觉他们是一个群体的一部分，所以他们自然地试图与邻居达成一致并找到共同点。(书童注：参考存在主义四大终极关怀之存在性孤独)这导致了想法空间中的某种模式崩溃。我们曾经有一个被允许的文化岛屿。这是一个典型的思想子空间，任何偏离那个思想子空间的东西都被压制，或者你被取消了。现在我们创造了一个新模式，但关键是我们不是试图有一个非常受限的思想空间。关于e/acc及其许多分支，不只有一种思考方式。关键是有许多分支，可以有许多集群和许多岛屿。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:56:19) Not yet, no. But ultimately, yeah, I totally agree that it seems to me that humans want to feel like they’re part of a group, so they naturally try to agree with their neighbors and find common ground. And that leads to sort of mode collapse in the space of ideas. We used to have one cultural island that was allowed. It was a typical subspace of thought, and anything that was diverting from that subspace of thought was suppressed or you were canceled. Now we’ve created a new mode, but the whole point is that we’re not trying to have a very restricted space of thought. There’s not just one way to think about e/acc and its many forks. And the point is that there are many forks and there can be many clusters and many islands.
Guillaume Verdon (01:57:07) 我不应该以任何方式控制它。我的意思是，根本没有正式的组织。我只是发推文和某些博客文章，如果有他们不喜欢的方面，人们可以自由地叛逃和分叉。所以这使得在想法空间中应该有去领土化，这样我们就不会最终陷入一个非常像邪教的集群。所以邪教通常，他们不允许人们叛逃或开始竞争性分叉，而我们鼓励这样做。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:57:07) And I shouldn’t be in control of it in any way. I mean, there’s no formal org whatsoever. I just put out tweets and certain blog posts, and people are free to defect and fork if there’s an aspect they don’t like. And so that makes it so that there should be deterritorialization in the space of ideas, so that we don’t end up in one cluster that’s very cult-like. And so cults usually, they don’t allow people to defect or start competing forks, whereas we encourage it.
Lex Fridman (01:57:51) 幽默和模因的利弊，从某种意义上说，模因中有一种智慧。那是什么，魔术剧场？那是哪本书？赫尔曼·黑塞。我想是《荒原狼》。但有一种拥抱荒诞的东西似乎能触及事物的真相，但与此同时，它也可能降低话语的质量和严谨性。
LEX FRIDMAN (01:57:51) The pros and cons of humor in meme, in some sense there’s like a wisdom to memes. What is it, the Magic Theater? What book is that from? Hermann Hesse. Steppenwolf, I think. But there’s a kind of embracing of the absurdity that seems to get to the truth of things, but at the same time, it can also decrease the quality and the rigor of the discourse.
Guillaume Verdon (01:58:22) 是的。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:58:22) Yeah.
Lex Fridman (01:58:23) 你感受到那种张力吗？
LEX FRIDMAN (01:58:23) Do you feel the tension of that?
Guillaume Verdon (01:58:25) 是的。所以最初，我认为让我们在雷达下成长的是因为它被伪装成某种元讽刺。我们会在幽默和模因以及所谓的shit posts的包装中偷偷放入深刻的真理，我认为这是故意伪装以对抗那些寻求地位、不想……与卡通青蛙或星际Jeff Bezos的卡通争论并认真对待自己是非常困难的，所以这让我们在早期能够相当迅速地增长。但当然，本质上人们会被引导。他们对真理的概念来自他们看到的数据，来自他们被喂养的信息，而人们被喂养的信息是由算法决定的。我们真正在做的是设计我们所说的高模因适应性信息包，以便它们能够有效传播并携带信息。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:58:25) Yeah. So initially, I think what allowed us to grow under the radar was because it was camouflaged as sort of meta-ironic. We would sneak in deep truths within a package of humor and memes and what are called shit posts, and I think that was purposefully camouflaged against those that seek status and do not want to… It’s very hard to argue with a cartoon frog or a cartoon of an intergalactic Jeff Bezos and take yourself seriously, and so that allowed us to grow pretty rapidly in the early days. But of course, essentially people get steered. Their notion of the truth comes from the data they see, from the information they’re fed, and the information people are fed is determined by algorithms. And really what we’ve been doing is engineering what we call high memetic fitness packets of information, so that they can spread effectively and carry a message.
Guillaume Verdon (01:59:47) 所以这是一种传播信息的载体。是的，我们一直在使用对今天的算法放大的信息景观最优的技术。但我认为我们正在达到可以进行严肃辩论和严肃对话的规模点。这就是为什么我们正在考虑进行一系列辩论并进行更严肃的长篇讨论。因为我认为时间线对于非常严肃、深思熟虑的讨论来说不是最优的。你会因为两极分化而得到奖励。所以即使我们开始了一个字面上试图使科技生态系统两极分化的运动，归根结底是为了让我们能够进行对话并一起找到最优解。
GUILLAUME VERDON (01:59:47) So it’s kind of a vector to spread the message. And yes, we’ve been using techniques that are optimal for today’s algorithmically-amplified information landscapes. But I think we’re reaching the point of scale where we can have serious debates and serious conversations. And that’s why we’re considering doing a bunch of debates and having more serious long-form discussions. Because I don’t think that the timeline is optimal for very serious, thoughtful discussions. You get rewarded for polarization. And so even though we started a movement that is literally trying to polarize the tech ecosystem, at the end of the day so that we can have a conversation and find an optimum together.
Lex Fridman (02:00:42) 我的意思是，这就是我试图用这个播客做的事情，鉴于事物的景观，仍然进行长篇对话。但荒诞被充分拥抱的程度是存在的。事实上，这次对话本身就是多层次荒诞的。所以首先，我应该说，就在最近我与Jeff Bezos进行了对话，我很想听听你——Beff Jezos——对Jeff Bezos的看法。说到星际Jeff Bezos。你对那个你的名字所启发的特定个体有什么看法？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:00:42) I mean, that’s kind of what I try to do with this podcast given the landscape of things, to still have long-form conversations. But there is a degree to which absurdity is fully embraced. In fact, this very conversation is multi-level absurd. So first of all, I should say that just very recently I had a conversation with Jeff Bezos, and I would love to hear your, Beff Jezos, opinions of Jeff Bezos. Speaking of intergalactic Jeff Bezos. What do you think of that particular individual whom your name has inspired?
Guillaume Verdon (02:01:25) 是的，我认为Jeff真的很棒。我的意思是，他建立了有史以来最史诗级的公司之一。他利用了技术-资本机器和技术-资本加速来给我们我们想要的东西。我们想要快速交付，非常方便，在家，低价格。他理解机器是如何运作的以及如何利用它，比如经营公司，不试图过早获利，把它放回去，让系统复合并不断改进。可以说，我认为亚马逊在机器人技术方面投资了最多的资本，当然随着AWS的诞生，有点使我们今天看到的科技繁荣成为可能，这支付了我的工资，我想在某种程度上也支付了我们所有朋友的工资。所以我认为我们都可以感谢Jeff，他是那里最伟大的企业家之一，无可争议地是有史以来最好的之一。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:01:25) Yeah, I think Jeff is really great. I mean, he’s built one of the most epic companies of all time. He’s leveraged the techno-capital machine and techno-capital acceleration to give us what we wanted. We want a quick delivery, very convenient, at-home, low prices. He understood how the machine worked and how to harness it, like running the company, not trying to take profits too early, putting it back, letting the system compound and keep improving. And arguably, I think Amazon’s invested some of the most amount of capital and robotics out there, and certainly with the birth of AWS, kind of enabled the tech boom we’ve seen today that has paid the salaries of, I guess myself and all of our friends to some extent. And so I think we can all be grateful to Jeff, and he’s one of the great entrepreneurs out there. one of the best of all time, unarguably.
Lex Fridman (02:02:32) 当然，蓝色起源的工作，类似于SpaceX的工作，试图让人类成为多行星物种，这似乎几乎比资本主义机器更大。或者这是不同时间尺度上的资本主义机器？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:02:32) And of course, the work at Blue Origin, similar to the work at SpaceX, is trying to make humans a multi-planetary species, which that seems almost like a bigger thing than the capitalist machine. Or it’s the capitalist machine at a different timescale perhaps?
Guillaume Verdon (02:02:47) 是的，我认为公司，它们倾向于逐季度优化，也许几年后，但想要留下遗产的个人可以在几十年或几个世纪的时间尺度上思考。所以事实是，一些个人是如此优秀的资本配置者，以至于他们解锁了将资本分配给带我们走得更远或更有远见的目标的能力……Elon正在用SpaceX做这件事，把所有这些资本投入到让我们到达火星。Jeff正在努力建造蓝色起源，我认为他想建造奥尼尔圆柱体（书童注：O’Neill cylinder，一种太空栖息地设计概念）并将工业搬离地球，我认为这很出色。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:02:47) Yeah, I think that companies, they tend to optimize quarter over quarter, maybe a few years out, but individuals that want to leave a legacy can think on a multi-decadal or multi-century timescale. And so the fact that some individuals are such good capital allocators that they unlock the ability to allocate capitals to goals that take us much further or are much further-looking… Elon’s doing this with SpaceX, putting all this capital towards getting us to Mars. Jeff is trying to build Blue Origin, and I think he wants to build O’Neill cylinders and get industry off- planet, which I think is brilliant.
Guillaume Verdon (02:03:33) 我认为总的来说，我支持四位亿万富翁。我知道这有时是一个有争议的声明，但我认为从某种意义上说，这是一种权益证明投票。如果你有效地分配了资本，你就解锁了更多的资本来分配，只是因为你显然知道如何更有效地分配资本。这与政治家形成对比，政治家被选中是因为他们在电视上说得最好，而不是因为他们有最有效分配纳税人资本的经过验证的记录。所以这就是为什么我支持资本主义，而不是，比如说，把我们所有的钱都交给政府，让他们弄清楚如何分配它。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:03:33) I think just overall, I’m four billionaires. I know this is a controversial statement sometimes, but I think that in a sense it’s kind of a proof of stake voting. If you’ve allocated capital efficiently, you unlock more capital to allocate, just because clearly you know how to allocate capital more efficiently. Which is in contrast to politicians that get elected because they speak the best on TV, not because they have a proven track record of allocating taxpayer capital most efficiently. And so that’s why I’m for capitalism over, say, giving all our money to the government and letting them figure out how to allocate it.
Lex Fridman (02:04:20) 你认为为什么批评亿万富翁是一种病毒式的、流行的模因？既然你提到了亿万富翁。你认为为什么对拥有财富的人，特别是那些在公众视野中的人，比如Jeff、Elon、Mark Zuckerberg，还有谁？Bill Gates，有相当广泛的批评？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:04:20) Why do you think it’s a viral and it’s a popular meme to criticize billionaires? Since you mentioned billionaires. Why do you think there’s quite a widespread criticism of people with wealth, especially those in the public eye, like Jeff and Elon and Mark Zuckerberg, and who else? Bill Gates.
Guillaume Verdon (02:04:44) 是的，我认为很多人会，而不是试图理解技术-资本机器是如何运作的并意识到他们拥有比他们认为的更多的主动权，他们宁愿有这种受害者心态。”我只是受制于这台机器。它在压迫我。成功的玩家显然一定是邪恶的，因为他们在这个我不成功的游戏中取得了成功。”但我已经设法让一些处于那种心态的人意识到技术-资本机器是如何运作的，以及你如何为了自己和他人的利益而利用它。通过创造价值，你捕获了你为世界创造的一些价值。那种正和心态转变是如此强大，实际上，这就是我们通过扩大e/acc试图做的事情，就是解锁那种更高层次的主动权。实际上，你对未来的控制远远超过你的想象。你有改变世界的主动权，走出去做吧。这是许可。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:04:44) Yeah, I think a lot of people would, instead of trying to understand how the techno-capital machine works and realizing they have much more agency than they think, they’d rather have this sort of victim mindset. “I’m just subjected to this machine. It is oppressing me. And the successful players clearly must be evil because they’ve been successful at this game that I’m not successful at.” But I’ve managed to get some people that were in that mindset and make them realize how the techno-capital machine works and how you can harness it for your own good and for the good of others. And by creating value, you capture some of the value you create for the world. That sort of positive sum mindset shift is so potent, and really, that’s what we’re trying to do by scaling e/acc, is unlocking that higher level of agency. Actually, you’re far more in control of the future than you think. You have agency to change the world, go out and do it. Here’s permission.
Lex Fridman (02:05:46) 每个个体都有主动权。座右铭”Keep building”（继续建造）经常被听到。这对你意味着什么，这与健怡可乐有什么关系？顺便说一句，非常感谢红牛。它工作得很好。我感觉很好。
LEX FRIDMAN (02:05:46) Each individual has agency. The motto, “Keep building” is often heard. What does that mean to you, and what does that have to do with Diet Coke? By the way, thank you so much for the Red Bull. It’s working pretty well. I’m feeling pretty good.
Guillaume Verdon (02:06:03) 太棒了。嗯，所以建造技术和建造……它不必是技术，只是建造总的来说意味着拥有主动权，试图通过创造来改变世界，比方说一家公司，这是一个在更广泛的技术-资本机器中完成功能的自我维持的有机体。对我们来说，这是在世界上实现你想看到的变化的方式，而不是，比如说，向政治家施压或创建非营利组织。非营利组织，一旦他们用完钱，他们的功能就无法再完成了。与其说是人为地扭曲市场，不如说是颠覆或引导市场，或与市场共舞，以说服它实际上这个功能很重要，增加价值，就是这样。所以我认为这是去增长、ESG方法之外，比如说，Elon之间的方式。去增长方法是，”我们要管理我们的方式走出气候危机。”而Elon是，”我要建立一家自我维持、盈利和增长的公司，我们要创新我们的方式走出这个困境。”我们试图让人们在所有规模上做后者而不是前者。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:06:03) Awesome. Well, so building technologies and building… It doesn’t have to be technologies, just building in general means having agency, trying to change the world by creating, let’s say a company which is a self-sustaining organism that accomplishes a function in the broader techno-capital machine. To us, that’s the way to achieve change in the world that you’d like to see, rather than, say, pressuring politicians or creating nonprofits. Nonprofits, once they run out of money, their function can longer be accomplished. You’re kind of deforming the market artificially compared to sort of subverting or coursing the market, or dancing with the market, to convince it that actually this function is important, adds value, and here it is. And so I think this is the way between the de-growth, ESG approach, versus, say, Elon. The de-growth approach is like, “We’re going to manage our way out of a climate crisis.” And Elon is like, “I’m going to build a company that is self-sustaining, profitable, and growing, and we’re going to innovate our way out of this dilemma.” And we’re trying to get people to do the latter rather than the former, at all scales.
Lex Fridman (02:07:26) Elon是一个有趣的案例。你是支持者，你赞扬Elon，但他也是一个长期以来一直警告人工智能的危险、潜在危险、存在风险的人。你如何调和这两者？这对你来说是矛盾吗？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:07:26) Elon is an interesting case. You are a proponent, you celebrate Elon, but he’s also somebody who has for a long time warned about the dangers, the potential dangers, existential risks of artificial intelligence. How do you square the two? Is that a contradiction to you?
Guillaume Verdon (02:07:45) 这在某种程度上是矛盾的，因为他在许多方面非常反对监管。但对于AI，他绝对是监管的支持者。我认为总的来说，他看到了，比如说，OpenAI垄断市场然后对可以嵌入到这些LLM中的文化先验拥有垄断的危险，然后，当LLM现在成为人们的真理来源时，那么你就可以塑造人们的文化。所以你可以通过控制LLM来控制人们。他看到了这一点，就像社交媒体的情况一样，如果你塑造信息传播的功能，你就可以塑造人们的意见。他寻求制造一个竞争对手。所以至少，我认为我们在那里非常一致，通向美好未来的方式是维持各个AI玩家之间的对抗性均衡。我很想和他谈谈，以了解他对如何推进AI的想法。我的意思是，我会说他也在用Neuralink对冲他的赌注。我认为如果他不能阻止AI的进步，他正在建造与之合并的技术。看行动，而不仅仅是言语。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:07:45) It is somewhat because he’s very much against regulation in many aspects. But for AI, he’s definitely a proponent of regulations. I think overall he saw the dangers of, say, OpenAI cornering the market and then getting to have the monopoly over the cultural priors that you can embed in these LLMs that then, as LLMs now become the source of truth for people, then you can shape the culture of the people. And so you can control people by controlling LLMs. He saw that, just like it was the case for social media, if you shape the function of information propagation, you can shape people’s opinions. He sought to make a competitor. So at least, I think we’re very aligned there, that the way to a good future is to maintain adversarial equilibria between the various AI players. I’d love to talk to him to understand his thinking about how to advance AI going forwards. I mean, he’s also hedging his bets, I would say, with Neuralink. I think if he can’t stop the progress of AI, he’s building the technology to merge. Look at the actions, not just the words.
Lex Fridman (02:09:10) 嗯，在某种程度上关注……也许使用人类心理学，关注我们周围的威胁是一个激励因素。这是一件鼓励的事情。当有截止日期时，我的表现要好得多。对截止日期的恐惧。我为自己创造人为的东西，比如我想在自己身上创造这种焦虑，好像如果我错过截止日期，真的会发生非常可怕的事情。我认为这里有一定程度的这种情况，因为创建与人类对齐的AI有很多潜在的好处。所以重新框架的一种不同方式是，”如果你不这样做，我们都会死。”这似乎是创建人类对齐AI目标的一个非常强大的心理表述。
LEX FRIDMAN (02:09:10) Well, there’s some degree where being concerned… Maybe using human psychology, being concerned about threats all around us is a motivator. It’s an encouraging thing. I operate much better when there’s a deadline. The fear of the deadline. And I, for myself, create artificial things, like I want to create in myself this kind of anxiety as if something really horrible will happen if I miss the deadline. I think there’s some degree of that here, because creating AI that’s aligned with humans has a lot of potential benefits. And so a different way to reframe that is, “If you don’t, we’re all going to die.” It just seems to be a very powerful psychological formulation of the goal of creating human-aligned AI.
Guillaume Verdon (02:09:59) 我认为焦虑是好的。我认为，正如我所说，我希望自由市场创造对齐的、可靠的AI，我认为这就是他试图用xAI做的事情。所以我完全支持。我反对的是阻止，比如说开源生态系统通过在行政命令中声称开源LM是双重用途技术并且应该由政府控制而蓬勃发展。然后每个人都需要向政府注册他们的GPU和他们的大矩阵。我认为那种额外的摩擦会阻止很多黑客做出贡献，这些黑客后来可能成为做出推动我们前进的关键发现的研究人员，包括AI安全的发现。所以我认为我只是想保持对AI的贡献机会的普遍性以及拥有未来的一部分。它不能只是被立法到某个墙后面，只有少数玩家可以玩游戏。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:09:59) I think that anxiety is good. I think, like I said, I want the free market to create aligned AIs that are reliable, and I think that’s what he’s trying to do with xAI. So I’m all for it. What I am against is stopping, let’s say the OpenSource ecosystem from thriving by, let’s say in the executive order, claiming that OpenSource LMs are dual-use technologies and should be government controlled. Then everybody needs to register their GPU and their big matrices with the government. And I think that extra friction will dissuade a lot of hackers from contributing, hackers that could later become the researchers that make key discoveries that push us forward, including discoveries for AI safety. And so I think I just want to maintain ubiquity of opportunity to contribute to AI and to own a piece of the future. It can’t just be legislated behind some wall where only a few players get to play the game.
Lex Fridman (02:11:08) e/acc运动经常被讽刺为意味着不惜一切代价的进步和创新。不管有多不安全，不管是否造成很多损害。你只是尽可能快地建造酷的东西，整夜熬夜喝健怡可乐，无论需要什么。我想，我不知道那里是否有问题，但对你来说有多重要，你在e/acc的不同表述中看到的，AI安全有多重要？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:11:08) The e/acc movement is often caricatured to mean progress and innovation at all costs. Doesn’t matter how unsafe it is, doesn’t matter if it causes a lot of damage. You just build cool shit as fast as possible, stay up all night with a Diet Coke, whatever it takes. I guess, I don’t know if there’s a question in there, but how important to you and what you’ve seen the different formulations of e/acc, is AI safety?
Guillaume Verdon (02:11:44) 再说一次，我认为如果没有人在研究它，我认为我会是它的支持者。我认为，再说一次，我们的目标是带来平衡，显然紧迫感是取得进展的有用工具。它黑进了我们的多巴胺系统，给我们能量工作到深夜。我认为还有一个你正在贡献的更高目标。归根结底，就像，我在贡献什么？我在为这台美丽机器的增长做贡献，这样我们就可以寻求星辰。这真的很鼓舞人心。这也是一种神经黑客。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:11:44) Again, I think if there was no one working on it, I think I would be a proponent of it. I think, again, our goal is to bring balance, and obviously a sense of urgency is a useful tool to make progress. It hacks our dopaminergic systems and gives us energy to work late into the night. I think also having a higher purpose you’re contributing to. At the end of the day, it’s like, what am I contributing to? I’m contributing to the growth of this beautiful machine so that we can seek to the stars. That’s really inspiring. That’s also a sort of neuro hack.
Lex Fridman (02:12:26) 所以你是说AI安全对你来说很重要，但现在你看到的想法景观是，AI安全作为一个话题更常被用来获得集中控制。所以从这个意义上说，你在抵制它，作为获得集中控制的代理？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:12:26) So you’re saying AI safety is important to you, but right now the landscape of ideas you see is, AI safety as a topic is used more often to gain centralized control. So in that sense, you’re resisting it, as a proxy for gaining centralized control?
Guillaume Verdon (02:12:43) 是的，我只是认为我们必须小心，因为安全只是权力集中化和最终掩盖腐败的完美掩护。我不是说它现在已经腐败了，但它可能在未来。而且实际上，如果你让论证运行，没有多少权力集中化的控制足以确保你的安全。总是有更多的9个9的P安全可以获得，99.9999%安全。也许你想要另一个9。”哦，请让我们完全访问你做的一切。完全监视。”坦率地说，那些AI安全的支持者已经提议拥有一个全球全景监狱，你对正在发生的一切都有集中的感知。对我来说，这只是为老大哥、1984式的场景敞开了大门。那不是我想生活的未来。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:12:43) Yeah, I just think we have to be careful, because safety is just the perfect cover for centralization of power and covering up eventually corruption. I’m not saying it’s corrupted now, but it could be down the line. And really, if you let the argument run, there’s no amount of centralization of control that will be enough to ensure your safety. There’s always more 999s of P safety that you can gain, 99.9999% safe. Maybe you want another nine. “Oh, please give us full access to everything you do. Full surveillance.” And frankly, those that are proponents of AI safety have proposed having a global panopticon where you have centralized perception of everything going on. And to me, that just opens up the door wide open for a big brother, 1984-like scenario. And that’s not a future I want to live in.
Lex Fridman (02:13:49) 因为我们在整个历史上有一些例子，那没有导致好的结果。
LEX FRIDMAN (02:13:49) Because we have some examples throughout history when that did not lead to a good outcome.
Guillaume Verdon (02:13:54) 对。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:13:54) Right.
Lex Fridman (02:13:56) 你提到你创立了一家公司Extropic，最近宣布了1410万美元的种子轮融资。公司的目标是什么？你谈到了很多有趣的物理东西，所以你在那里做什么可以谈论的？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:13:56) You mentioned you founded a company, Extropic, that recently announced a 14.1 million seed round. What’s the goal of the company? You’re talking about a lot of interesting physics things, so what are you up to over there that you can talk about?
Guillaume Verdon (02:14:12) 是的，最初我们不打算在上周宣布，但我认为由于人肉曝光和披露，我们被迫披露了。所以我们不得不披露我们大致在做什么。但实际上，Extropic诞生于我和我的同事对量子计算路线图的不满。量子计算有点是试图商业化规模化的基于物理的计算的第一条路径，我正在研究运行在这些基于物理的计算机上的基于物理的AI。但最终，我们最大的敌人是这种噪声，这种无处不在的噪声问题，正如我所提到的，你必须不断地把噪声从系统中抽出来，以维持这种原始环境，在那里量子力学可以生效。那个约束太多了。做那个太昂贵了。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:14:12) Yeah, originally we weren’t going to announce last week, but I think with the doxing and disclosure, we got our hand forced. So we had to disclose roughly what we were doing. But really, Extropic was born from my dissatisfaction, and that of my colleagues, with the quantum computing roadmap. Quantum computing was sort of the first path to physics-based computing that was trying to commercially scale, and I was working on physics-based AI that runs on these physics-based computers. But ultimately, our greatest enemy was this noise, this pervasive problem of noise that, as I mentioned, you have to constantly pump out the noise out of the system to maintain this pristine environment where quantum mechanics can take effect. And that constraint was just too much. It’s too costly to do that.
Guillaume Verdon (02:15:11) 所以我们在想，当生成式AI有点吞噬世界时，世界上越来越多的计算工作负载集中在生成式AI上，我们如何能够使用物理学从物理学、信息论、计算以及最终热力学的第一原理来设计生成式AI的终极物理基底？所以我们寻求建造的是一个基于物理的计算系统和基于物理的AI算法，它们受到非平衡热力学的启发，或直接利用它来将机器学习作为一个物理过程来做。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:15:11) And so we were wondering, as generative AI is sort of eating the world, more and more of the world’s computational workloads are focused on generative AI, how could we use physics to engineer the ultimate physical substrate for generative AI from first principles of physics, of information theory, of computation, and ultimately of thermodynamics? And so what we’re seeking to build is a physics-based computing system and physics-based AI algorithms that are inspired by out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics, or harness it directly to do machine learning as a physical process.
Lex Fridman (02:16:01) 那么这意味着什么，机器学习作为一个物理过程？是硬件吗？是软件吗？两者都是吗？它试图以某种独特的方式做全栈吗？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:16:01) So what does that mean, machine learning as a physical process? Is that hardware? Is it software? Is it both? Is it trying to do the full stack in some kind of unique way?
Guillaume Verdon (02:16:10) 是的，它是全栈的。所以我们是那些用TensorFlow Quantum将可微编程构建到量子计算生态系统中的人。TensorFlow Quantum的联合创始人之一是CTO Trevor McCourt。我们有一些最好的量子计算机架构师，那些设计了IBM和AWS系统的人。他们已经离开了量子计算，帮助我们建造我们所说的实际上是一台热力学计算机。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:16:10) Yes, it is full stack. And so we’re folks that have built differentiable programming into the quantum computing ecosystem with TensorFlow Quantum. One of my co-founders of TensorFlow Quantum is the CTO, Trevor McCourt. We have some of the best quantum computer architects, those that have designed IBM’s and AWS’s systems. They’ve left quantum computing to help us build what we call actually a thermodynamic computer.
Lex Fridman (02:16:43) 一台热力学计算机。嗯，实际上让我们在TensorFlow Quantum周围停留一下。你从TensorFlow Quantum中学到了什么教训？也许你可以谈谈创建本质上是量子计算机的软件API需要什么？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:16:43) A thermodynamic computer. Well, actually let’s linger around TensorFlow Quantum. What lessons have you learned from TensorFlow Quantum? Maybe you can speak to what it takes to create essentially, what, like a software API to a quantum computer?
Guillaume Verdon (02:17:01) 对。那是一个挑战，要发明、建造，然后在真实设备上运行。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:17:01) Right. That was a challenge to invent, to build, and then to get to run on the real devices.
Lex Fridman (02:17:09) 你能实际谈谈它是什么吗？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:17:09) Can you actually speak to what it is?
Guillaume Verdon (02:17:11) 是的。TensorFlow Quantum是一次尝试……嗯，我想我们成功了，将深度学习或可微经典编程与量子计算结合起来，并将量子计算转变为或在量子计算中拥有可微的程序类型。Andrej Karpathy称可微编程为Software 2.0。就像，梯度下降是比你更好的程序员。这个想法是，在量子计算的早期，你只能运行短的量子程序。那么，你应该运行哪些量子程序？嗯，就让梯度下降找到那些程序吧。所以我们建立了第一个基础设施，不仅可以运行可微的量子程序，还可以将它们作为更广泛的深度学习图的一部分，结合深度神经网络——你知道和喜爱的那些——与所谓的量子神经网络。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:17:11) Yeah. TensorFlow Quantum was an attempt at… Well, I guess we succeeded, at combining deep learning or differentiable classical programming with quantum computing, and turn quantum computing into or have types of programs that are differentiable in quantum computing. And Andrej Karpathy calls differentiable programming, Software 2.0. It’s like, gradient descent is a better programmer than you. And the idea was that in the early days of quantum computing, you can only run short quantum programs. And so, which quantum programs should you run? Well, just let gradient descent find those programs instead. And so we built the first infrastructure to not only run differentiable quantum programs, but combine them as part of broader deep learning graphs, incorporating deep neural networks, the ones you know and love, with what are called quantum neural networks.
Guillaume Verdon (02:18:21) 最终，这是一个非常跨学科的努力。我们必须发明各种微分方法，通过混合图进行反向传播。但最终，它教会了我编程物质和编程物理的方法是通过对控制参数进行微分。如果你有影响系统物理的参数，并且你可以评估某个损失函数，你就可以优化系统以完成任务，无论那个任务是什么。这是一个非常普遍的元框架，用于如何编程基于物理的计算机。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:18:21) And ultimately, it was a very cross-disciplinary effort. We had to invent all sorts of ways to differentiate, to back propagate through the hybrid graph. But ultimately, it taught me that the way to program matter and to program physics is by differentiating through control parameters. If you have parameters that affects the physics of the system and you can evaluate some loss function, you can optimize the system to accomplish a task, whatever that task may be. And that’s a very universal meta framework for how to program physics-based computers.
Lex Fridman (02:19:05) 所以试图参数化一切，使这些参数可微，然后优化？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:19:05) So try to parameterize everything, make those parameters differentiable, and then optimize?
Guillaume Verdon (02:19:12) 是的。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:19:12) Yes.
Lex Fridman (02:19:13) 好的。TensorFlow Quantum有一些更实际的工程教训吗？组织上也是，比如涉及的人类以及如何到达产品，如何创建好的文档？我不知道。所有这些人们可能不会想到的小微妙的东西。
LEX FRIDMAN (02:19:13) Okay. Is there some more practical engineering lessons from TensorFlow Quantum? Just organizationally too, like the humans involved and how to get to a product, how to create good documentation? I don’t know. All of these little subtle things that people might not think about.
Guillaume Verdon (02:19:34) 我认为跨学科边界工作总是一个挑战，你必须在互相教学方面非常耐心。我通过这个过程学到了很多软件工程。我的同事学到了很多量子物理学，有些人通过建造这个系统的过程学到了机器学习。我认为如果你让一些聪明、充满激情并相互信任的人在一个房间里，你有一个小团队——
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:19:34) I think working across disciplinary boundaries is always a challenge, and you have to be extremely patient in teaching one another. I learned a lot of software engineering through the process. My colleagues learned a lot of quantum physics, and some learned machine learning through the process of building this system. And I think if you get some smart people that are passionate and trust each other in a room, and you have a small team-
Guillaume Verdon (02:20:00) 充满激情并相互信任，你有一个小团队，你们互相教授你们的专长，突然你有点形成了这种专业知识的模型汤，一些特别的东西从中出来，对吧？这就像结合基因，但为了你的知识库，有时特殊的产品从中出来。所以我认为，即使最初在跨学科团队中工作摩擦很大，我认为归根结底产品是值得的。所以，学到了很多试图弥合那里的差距。我的意思是，直到今天这仍然是一个挑战。我们雇用有AI背景的人，有纯物理背景的人，不知何故我们必须让他们互相交谈。对吧？
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:20:00) Are passionate and trust each other in a room, and you have a small team, and you teach each other your specialties, suddenly you’re kind of forming this sort of model soup of expertise, and something special comes out of that, right? It’s like combining genes, but for your knowledge bases, and sometimes special products come out of that. And so I think, even though it’s very high friction initially to work in an interdisciplinary team, I think the product at the end of the day is worth it. And so, learned a lot trying to bridge the gap there. And I mean, it’s still a challenge to this day. We hire folks that have an AI background, folks that have a pure physics background, and somehow we have to make them talk to one another. Right?
Lex Fridman (02:20:47) 招聘过程有魔力吗，建立一个能够一起创造魔力的团队有科学和艺术吗？
LEX FRIDMAN (02:20:47) Is there a magic, is there some science and art to the hiring process, to building a team that can create magic together?
Guillaume Verdon (02:20:56) 是的，真的很难准确指出那种je ne sais quoi（书童注：法语，意为”难以言喻的特质”），对吧？
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:20:56) Yeah, it’s really hard to pinpoint that je ne sais quoi, right?
Lex Fridman (02:21:03) 我不知道你说法语。这很好。
LEX FRIDMAN (02:21:03) I didn’t know you speak French. That’s very nice.
Guillaume Verdon (02:21:07) 是的，我实际上是法裔加拿大人。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:21:07) Yeah, I’m actually French Canadian.
Lex Fridman (02:21:09) 哦，你是真正的法裔加拿大人。
LEX FRIDMAN (02:21:09) Oh, you are a legitimately French Canadian.
Guillaume Verdon (02:21:09) 我是。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:21:09) I am.
Lex Fridman (02:21:11) 我以为你只是为了信誉而这么做。
LEX FRIDMAN (02:21:11) I thought you were just doing that for the cred.
Guillaume Verdon (02:21:15) 不，不。我真的是法裔加拿大人，来自蒙特利尔。但是的，基本上我们寻找具有非常高灵活度的通才、不是过度专业化的人，因为他们将不得不走出他们的舒适区。他们将不得不整合他们以前从未见过的概念，并非常迅速地整合到舒适区，或学会在团队中工作。所以这就是我们在招聘时寻找的。我们不能雇用那些在过去三四年里只是优化这个子系统的人。我们需要真正通用的某种更广泛的智力和专长，以及开放思想的人，真的，因为如果你从头开始开创一个新方法，没有教科书，没有参考资料。就是我们，和渴望学习的人。所以，我们必须互相教授,我们必须学习文献，我们必须分享知识库，合作以便一起推动知识边界。所以，习惯于只是被规定做什么的人在这个阶段，当你处于开拓阶段时，那不一定是你想雇用的人。是的。
GUILLAUME VERDON (02:21:15) No, no. I’m truly French Canadian, from Montreal. But yeah, essentially we look for people with very high fluid intelligence that aren’t overspecialized, because they’re going to have to get out of their comfort zone. They’re going to have to incorporate concepts that they’ve never seen before, and very quickly get comfortable with them, or learn to work in a team. And so that’s sort of what we look for when we hire. We can’t hire people that are just optimizing this subsystem for the past three or four years. We need really general sort of broader intelligence and specialty, and people that are open-minded, really, because if you’re pioneering a new approach from scratch, there is no textbook, there’s no reference. It’s just us, and people that are hungry to learn. So, we have to teach each other, we have to learn the literature, we have to share knowledge bases, collaborate in order to push the boundary of knowledge further together. And so, people that are used to just getting prescribed what to do at this stage, when you’re at the pioneering stage, that’s not necessarily who you want to hire. Yeah.