Interview, Fireside Chat
If You Could Live Forever Would You? (Ben Goertzel) | AI Podcast Clips with Lex Fridman
- The primary research goal is to eliminate involuntary death, establishing a future where death is entirely voluntary, with current arguments valuing death as essential to life expected to seem "ridiculous" within fifty years.
- Neuroscience advancements are projected to enable precise pain regulation, potentially allowing individuals to adjust pain levels on a scale from zero to eleven, though the optimal setting for a fulfilling life remains uncertain.
- Significant potential exists for non-human AGI systems that do not require pain mechanisms and are predicted to be more benevolent than humans, who may be disqualified from super-AGI status due to motivational systems prioritizing small-scale self-harm.
- Transhumanism is identified as the optimal path for maximizing joy, growth, and choice, with specific biological strategies including universal stem cell injections for tissue regeneration and "spiral ligamers" to cross-linked extracellular proteins, though the latter requires several years of development and is currently unfunded.
- Solving aging necessitates an integrated biological knowledge database, massive machine learning and AGI funding, and regulatory support for radical therapies, with the speaker estimating the world could afford a $10 trillion investment in a holistic bio-AI infrastructure without economic devastation.
- Despite the potential for massive investment, current research remains siloed within a few large entities, leaving vast amounts of personal biological data in hospital databases unused.
- Financial precedents involving trillions of dollars allocated to banking and insurance sectors during past crises suggest similar large-scale capital injections may occur during current events, contrasting with the current lack of funding for biological infrastructure.