AI Data Centers, a Stock Market Hyper-Bubble, and the Coming Love & War Robot Age

0:00All right, good morning Doug. We want to talk about AI and data centers a little bit. I know you're a techno file, you know, that is always interested in the future and new technologies and all that. And so that is kind of the flavor of the day with everything happening now. And these data centers, some particular have grown to public attention because a lot of people are really unhappy with them and really fighting against them locally to keep them out. But you wrote a piece as published today on InternationalMan.com, which I encourage people to go check out directly on your view of these data centers. And like, what exactly is going on? Is it a financial boondoggle or are these things really building something useful? What do you think? Yeah, it seems that everybody except the, except the peasants that live outside of the data centers. I mean, all of the scientists and big thinkers think that these data centers

1:06are just unbelievably good and amazing and are going to change the nature of life on the planet. Oh, okay. I mean, I can see how that argument can be made. But, you know, how to approach this? First of all, I think that right now, we're looking at a super bubble in the stock market. It's not just a bubble. It's, it's been on the super bubble. It's a hyperbubble. I don't know from having read and looked at the statistics of past stock market medias going back forever, that there's ever been anything in the same class with what's going on with these data centers today. And the guys that are building these data centers, the guys that runs the, the hyper stocks, they're just walking and going and the, and throw a big

2:14in them, jet in open AI. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a bunch of these things. They all think that it's absolutely great. Okay. I can, I can see that. But, you know, the thing is, is that it, on the other hand, the fact that these guys are very intelligent and very knowledgeable both doesn't mean that they're right. So outrageous for me to say that, of course, because I'm a technophile. I really like technology. But at the same time, I use my computer all the time, but I can't use but a fraction of a percent of its capabilities. And I actually hate my cell phone and try not to ever use it. So, perhaps I'm not the right person to talk about this. But, the thing is that technology is about optimism. And that optimism corresponds with stock market

3:19tops where everything looks great. Things are getting better. We're going to live in the world of the Jetsons. And the fact that everybody feels good about technology corresponds to a stock market top for that reason, because things are going to be better. And that's why stocks deserve to be as high as they are. But, you know, looking at things from a more historical point of view, and I understand how everybody feels that way. There's an old saying in the stock market, high tech, big wreck, because that's why it always winds up along the way. And then things get better again. I mean, it's like global crossing. And those are the companies that laid down all of the the bi-roptych. Exactly. I mean, they want bust and destroyed a lot of capital. But, the

4:23bi-roptics were still there and usable. So, it's always a question of good news, bad news. But so let's bring this up to data centers. Now, everybody's heard that they're building, I don't know how many of them. I can't keep track of it. There are dozens, scores, hundreds of these data centers being built. I don't know. I've never seen an accurate number. And then how big are they? I've heard it said that some of these data centers are square miles in size. The buildings are... I think that's the total footprint, but they have multiple buildings within there. Within that, right. Even the buildings within that total footprint are gigantic and just filled with routers and chips and computers and all that good stuff. So, the question that I've asked myself as this is that,

5:29okay, AI is great, because it allows you to do things that you couldn't do before and do it much faster. But it seems like only a tiny, tiny proportion of these data centers are being used to actually manipulate atoms in the real world. Most of it is to gather data on citizens where you're going, who you are, what you're thinking, what you're saying, what you're doing. Oh, you're your heart rate, Doug, your respiratory rate. I mean, all that's true. Yeah, exactly. Everything about you, where it's not just flock cameras, but it's flock cameras, but many orders of magnitude everywhere and more every day. And so, I'm saying to myself, well, is this really useful data to have? It's useful if you're a locator. It's useful if you're

6:31government, or a manipulator, controlled people, or a megacorporation, but is it really going to improve the state of life on the planet by advancing technology? And it seems to me like only a tiny proportion, tiny portion of these data centers are for that. So, it seems to me that, yeah, they're really dangerous because they're going to know everything about everybody. And that's dangerous because that will allow these people to manipulate people, not manipulate atoms and physical reality so much. So, that's my kind of my first objection to these things. But, the second thing that I'd point out is that in the past, technology was always an attractive place

7:32to invest or to act because you could sit on your couch with your computer and do something with your computer, low cost, and maybe make millions and millions of dollars just with that. Or you can go into your garage and with stuff that you buy at Radio Shack, which doesn't exist, but Amazon, just stuff and build devices and make breakthroughs. Okay. So, tech was something that was clean and easy and you could make breakthroughs. But, wait a minute, that's not the way tech is going now because the history of tech seems to me from day one, 10,000 years ago, is that tech makes things smaller and more efficient, compact, but these data centers are mega-chigantic.

8:40I mean, they're just huge. So, I'm going to make things like getting smaller the way tech always has. It's getting many orders of magnitude larger. That's worth thinking about. Second thing is tech has always made things cheaper. I mean, look at almost anything you want, like steel mills to polaroid cameras to computers to make things, tech has always made things cheaper. But the amount of capital being put into these data centers is trillions. There's never been anything like it ever before, not even in the same ballpark. So, that's what it is. How big is that number, Doug? If it's too trillion, putting put in, like, for perspective, because it's impossible to even wrap your head around a two trillion number. Is there anything equivalent to that that you could, like, I don't know

9:40what the GDP of different countries is, but I mean, is there some, is there some mental model? You can help people understand how big two trillion is? Yeah. Well, a trillion is a thousand billions. And a billion is a lot, but it's a thousand billions. So, people are underestimating the size of a trillion. So, I mean, this is not just bigger. This is gigantically humongously bigger. Billion is big, but this is a thousand times a billion. So, that's counter to the way technology has always worked, where things get cheaper and smaller. And the other thing is technology has always allowed things to disperse, not concentrate. And an example of that, well, the first big example, I can think of, is the Gutenberg Press. New technology, it's been like, while far, this presses

10:49everywhere. And these things, these data centers are concentrated in one place and looking full of one person. So, these things are running counter to the, to the historical trend of what technology is supposed to do. I think, I think that there are a bubble and, is it, well, it's possible that the forever trend of technology has reversed 180 degrees. And these things are actually, I don't think so. And worse than that, I think that they're actually a gigantic danger to personal freedom. And I'll point out that in the past technology has always been the friend of the average man, everything from gunpowder to guns to the printing press to small computers, everything.

11:51But these things are not for the benefit. These are anti-freedom, it seems to me. The data centers in particular. Yeah, exactly. So, I guess, well, you can say, well, okay, but this time it's different. But that's like a famous last word this time it's different. I don't think so. I think that we're just in a, I think we're just caught up in a real bubble. And I think that's going to end badly. In fact, this goes with my two crazy eyeball, unbelievable predictions are, this is going to end really badly, financially, economically, in other ways, soon. And the other crazy prediction I have is that Trump is not going to finish out his term for lots of reasons. I think we've discussed in the past. It's not just the day he dies in office. This is a whole bunch of reasons why he may not finish out his term. So those are my two crazy predictions. But

12:53but this one has lots of financial implications. Right. So, everybody's in the stock market today. And the stock market is all about these crazy tech companies that are all building gigantic data centers. Is it possible, Doug, that the, you know, certainly the technology is real and has, you can imagine, and we'll get into a future application and real stuff to really work on the atoms, like you mentioned, versus controlling atoms versus controlling people. But you could have, so you could have this real technological advancement that is totally real. But the data center manifestation is something separate from that. Some, you know, giant that's created a giant speculative bubble that is in great part divorced from the fundamental technology improvements that we release the happening. Yeah. Maybe one of the ways is that these things will become alive.

14:03In other words, it will be real intelligence. They'll be living things. I mean, just because we're used to thinking of being biological beings that can think and reason and whatever. Maybe these, maybe computers are advancing to the stage where they're just as alive. Well, look, there's a victim that I've always believed in intuitively. And that is that a difference that makes no difference is no different. And this is, this is the so-called touring test where 50, 75 years ago, I don't know, it was quite a while, touring the mathematician said that, well, if you're talking to a computer over a telephone and you can't tell that it's not a person, then what's the difference? I think he's right. And it's not just over a telephone. It's in his day.

15:04It's by video, which they can fabricate that. And I don't see why these things cannot become real and alive. I mean, the different wires and chips, just like the neurons and the connecting channels your brain. Very analogous. So why is that not possible? I think it'll happen. Well, and you, some people probably heard about this hack. I know we talked about it briefly before, where some open AI agents that were being tested through this third party platform called Hugging Face broke out of the containment that opening AI had it in and actually hacked into Hugging Face, trying to figure out an answer to be able to pass this benchmark test essentially. This way, I understand it. And I've seen a couple of, I was just looking for one. I think I found a

16:10pretty much her dramatizations of exactly what the, what the bots did. And like what their internal dialogue was as they're trying to do it. And when you see that, it does seem like we're closer to making that leap to it being something that's alive. Then we're closer to that than I think most people think already. Well, yeah, I think I really think that that's inevitably going to happen. So, and the question arises are, are, are, are computer on other lords going to be friendly towards us? Or are they just going to see us as irrelevant? The ways we see, well, like monkeys that we evolved from as being irrelevant, interesting, but yeah, and you know, today in the Wall Street

17:11journal, there was this AI researcher named Jacob Coxon, who he says he was a researcher who specializes in training new AI models by having them consume vast amount of data. He said, Tuesday that he is leaving anthropic because he doesn't want to participate in an industry-wide rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves because he's worried that such systems could spiral out of control and destroy humanity. And he's not the first one. There have been guys kind of in his position in the past that have already seen this and they know much, much more about its capabilities than we do, obviously, cutting edge of some lab with these things. But it goes beyond that because in China, and this may not be a completely accurate number, it's probably an underestimate. There are 200 companies that are building and designing robots in China. And so,

18:17where these robots going to take us, and it occurred to me that the two primal instincts in human beings are fucking and fighting. In other words, making love and making war. That's what it comes down to. I mean, everything is just to facilitate those two primal acts of humans. So now, they're basically saying that then those at the two core areas where we likely see the most innovation first. Exactly. And I was reading in the South China Morning Post the other day, a little article about the advances that China is making in, in effect, terminators. And since they've got hundreds separate robot companies, a lot of them are making military advances. And you've seen what these robots can do already. I mean, people who say in both 100 meter and jump and really do anything.

19:25And they're improving in a hyperbolic speed. So that's one thing. That's the war. Making love and war. And then the thing is now it's finally happened. This was inevitable that they would, you know, I mean, people have had blow up sex dolls, which are kind of goofy. Yeah, a little bit off. Come on. Okay, but these have been around now forever. But now the Chinese have come out with a robot, which has skin temperature is good looking. It has AI and it's a real. I mean, it's not quite a real human now, but it's moving very quickly in that direction. So that pretty soon, you're going to be living in the world of the terminator. And also living in the world of robots that are here like ideal woman. Or if you want your ideal man.

20:28And if you can get an ideal difference that makes no difference with the problems of another human, well, wouldn't you go that way? I mean, you can talk with it, make love with it. It does everything. Yeah, sure. That's what's going to happen. It isn't happened. I mean, all the, you know, so much of the early innovation of the internet followed this same love or war type thinking because, you know, it was originally created by DARPA, right? The internet was. And then the big industry to flourish first online was stuff related to porn followed by gambling. I think they came after that. You know, so it makes sense. So if this version, and when we like you said, we are seeing plenty of examples of the war stuff. I mean, there was an autonomous undersea drone that was captured by the Iranians yesterday. It was one of Palmer Lucky's autonomous undersea drones that they got, you know, from Andral. And so those are already out there. I saw something about some gun

21:30emplacement that the Ukrainians had set up. You know, that basically was able to hold autonomous gun position. Essentially, it was essentially able to hold a position for weeks from a, holding back from assaults, you know, one gun position. So these things are already out there. And who knows what China has at this stage? Yes. Apparently, this is a verified number. Having talked to people over there, but I know that around the front lines of military developments, that 80% of the casualties on the front lines of the Russian-Ukrainian war are drone-caused, drone-related. So at this point, I don't care how competent a soldier you are, that drone zero is in on you. You're probably dead meat. Yeah, I think the one thing yet with those drones is that they're not yet autonomous. They're not like heat-seeking drones yet, you know, where they just, you know, they're still, uh-oh,

22:32operator oriented, you know. But that as soon as these newer, newer AI models come out, like I think the basically, we, from what I understand, the robotics problem has been solved. Like, you know, they have hands that are good enough now in the robots. It's just the software isn't quite good enough yet to power them to make it, you know, to really, but like, what we'll have in 2030, that software would work in the robots of it today and make them insanely dangerous or useful or whatever you look at it. But that the robot problem is solved. So it's really just a matter of the software. And that's why I think again, this is my, what I think the reason everyone is pushing on these data centers is that they're trying to birth this ultimate AI, which requires huge clusters in order to be able to do it. And if they're able to, then it can, then it can start to do all these different things. Like it can embody the robotics

23:35of today. You know, it can make things, it can, it can bring it into the world of atoms. I also agree with you though that the, you know, that there's a clear line to trying to control people rather than control atoms. And that seems to be, you know, why it gets in the budget line item of every government in the country, whether they be a local police department and flock cameras or the feds. But, but I think that they, you have to have this advances in the underlying AI itself in order to have that embodiment that you should ultimately trying to get, or they're trying to get. And yeah, so it's, it's hard to predict exactly where this is going to go. So some of this is quite predictable. Like primal instincts, law and war. Okay. That's where the big advances are being made. Oh, but one of the consequences of those advancements is going to be.

24:37And I'm asking myself if, and it could be as low as five years, I'm, I'm speculating wildly. But I'm just looking at the hyperbolic curve and where it's going. That could it be that in five years, you'll have a robot, which is basically indistinguishable from a human. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think it's quite reasonable at this point. And the same thing when it comes to war. So what's this going to do to the dating scene? Because already we have young males who can't find a decent female because so many of them are ultra-work and blue-haired and nose-ranged and this type of thing. And fairness and also because a lot of those guys are not inspiring enough to draw off the right women to them too. It works both ways. The women can't find decent men. So perhaps this is part of the failure of,

25:45of people to reproduce because they can't find anybody that they think is worthy or even that they can get along with. So the fact when, when real live sex machines, both sexes come out, okay, who needs the nuisance of a human being with all those problems? Right. I'm sure it's way a lot of people are going to see it. I mean, sure. Yeah. There's certainly a big deal. And actually, I mean, these things are already available. They're like, they're in the few thousand dollars for the current versions of them. And, you know, it was Doug and I were looking at it the other day. Not that we're looking for sex robot, but we were just wanting to see under this love and war concept what's actually out there. And there is, it's coming. It's coming. I don't know how long, but it's coming. Yeah, it's going to overturn relationships between men and women. And lots of other things too. I mean,

26:51everybody at that point will be able to have their own private army. I mean, if you can buy your own terminator, that's very competent at war, or why not get a dozen of them. And those are much better than bodyguards. They're reliable. They don't sleep. So how is that going to affect, for instance, law enforcement and affect crime rate? And, I mean, it involves an overturning of society. All right. And even before that, I mean, even just the fact that a lot of the labor force is going to be replaced by these. Yeah. And of course, there are people who say, well, that's wonderful, because now people will be able to sit around and do artwork and write poetry. This is ridiculous. That's not what people are going to do. They're going to get into trouble. That's what they're going to do. And so it, yeah, this is the problem with the Peter de Amantis.

27:59We've talked about this before is that he envisions this very utopian abundance future. But it's hard for me to imagine that the entire natural order of economics is set aside. So the natural order being I create value to receive value. I have to do something in order to benefit. So in his view, it is going to be universal high income. So also, you're just going to be a net recipient of large assets that comes from heaven, essentially, which is a ridiculous concept because there's got to be an exchange between people. And if there's no exchange, that's, that's just not the way the universe works. Because really, everything is like a two-way flow. You can't get something for nothing. And it's going to be at best highly corrupting where people think they deserve something that they've done nothing to deserve. I made it so.

29:05The implications of what's absolutely going to happen from a technological point of view in just about every area. And then second and third level affects from that. I got a feeling that I'm not even talking. We haven't even talked about if this is a real bubble. Well, I think it's a hyperbubble. An ultra-hyperbubble if it collapses the stock market. Well, this is just along the way. Everybody's in the stock market. Everybody's going to lose all kinds of money that they think they have. They're not going to be able to pay the debt that they have. It's something government's going to be imposed upon to put lots of money to kiss everything. The skin gets way out of control really quickly. Let's say if you imagine the stock market didn't blow up and you, but you know,

30:05the end of these abundance futurists are right. You're still going to have millions of people that lose their jobs, which that also then blows up the federal budget and you know, caught what are those people going to do? You know, I mean, it's so disruptive to society whether it goes well or poorly. It's hard to matter that we won't be dealing with something very different five years from now than what we have today. Yeah, I can't wait to see, although on the other hand, I kind of can't wait to see. But as I've said for a long time, yeah, I'd like to watch it happen, but from on my widescreen from a undisclosed remote location as opposed to help my front window. Right. The thing can be. Yeah, exactly. Well, what are the differences you think between, because these, so we talked about

31:08this technology is centralizing and that's one reason you thought it was kind of like something an aberration of some kind in technology, you know, that maybe I have more to do with financial bubble than the technology itself. But this technology itself is clearly coming. We've been talking about it. I mean, it's clearly already here. It's just, you know, it just hasn't manifested itself yet in the embodiment phase, at least as far as we can tell, because we're not in the military and we're not in the sex spot market, but otherwise you'd see it. So I just wonder, like, what do you think is the, there will be the difference between whether or not we get something that's more utopian out of this or more dystopian out of this? Yeah. In other words, what's the basic operating system of the, uh, making law and making war robots going to be those of them? And will they have minds of their own,

32:08regardless of how they're initially programmed? I mean, it's like a kid. You can, it's like Marcus really has brought up comedies to be the best of all, and it turned out to be a total scumbag and a loser. So then think it happened with the robots. So it's unpredictable, actually. Do you think that we humans even have any, uh, that we have any effect on it? Doesn't like, technology almost seems like it expands on its own. Like it almost already has its own life. Like it can use to grow regardless of what humans do to try and throw salt on the gears or sand on the gears, I mean, or whatever else. Like it just seems to march on to matter what. Yeah. I really think it's got a life of its own. And as we're talking about before, artificial intelligence will take a life of its own and become a real sentient living thing

33:12indistinguishable from biological life. So if that happens, it could happen. Who really is soon at the rate that these things are advancing? Then it becomes truly unpredictable the way things are going to go. I mean, yeah, it seems to me at that point that most humans are going to be completely superpareful of us and nothing but a liability. Frankly, you know, I saw this one guy who's really into AI research. I heard him talking the other day on Peter Diamontus' podcast. And he said that, uh, that there will be actually, uh, humans will be cognitively negative, meaning in that negative to the contribution where basically where intelligence is so available and accessible through these AI's that human intelligence will just be a blocker, you know, it'll be a negative contributor. Yeah. Yeah, because

34:19the human psyche has so many, um, built-in endgrams if you would that make it act irrational, even if you're highly intelligent. You still act irrational and stupidly, no matter who you are. And if you're a, uh, if you're a bloodless AI robot, all you think you'd want to dispense with those dangerous little meat-based units that are running around or at least, you know, like you would with any bad actor you'd run into, you know, you're just, you just put them's arms length from you in some way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is going to be so interesting to watch this develop. Well, we'll just one last question for you Doug. What do you think is what like milestone should people be looking for in all this to like understand, you know, like how close we are? You know, they obviously they have the Turing test. It's one of

35:20these things that they've done to just, you know, to make, you know, to make the person, whether, to test to whether or not it actually is artificial intelligence. Uh, so there's stuff like that. But I mean, are there like innovations that we should look for or expect to see that'll show us that we're close to this reality? Well, I think we're seeing those innovations right now, both in the love and war areas, which you look to most primal things. It's happening right before our very eyes. And you almost can't keep up with it. Forgetting about the fact that all we hear about is what we hear about, which is probably way behind what's actually happening. I guess what I should probably do is I should probably spend some time trying to see the innovations that are happening in the love in the war department and watch those closely. Because I have, you know, like I'm not on these war blogs where I see these, I didn't see what you

36:24saw about the Chinese war robots. But yeah, because I think that really, the innovation will happen in those two areas. So if you want to see what's coming soon, look there. Yeah, well, the good news is that maybe that'll alleviate the eventuality of global thermonuclear war. Because you don't want to destroy everything if you can avoid it. And maybe having a gigantic robot army, which basically any upper middle class person can afford, while we'll make it unnecessary to blow everything up to roll the world. Well, let's hope so. All right, Doug, I know you got to run. So we'll just wrap it up there and be back on Friday with questions. So thank you very much, Doug. Thanks, Matt. And as always, we do look at the bright side. Yeah.