Video the question that put in difficulty on the close billionaire of Elon Musk and the US Vice -President: “Would you prefer the human race to last, right?”

Peter Thiel, one of the important tech billionaires of Silicon Valley who has their own vision of the future of humanity, said after a long hesitation that the human species should survive, but that the answer is more nuanced than it seems at first sight.

“- You would prefer the human race to last, right?”, It was the seemingly trivial question to Thiel by Ross Douthat, an American and editorialist conservative author at The New York Times during an interview he took on his billionaire named his podcast Interesting Times with Ross Douthat.

– Thiel: Eh …

– Douthat: You are hesitant.

– Thiel: Well, I don't know. I would … I …

– Douthat: That's a long hesitation!

– Thiel: There are so many default questions here.

The billionaire believes that humanity will no longer progress without artificial intelligence

Thiel made the comment after being asked in an extensive interview that he granted last week about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and if he is afraid he will arrive at a dead point of development. The interview conducted by Douthat was fully transcribed by The New York Times, the above time taking place shortly after the journalist asked the billionaire about the perspective that you will stagnate in the future:

– dothat: I mean [A.I.] It is very intelligent, creative in a conformist way. It's like Netflix algorithm: it produces “acceptable” movies that people look at. Generates “acceptable” ideas to infinity. Leave a lot of people without jobs and make them irrelevant. But at the same time, it deepens stagnation in a way. Is this a real fear?

– Thiel: It's … [oftează]… it's quite possible. It's definitely a risk. But I think, in the end, I come to the conclusion that we should still try with artificial intelligence, and the alternative is a total stagnation.

So, yes, all kinds of interesting things can happen. Perhaps the drones, in a military context, combine with artificial intelligence and, yes, this is scary or dangerous or dystopic or will change the rules of the game. But if we do not have artificial intelligence, alas, then nothing happens. (…)

Thiel's comments about the future of humanity have been viral

Douthat's billionaire interview was published 10 days ago. It has passed largely unobserved, until fragments from it began to be widely distributed on social networks.

Most of them were related to the moment when the American writer and journalist asked Thiel about the voices in the Tech world that have a radical vision of the future of humanity. “It seems very clear to me that a large number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a mechanism for Transumanism – a way to transcend our mortal body – and either to create a successor species or to merge the mind,” said the publisher from The New York Times.

– Douthat: Do you think all this are irrelevant fantasies? Or do you think I'm just an exaggeration? Do people raise money pretending to build a “god-masin”? Is it just an exaggeration? Is it an illusion? Or is it something that worries you?

– Thiel: Hmm, yes.

It was the moment when Douthat then asked him the question related to the continuation of humanity, to which Thiel hesitated. The journalist insisted after the time of break:

– Douthat: Should the human race survive?

– Thiel: Yes.

– Douthat: Ok.

– Thiel: But I would also like to radically solve these problems. And it's always … I don't know, yes – Transumanism. The ideal was this radical transformation, in which your human body is transformed into an immortal body. And there is a criticism, say, to trans people in sexual context or, I do not know, a transvestite is someone who changes their clothes and dresses in clothes of the opposite sex, and a transsexual is someone who changes, I do not know, the penis in a vagina. And then we can debate how well these operations work. But we want a bigger transformation than that.

Criticism is not that it is strange and unnatural, but that: brother, it is so little, so sad. And, ok, we want more than changing your clothes or sexual organs. We want to be able to change your heart, change your mind, change your whole body.

Who is Peter Thiel

At 57 years old and with an estimated Bloomberg wealth at $ 21.5 billion, Thiel is considerably more influent than his wealth, which plays him easily outside the ranking of 100 people in the world.

Part of his influence is due to the fact that he is the founder and president of Palantir, a software and analysis company that from his beginning has had numerous contracts with the United States Government. Like other American technological companies, Palantir has invested strongly in the technology of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years and has a $ 317 billion capitalization.

Another part of Thiel's influence is due to the many personal relationships he has done in the tech industry over the years. Some of these are with names that have become part of the US government. Elon Musk has been known for over two decades, the two counting among the founders of the PayPal online financial service. Despite a sometimes turbulent relationship, Musk and Thiel have remained in cordial relationships to this day. For example, Forbes named Musk in a March article as one of Thiel's allies in Trump administration.

It's not the only one. Thiel has known himself with the US Vice -President, JD Vance, since 2011, when the latter was still a student at the Faculty of Law of the Yale University. Vance named the discussion then with Thiel the “most significant moment” of his life and described the Tech entrepreneur “probably the smartest person” he has ever encountered. The current US vice -president has worked for several years for Mithril Capital, another company founded by Thiel.

The New York Times wrote last summer, as soon as Trump chose Vance as his candidate for the position of vice president, that Thiel brought him to Mar-A-Lago for a meeting that opened the way of reconciliation. Vance was a virulent critic of Trump, which he at one point called a “Hitler of America”.

The meeting mediated by Thiel took place in the context in which he has become an important donor for right -wing politicians in recent years.

The vision of Christianity of a Tech billionaire

Thiel, who describes himself as a heterodox Christian, spoke several times about his ideas, including the theme of Transumanism. This year he had two discussions with the well -known conservative intellectual Jordan Peterson. One took place in February at a panel organized at a London conference. The second was through an interview he gave to Peterson for his YouTube channel.

He resumed the subject during the interview he gave him to Douthat.

– Thiel: Orthodox Christianity, by the way – the criticism of Orthodox Christianity at this address [a transumanismului] It's that these things don't go far enough. That Transumanism only involves changing your body, but you must also transform your soul, you must transform your whole being. And, so …

– Douthat: Wait, wait. I generally agree with what I think is your conviction: that religion should be friends with science and ideas of scientific progress. I believe that any idea of ​​divine providence must also include the fact that we have progressed and have done unimaginable things for our ancestors.

But, however, it seems that the promise of Christianity in the end is that you will receive the perfect body and the perfect soul through the grace of God. And the person trying to do this alone, with a lot of cars, risks becoming a dystopian character.

– Thiel: Well, it's … let's articulate that.

– Douthat: And you can have a heretical form of Christianity that says something else.

– Thiel: Yes, I don't know. I believe that the word “nature” does not appear even once in the Old Testament. And so there is a meaning in which, as I understand the Judeo-Christian inspiration, it is about the transcendence of nature. It is about to go beyond the limits. And the only thing you can associate with “nature” is that people are fallen. This is the natural condition, in a Christian sense: you are defective, you are broken. And that's true. But, in a way, with the help of God, you are called to transcend this, to overcome this.

– dothat: Correct. But most of those who-with the exception of you-work on building the hypothetical “god-Masina” I do not think they cooperate with Yahweh, with the Lord of the hosts.

– Thiel: Sure, sure. But…

– Douthat: They think they build their own immortality, right?

– Thiel: We jump between a lot of topics. So, again, the criticism we formulate is: they are not ambitious enough. From a Christian point of view, these people are not ambitious enough. And then the question arises: well, they are …

– Douthat: but they are not sufficiently ambitious and spiritual.

– Thiel: And then, are they even physically ambitious enough? And are they truly Transumanists? And here comes, OK, the cryogenia phase – it seems retro, since 1999 – no big deal in this direction. So they are no longer transumanists in the sense of changing the body. Then, ok, maybe it's not cryogeny, maybe it is “uploading” – the transfer of consciousness [într-un calculator]. Which, honestly, I don't really love. I prefer to keep my body. I don't just want a computer program that simulates me.

The entire talk of almost an hour between the two can be seen on the podcast's youtube channel Interesting Times hosted by Ross Douthat.

I hope you liked the special edition of the “Nerd Alert” section this weekend. In case you want to take a look over last Sunday, you can find it here: