Do you believe today's models are conscious?
I want to be clear. No one really knows. Can I say what I don't like about the whole framing?
Should it ever be allowed to not answer or disengage with me?
I think this is a technology that wants a new form factor.
Some lab says I'm going to push the button on RSI to make sure we have the power. I think if people really pushed on RSI, then yes, that would be true. But I think it's a very dangerous thing to push on.
Curing or treating a major disease? And I would hope we have the candidate for that in the next couple of years.
Where do you feel the most pressure right now?
I mean, it feels like everywhere.
We should be shooting more for a new renaissance than a new industrial revolution. The future has to be about people.
All right, Sam, thank you so much for joining me.
So, the first thing I want to talk about are some of the announcements that you made last week about all of the math proofs and the discoveries. And I think it seems incredible, but maybe you can contextualize it for a broader audience who may not be in the weeds.
I think we are entering the era where AI is going to help us discover significant new knowledge. Um, and we've been talking about this for a long time and I, you know, maybe started earlier this year, but now it's really like, okay, the AI is doing very difficult things, figuring out very complicated, important new knowledge.
And I believe that the same thing that has worked here for math is going to work for biology, help us get new medicines, material science, you know, help us get new sources of energy and much more. So, this is one of the things I've always been most excited about. I think this is going to do an enormous amount to really have an impact on people's lives. It won't feel directly like using AI. You'll just be like, 'Okay, the world got better and it's just society doing its thing.' But I think that the power of this will be transformative.
And I think about having that kind of direct impact on society day to day. Is there anything that you think will stem from some of these discoveries in particular that people will feel? And what is the timeline for something like that?
I would hope, well, you know, the FDA process is going to take a while. So let me kind of give a time frame to when I think we have like a discovery of curing or treating a major disease or a candidate for that that has to go through testing. I would hope we have the candidate for that in the next couple of years for the first like really major thing.
Probably need to overhaul some of the post-discovery process to start to get cures, and probably need to overhaul it somewhat. I'm glad we have a process. I no doubt that there's room for improvement as there is in anything, and maybe there's more than average here, but, you know, I am grateful that when we take a medicine it is generally considered safe and has been tested, and I think that part's good.
Is there a particular project that was kicked off by AI, discovered by AI, that you're really excited about, that you think is kind of coming over the horizon soon?
Personally, I think I'm most emotionally excited for a major physics discovery, and I'm hopeful that can come soon. Um, I don't know if that's necessarily the most important thing for humanity as a whole, um, but it's the one where I'm like, I think we're going to get it, and it's gonna be so cool.
There was some in the math community whose reaction was, you know, 'we didn't ask for this,' and it felt very similar to how engineers, I think, first reacted to AI starting to write a lot of the code. Where do you think that comes from, and how do you think that is going to transition?
Um, coding was a very interesting one. Before we kind of go to where it comes from, the thing about coding is that people went through this: 'there's no more jobs as coders for people to...' Coders are never going to be busier than they've been, and coders are never going to have more of an impact and make more money. The texture of the job changed a lot.
But the fact that we're going to like employ people to get computers to do things, that seems like it's going to keep going for much longer than people thought, and people were so certain. Um, you know, 6 or 12 months ago this was not the case. Yeah, it's like, 'there's no need,' you know. And I think there's many lessons to learn from this, but one of the interesting ones is that the world actually had demand for just way more software than any of us thought at the time.
And part of why I think some of the mathematicians are having the reaction they're having is it's not clear that the same thing applies to math. However, where I think there is an analogy to coding is already you're starting to see a similar shift happen that happened with coding, which is, okay, fine, maybe we're not going to discover new math theorems or prove them in an unaided way anymore. Maybe that part is like done or mostly done or ending. Um, but, you know, given that our whole society is focused on people doing useful things for each other, um, these kind of like incomprehensible math proofs turned out to be not that helpful to people, and there's now a lot of excitement about people who are going to take these new ideas, figure out what's going on, and figure out a way to translate it to something that people can understand and write a beautiful proof for it. Um, I'm sure there will be other things too.
And no doubt what it meant to be a mathematician last year is not going to be what it means to be a mathematician next year in some senses of it. I think we probably will find that there's a lot of other things that mathematicians do that we really want people to do, and they can do those much better. Whether that means there will be more total demand for mathematicians or not, I don't know. But I think there is a really important thing here.
You were mentioning earlier that you've never felt busier. There's never been more to do.
Yeah. Everyone thought AI was going to go the other way and we weren't going to have enough to do. And again, maybe that happens someday. But I think all of this stuff has just been much less obvious than it seems on the surface. I mean, I always hope that people get to work a little bit less, get to be a little bit less busy, and have more time for everything else in their life. I think that like technology is supposed to enable that. I want that thing to happen. Um, but man, does it sure seem like we're good at wanting more out of life, and wanting more out of the world, and making ourselves busier.
Yeah. I think that's just human nature. Like, if we were comfortable with the way life was 100 years ago, now we'd probably be working an hour a week, but that's just not the way it is.
And I think it's a beautiful thing about human nature that that's not the way it is.
Yeah. I mean, a good example is, um, you know, a few weeks ago, my editor started using Astra to edit our videos. Uh, they are still directing, they're still coming up with like how the video should be, but they're not touching the timeline anymore. It's the most insane thing, and it was an overnight change. We're making more videos. They're busier than ever.
It's... It has surprised me how often someone says a sentence that translates to exactly that.
Yeah. So, I'm thinking about discoveries from AI, and I'm wondering, like, how do you think about if AI and OpenAI discovered some math proof or significant scientific innovation that gave a massive commercial advantage? Like, would you publish it? And how do you think about that trade-off between, like, okay, we're going to use this for our competitive advantage versus publishing it for the world's good?
I will come back to that, but I didn't answer the end of your first question. Um, you know, I think one of the challenges... innovation and solving hard problems is really like part of the fun of life for many people, and so part of what's going on here is I think we do just need to be honest that AI is going to do that part of that really well. Um, I think there'll be questions about what people value that will remain kind of human questions forever. Um, there will be questions about how to interpret results and how to explain them where we'll really want a person to do it. I do feel some like... I definitely want the trade. I definitely want, you know, the cures to diseases, no matter how much someone else would have enjoyed taking decades longer to figure it out themselves. I think most people would agree that we shouldn't make that such a trade.
But there is a real thing being lost here, which is this is of great enjoyment. Like, the most fun part of my job are the really hard problems. Maybe I should say the most fulfilling part. Maybe they're not the most fun in the moment because they're really hard. But like, that's the stuff where it's like, ah, I did a hard thing, and I'm proud of it, and I leveled up. And, um, so I don't have an answer to this, but I get why people feel the grieving of different sorts that they feel.
Yeah. I mean, it's almost like you're trading off the enjoyment of the craft of doing the thing, like writing code, writing beautiful code, versus delivering an end product.
Yeah. And I think that's the trade-off where AI is just making it so much easier to deliver that end product, and you're just doing less of the actual craft. I think people are finding craft in new ways, but craft of... and, you know, probably when we stopped using like punch cards or whatever, however people programmed computers a long time ago, there were people who were like, 'Oh, the craft is gone if you can just like write this stuff for a compiler.'
Um, but I feel it. I feel it myself, um, in a bunch of ways, and, uh, I'm still excited to like head into this future, and I'm sure we'll all find new and hopefully better kinds of fulfillment.
What's something that you've felt like you've kind of given up lately to AI, and in fact you've just kind of elevated to where you're overing agents?
I guess this is the one we were talking about, but I realized I have not read or even looked at a line of code in probably a year. And I don't code for work at all, but I would still like do little random personal projects, or just like, 'I need this thing, I can like make, you know, write a very simple thing for it.' And that is fun. That is a fun thing. Like, writing code at least occasionally is a fun thing to do. And I don't think I'll ever do that again. Or if I do, it'll be like, you know, like a Revolutionary War reenactment or whatever kind of thing people do, you know?
When I'm old and bored, and I'm trying to like remember the glory days... the glory days of writing code.
Um, in terms of the scientific discovery question, I think there's like some kinds of basic science that should just belong to the world, and we should do as a sort of public good. Until very recently, we haven't had models that can go, you know, kind of end to end discover an important new thing, like design a whole chip end to end. Um, and so what a company can do today, uh, let's say, let's say figure out a new material.
Um, what a company could do today is have like a bunch of people that, uh, you know, use Codex or a lot of API credits to try to kind of do the work. But as the models get smarter and more capable, like, maybe they can just go in the same way that they could solve really difficult math problems, um, you know, with enough compute and enough data from the real world, discovering new material.
So I want to switch gears. Um, one of the most exciting things that has happened in 2026 is this revolution of personal AI assistants, starting with OpenClaw of course, that was, you know, Peter Steinberger, a genius. Um, and I think like this idea that AI can work on my behalf ambiently, passively throughout the day and just get things done for me is so exciting, and Dot gives us a glimpse of what that can be, but it still feels like we have a long way to go to really have an ambient personal assistant. What do you think either the technologies, or maybe there's some, you know, some kind of data that's required? What is necessary to get us to what you believe is, or what your vision is for an AI assistant?
You know, I think, uh, we have most of the technological pieces, and what we need is more product work, maybe new consumer hardware at some point for the ambient awareness, and a lot more compute. But I think we have smart enough models now to make something extraordinary that can be monitoring all the things that you care about, that can be helping you out with all the tasks you want to offload, um, that can be existing in the physical world with you and have context even when you're not in front of your computer. Um, I'm very excited about this. I don't think this is that far away. I think you do get more than a glimpse with Dot if you take the time to sort of set it up right and give it enough feedback. I would estimate at this point that I have Dot saving me an hour a day of stuff I just didn't want to be doing, which is like pretty great.
And then also a few times a day, something important and urgent that I would have missed. Not just because I was busy in a meeting, which is what I thought it was going to help me with, saying, you know, 'there's this urgent thing, there's a deadline very soon, you got to pay attention.' But also, the model is smart enough that it can pull ideas and information and do like good reasoning across stuff from a lot of sources, in a way that I've just like run out of brain space during a busy day to do.
Yeah. And I feel like the power is there, and we just need to put a nice product around it. I mean, you mentioned compute. So let's stick on that for a second. The distribution of how people are using AI is like completely asymmetric. There's the top 1% using the vast majority, or really like the power users, and then there's everybody else. How much compute do you think is necessary if 50% of the world were really using a personal AI assistant to its full capability?
How many GPUs do you want working for you and your personal assistant?
Yeah, I guess that is it, right? Infinite. As many as I can get my hands on.
This is a weird thing, right? Like if...
Yeah. How do you think about that? I mean, is it just like get all the GPUs and keep building data centers?
When people talk about the global market for GPUs and the demands for this and demands for compute, the thing that I think it misses is people are assuming that models are going to stay at the same capability and the same cost per task as today. And maybe there is a cap on demand at that point, but for sufficiently high-quality intelligence at a sufficiently low cost, I think it's like very hard to talk about an arbitrary market size there. I think it's just going to keep... people call us all sorts of things, Jevons paradox, whatever. I think it's just going to keep going up. Um, I am sure there will be some periods... I believe that there will be some periods where, like with any new technology, there's supply constraints and supply gluts, and, you know, we don't have it perfect all the time, but I would bet a lot that the directional trend is to want much more compute.
I still feel even with as proactive as Dot is and other AI assistants, I still feel this cognitive load, like I'm having to make a lot of decisions throughout the day. And we talked about that briefly earlier, like what is the solution to that? It is definitely saving me time. It's saving me money, but I am busier than ever.
And I'm having to make more decisions than ever, and I find myself at the end of the day just feeling completely drained.
Yeah. Um, well, first of all, a thing I've done in my own use that's been pretty good is just like telling Dot, like, 'I'm starting to trust your judgment more. You know, tell me after you do something. I always want to know, but you can like take more actions proactively and ping me less often.' Um, and that has helped. The negative is I do think the people that use AI the most are busier than ever. The positive is they're getting much more done than before.
Yeah. So, you know, as you were saying earlier, if we went back to 1900 or whatever, maybe we could have an equivalent life and all work an hour a day. You could be much less busy and get what you were getting done 3 years ago. Like, now maybe you say, 'Well, I can't, because I'm in a competitive environment.' And so, like, yeah, that's people are always going to work as hard as they can. I find this like kind of depressing. I hope it's not true. Maybe it is.
It's not all depressing. Like, there's something, again, there's something beautiful about it.
That's the dynamic of a competitive market, right? Isn't that... Do you not find that to be inevitable? Everybody's just going to... Everybody ramps up, competes as fiercely as they ever would.
I hope that the future is one of more like human connection, and more people spending more time on like the fullness of things that make up a rich life, and not kind of turning ever harder as like a wheel in the machine of capitalism. And I think this is probably true. Like, I think quality of life has gone up enormously in the last few hundred years.
Uh, I think most people do work less than they worked during the industrial revolution. Um, speaking of that, I've recently been telling people that, you know, I think we should be shooting more for a new renaissance than a new industrial revolution. And it's been quite interesting to watch how people respond, because very commonly the response to that is something like, 'Yeah, I'm really scared, the industrial revolution was really bad for most people, and I don't want to just be like a worker on a factory line, and now the AI tells me what to do instead of some like factory owner telling me what to do. Like, I want to go be creative. I want to go make stuff. I want to go explore. I want to have time to like reconnect with what people used to do in the past, and like live with my community, and raise my kids, and spend time in nature, and whatever. Um, and I want to see like a ton of scientific discovery and great new art.'
So, I think there is a fear that AI is going to be more of what you have said, but I think if we can offer people a future where it's more like the Renaissance, I think people are excited for that. I think we can do it. Um, I think this technology is so powerful that although you will probably have some small number of people in society that have always competed to like be the person with the biggest, you know, business empire, whatever,
I think a lot of people can have a vastly increased quality of life and much more space to live their life.
Is the disparity between those hyper-competitive people and everybody else going to amplify because of AI? Like, if you're using 100% of your effort to work, and now all of a sudden you're getting 10, 100 times more done, and somebody else is like, 'well, I actually want to reap the benefit of not working as much.' Doesn't that increase the disparity?
Left to its own devices, I think probably... I will say no one knows this for certain. Like there could be a bunch of other weird things where the AI's... well, that would take too long. I will just say I think probably that's right. We don't know for sure. Um, but I think society will decide to put some structure in place that prevents it from getting too out of whack. Um, yeah, I would be worried about that also on its own.
Let's change gears. I know you've been talking about this a lot, so I want to ask you: do you believe today's models are conscious?
I don't personally. Well, as a scientific question, I think consciousness is always hard, but my belief is that today's models are not conscious, or if they are, it's like a very strange form of it.
Do you think, based on the architecture we have today, that it could become conscious? And I know I'm just asking your belief. I'm not asking for the scientific answer.
The smartest people I've talked to about this basically come to the following, philosophically: that either, you know, consciousness is like something outside of physical reality and exists in either, you know, something like what the Eastern religions would say, and it's like the base layer of reality, or something supernatural and religious, more like the Western religions would traditionally say; or that it is an emergent property of matter and energy somehow, we don't understand it yet, and, you know, maybe the substrate matters, but maybe it doesn't, and maybe energy flowing through matter can do it. And then in that world, sure, like you can imagine it someday somehow existing in other forms. Can I say what I don't like about the whole framing?
