00:21:04 · Danny Fortson, Jaron Lanier
[00:21:04] S10: So it's 2026, end of twenty twenty six. I now endow you, Jaron, with a magic wand. When we think about how this is being built, how it is being deployed, how would you remake it, and is there any possibility that, like, there is a remake [00:21:24] S7: Yeah. So possible. Alright. So I've said that I think the core idea of doing giant statistical correlations of stored human data to do better searching and extrapolation and collaboration is a great idea. I'm into that. So the next question is, if I don't like agents and I don't like these addicting chatbots, is there something else to do with it? And, I mean, I can tell you about something I've been experimenting with lately that I think is better. [00:21:51] S10: And Okay. [00:21:52] S7: So... Look. Right now, let's say you wanna get something out of AI. You want some result. And just for the hell of it, I'll say you want a synthesized video clip of something. [00:22:02] S10: Mhmm.
00:22:03 · Jaron Lanier
[00:22:03] S7: And I'm gonna presume that you have a good reason for it. It's for education, and it's not for deception, and it's not... That you're some horrible thing. Alright? I'm just gonna presume it's a great thing. Like, I want a a demonstration of how annealing works in a... Or I don't know. Whatever it is. Okay. So, right now, you prompt for that, and now you get something. But in most domains, the description itself is gonna be imperfect because that's the nature of description. But furthermore, the act of making is an exploration in which you learn more. And one of the problems with prompting is that you deny yourself that learning. You're just supposed to get this thing. And what actually happens in real human creativity and invention is you get close to the thing, and then you start tweaking and experimenting, and then you learn more and more and more, and then you get somewhere. So my thought was a better way to do this is instead of prompting for a result, I prompt for an editor for results in the neighborhood of what I want. So let me explain what that might look like. If I wanted to prompt for this short video, what I would say is I wanna have an editor for two minute clips that introduce annealing using video. I wanna have six sliders in order to explore variations on the video. One of the sliders is for degree of visual detail. Another is for degree of historical reference. Another is for degree of technical accuracy. Another is for... Well, I don't know. Right. You you come up with these things. And then you get this thing and you start playing with the sliders. And now the interesting thing about playing with the sliders is that you start learning. You develop your intuition for what you're doing. So instead of cognitively offloading, you're cognitively enhancing. Two is the question of authorship becomes clear. You're the author of what you choose. Three is you're getting what you actually want. Whether this particular method is the right one, I can't say it's too early, but the thing is what it does is it gives definite human authorship, definite human role. It gives human documentation. It gives human exploration. It gives human intuition expansion. It gives more accurate and better results, I think, at least so far. So can that happen, or is that inadequately worshipful of the new AI god so that it would be rest as heresy?
00:24:23 · Danny Fortson, Jaron Lanier
[00:24:23] S10: And Right. Because in that, it is secondary. Right? It is in service to you as opposed to vastly superior to you, and therefore, you are like a supplicant. [00:24:37] S7: Yeah. So the question is, do we want the Oracle at Delphi or the library at Alexandria? You know, like, which which model is better for civilization? [00:24:48] S10: So just stepping back, are you an optimist here late in 2026? [00:24:54] S7: Well, look. Okay. So first of all, just to be clear, I'm a heretic, but I haven't been expelled from the temple. I'm still Right. Called it, you know, unifying prime scientists at Microsoft, one of the places selling agents. [00:25:05] S10: I By the way, what is a unifying prime scientist? I think that might be the coolest title anybody who's [00:25:12] S7: got on this pod. I used to study cephalopod cognition, and it was a joke because I'm in the office of the chief technology officer, so it overall spells out octopus. [00:25:20] S10: Gotcha.
00:25:20 · Danny Fortson, Jaron Lanier
[00:25:20] S10: Gotcha. [00:25:21] S7: So that's how... That's where that comes from. Prime unifying scientists. Right? And so... But the thing is, what is unique... I have a funny job title, is not unique. There are a lot of those in Silicon Valley. What is unique is I speak my mind even when it's pretty unfiltered as it has been in this interview. And I just make clear, I'm not speaking for Microsoft. And the thing I wanna point out, and we have an arrangement for that. That's... And Microsoft stock is fine. We haven't imploded. And I just want more Silicon Valley companies to notice that and allow their people to speak. One of the things that I find very depressing is this long sequence of people who feel they have to leave places like, well, Meta, famously, but also Anthropic and OpenAI [00:26:04] S10: Google.
00:26:04 · Danny Fortson, Jaron Lanier
[00:26:04] S10: Google. [00:26:05] S7: Protest what's going on. And how much better would we be as a community and as servants of mankind if instead of people feeling they had to leave... I mean, we are becoming a de facto government of the world. Why can't we have debates and open discussions within ourselves? Why can't somebody in Meta or OpenAI or Anthropic or Google or wherever say, you know, I think what we're doing... I love the community, love the technology. I think what we're doing is the wrong way of bringing it out. I really think this is gonna do damage. Why can't somebody say that without having to quit? That's a huge cultural problem. When you asked before, how did this all happen? That's a lot of the mechanism. The problem is that when you have a community that overall rejects the idea of discussion or disagreement within it, you end up having this thing that narrows and narrows and narrows and ties itself into a little knot. And since there's no such thing as a perfect thought or perfect understanding, the tighter you get, the more likely you are to fall into something that's, like, ridiculous. [00:27:09] S10: Right. On that happy note. [00:27:12] S7: Oh, yeah. I met my optimist. Yeah. Sure. Look. If you look at the history of people, we've survived all kinds of nonsense in the past. Some of it wasn't as different as it might seem from this. You know? We've often made each other suffer terribly for it.
00:27:12 · Jaron Lanier, Danny Fortson
[00:27:12] S7: Oh, yeah. I met my optimist. Yeah. Sure. Look. If you look at the history of people, we've survived all kinds of nonsense in the past. Some of it wasn't as different as it might seem from this. You know? We've often made each other suffer terribly for it. [00:27:27] S10: Yeah. I have a sense, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this, that that the people building this technology from Elon Musk to Dario Amodei, Sam Altman view themselves as the hero in the story. Like, are going to save us all. [00:27:46] S7: Mhmm. [00:27:46] S10: And it feels dangerous that they're like, well, okay. We were making this doomsday device, but don't worry. We are the virtuous ones that are gonna build it in a way that actually makes it alright for all of us. And it feels like it's almost juvenile, this kind of view as, like, they are they are our heroes, and they're gonna save us.