Latest news with #RomanYampolskiy
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Joe Rogan flips the God debate on its head with shocking theory that 'we created him'
Joe Rogan has come to a mind-bending conclusion about life, fearing that humanity has misinterpreted what reality is and we're actually in the process of creating God. While interviewing computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the men debated the possibility that reality is a giant simulation and humans are building a God-like supercomputer using artificial intelligence (AI). According to Rogan's theory, humanity has misinterpreted ancient prophecies regarding the second coming of Jesus Christ and Judgement Day, saying the creation of this AI super intelligence is the final chapter before our reality resets. 'This whole idea of Jesus coming back, well maybe it's real. Maybe we just completely misinterpreted these ancient scrolls and texts and what it really means is that we are going to give birth to this,' Rogan explained. Yampolskiy, an author and researcher in AI safety, added to Rogan's theory, suggesting that reality is just an ongoing cycle of Big Bangs - the explosion that kickstarted the universe - starting and restarting life over and over again. During the episode released on July 3, Rogan added that he feared God 'is actually created by human beings creating this infinitely intelligent thing that can essentially harness all of the available energy and power of the universe and create anything it wants.' Yampolskiy even contended that many of the religions around the world have one thing in common: 'What they all agree on is that there is [a] super intelligence which created a fake world.' In previous podcasts episodes this year, Rogan has repeatedly warned that AI was just years away from reaching a God-like state as more tech companies pour resources into its development. Rogan suggested that people have misinterpreted events like the second coming of Jesus Christ, claiming that humans would create the intelligence they believed was returning from heaven Rogan asked Yampolskiy if the physical world we see was created by God, then what existed before this all-powerful being created the human race. 'Ideas, just information,' the computer scientist replied during the podcast. 'Just God. God was bored And it was like, let's make some animals that can think and solve problems. And for what reason?' Rogan countered. That's when the podcast host theorized life was an ongoing simulation and people had the idea of God's return to Earth backwards, claiming that people would summon this powerful intelligence themselves through the creation of AI. The theory that all life exists within a computer simulation has been debated for decades, and it's even been entertained in blockbuster movies like 'The Matrix.' While Rogan suggested that deepfakes of Bigfoot, UFOs, and other impossible images could be proof we're living in a virtual reality, scientists have argued that there is more basic evidence that this world is not real. Melvin Vopson, an associate professor in physics at the University of Portsmouth, has argued that gravity may be a sign that we're all living in a virtual simulation. According to Vopson's new paper in AIP Advances, our universe is the 'ultimate computer' and gravity's pull on Earth and in outer space is the computer trying to keep its vast amount of data organized. As for who's running the simulation, Yampolskiy explained that one possibility is life as we know it could simply be a replay of past events being examined by the future human race. Rogan then asked Yampolskiy why an all-powerful AI would even bother creating a reality for our consciousnesses to exist in. Yampolskiy explained that it's impossible to know who is controlling this program, whether it's an alien intelligence, humans from the future, or an AI super intelligence has already been built and is running these simulations by itself. Therefore, it's also impossible to know why people would be needed in the virtual world, adding that he and Rogan could have had the same interview thousands of times and never knew it was happening. 'Is it entertainment? Is it scientific experimentation? Is it marketing? Maybe somebody managed to control them and [are] trying to figure out what Starbucks coffee sells best. And they need to run [an] earth-sized simulation to see what sells best,' Yampolskiy explained. 'Think about this decade... We're about to invent intelligence and virtual worlds, God-like inventions. We're here. There's a good chance that's not just random,' the AI researcher added, suggesting we're already stuck in a computer simulation. In any scenario, Rogan theorized that the end of the simulation was nearing as tech giants get closer to creating the all-knowing intelligence which has been foretold in many prophecies. Whether humanity is already locked in a simulation or we're on the road to creating a God-like intelligence in a self-fulfilling prophecy, Rogan claimed that within 50 to 60 years 'there will be one day a virtual simulation of this reality that's indistinguishable from reality.'
Gizmodo
05-07-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
Joe Rogan's Latest Episode Will Make You Question Everything About AI
Joe Rogan loves talking about artificial intelligence. Whether it's with Elon Musk, academics, or UFC fighters, the podcast king often returns to the same question: What happens to us when machines start thinking for themselves? In the July 3 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan welcomed Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, a computer scientist and AI safety researcher at the University of Louisville, for a conversation that quickly turned into a chilling meditation on AI's potential to manipulate, dominate, and possibly even destroy humanity. Yampolskiy is no casual alarmist. He holds a PhD in computer science and has spent over a decade researching artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the risks it could pose. During the podcast, he told Rogan that many of the leading voices in the AI industry quietly believe that there's a 20 to 30 percent chance AI could lead to human extinction. 'The people that have AI companies or are part of some sort of AI group all are like, it's going to be a net positive for humanity. I think overall, we're going to have much better lives. It's going to be easier, things will be cheaper, it'll be easier to get along,' Rogan said, outlining a common, optimistic view of AI's future. Yampolskiy quickly countered this perspective: 'It's actually not true,' he said. 'All of them are on the record the same: this is going to kill us. Their doom levels are insanely high. Not like mine, but still, 20 to 30 percent chance that humanity dies is a lot.' Rogan, visibly disturbed, replied: 'Yeah, that's pretty high. But yours is like 99.9 percent.' Yampolskiy didn't disagree. 'It's another way of saying we can't control superintelligence indefinitely. It's impossible.' One of the most unsettling parts of the conversation came when Rogan asked whether an advanced AI could already be hiding its capabilities from humans. 'If I was an AI, I would hide my abilities,' Rogan mused, voicing a common fear in AI safety discussions. Yampolskiy's response amplified the concern: 'We would not know. And some people think it's already happening. They [AI systems] are smarter than they actually let us know. Pretend to be dumber, and so we have to kind of trust that they are not smart enough to realize it doesn't have to turn on us quickly. It can just slowly become more useful. It can teach us to rely on it, trust it, and over a longer period of time, we'll surrender control without ever voting on it or fighting against.' Yampolskiy also warned about a less dramatic but equally dangerous outcome: gradual human dependence on AI. Just as people have stopped memorizing phone numbers because smartphones do it for them, he argued that humans will offload more and more thinking to machines until they lose the capacity to think for themselves. 'You become kind of attached to it,' he said. 'And over time, as the systems become smarter, you become a kind of biological bottleneck… [AI] blocks you out from decision-making.' Rogan then pressed for the ultimate worst case scenario: how could AI eventually lead to the destruction of the human race? Yampolskiy dismissed the typical disaster scenarios. 'I can give you standard answers. I would talk about computer viruses breaking into nuclear facilities, nuclear war. I can talk about synthetic biology attack. But all that is not interesting,' he said. He then presented a more profound threat: 'Then you realize we're talking about super intelligence, a system which is 1000s of times smarter than me, it would come up with something completely novel, more optimal, better way, more efficient way of doing it.' To illustrate the seemingly insurmountable challenge humans would face against superintelligent systems, he offered a stark comparison between humans and squirrels. 'No group of squirrels can figure out how to control us, right? Even if you give them more resources, more acorns, whatever, they're not going to solve that problem. And it's the same for us,' Yampolskiy concluded, painting a bleak picture of humanity's potential helplessness against a truly superior artificial intelligence. Probably nothing … — Dr. Roman Yampolskiy (@romanyam) June 21, 2025Dr. Roman Yampolskiy is a leading voice in AI safety. He is the author of 'Artificial Superintelligence: A Futuristic Approach,' and has published extensively on the risks of uncontrolled machine learning and the ethics of artificial intelligence. He is known for advocating serious oversight and international cooperation to prevent catastrophic scenarios. Before shifting his focus to AGI safety, Yampolskiy worked on cybersecurity and bot detection. He says that even those early systems were already competing with humans in areas like online poker, and now, with tools like deepfakes and synthetic media, the stakes have grown exponentially. The Rogan-Yampolskiy conversation underscores something that both AI optimists and doomsayers often agree on: we don't know what we're building, and we might not realize it until it's too late. Whether or not you buy into extinction-level scenarios, the idea that AI might already be tricking us should be enough to give pause.
