I recorded this debate 14 years ago, and the question has only gotten sharper.
Lincoln Cannon is a software engineer with degrees in philosophy and business. He is also president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. So when he argues that science and religion are complementary, he is not speaking from ignorance of either side.
I disagree with him. I think they are mutually exclusive. He thinks they complete each other.
So we sat down and argued it out. Friendly, but real.
This was a special edition of Singularity. FM, and it remains one of the more honest conversations I have had about belief, reason, and what transhumanism owes to both. The questions we wrestled with sit right at the heart of #transhumanism and the #futureofreligion in an age of accelerating #technology.
The Path to Robust deAGI asks what it would take to build artificial general intelligence that is both powerful and structurally aligned with human flourishing—not just steered by after‑the‑fact safety patches. Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET and a founding member of the Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance, will outline how a decentralized, token‑coordinated ecosystem—combining ASI: Chain, Hyperon AGI, and community‑owned GPU clouds—can prevent AGI from being captured by any single corporation or state.
Goertzel will contrast centralized AGI roadmaps with a deAGI approach that bakes openness, diversity of values, and economic inclusion into the architecture itself, drawing on ideas like pluralistic training data, interoperable agent networks, and on‑chain governance of key system upgrades. He will also discuss technical milestones toward “robust” deAGI—modular cognitive architectures, decentralized marketplaces for AI services, and verification mechanisms that let communities audit and constrain AGI behavior—framing them as concrete steps toward an AGI that advances joy, growth, and choice for all rather than amplifying existing power imbalances.
There is something critical taking place in the world now.
It has something to do with the neurological response system of humans.
Basically, when something happens, our sensory/nervous system processes it and guides us in the best way to respond.
That system is being blunted to death in everyone living in today’s world.
We have become so stimulated by numerous technological, socioeconomic and geopolitical shocks, that, we are almost in a helpless trance-like state now (the usual rounds of life).
We can only just watch as the world unfolds into a dystopian singularity before our eyes— wars & conflicts, natural disasters, alien disclosures, unending AI updates now laced with political & economic tensions, World Cup & UFC fevers, Stock Market volatility etc… etc…
Dr. Roman Yampolskiy joins me to explore one of the most urgent and uncomfortable questions of our time: what happens when we create intelligence that surpasses our own? We unpack the difference between the AI tools we use today and the emergence of artificial general intelligence, and why the transition from narrow systems to self-improving intelligence may mark a point where human control is no longer possible. Roman shares why even the people building these systems do not fully understand how they work, and why that gap in understanding becomes exponentially more dangerous as capabilities increase.
In this conversation, we explore the limits of control, prediction, and safety in a world where intelligence can recursively improve itself beyond human comprehension. Roman lays out why the problem of AI alignment may be fundamentally unsolvable, what timelines experts are realistically considering, and why even a single mistake at that level could have irreversible consequences. This episode invites a deeper reflection on what we are creating, what we assume we can control, and whether humanity is prepared for the intelligence it is bringing into existence.
André’s Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/bo… 00:00 Intro 01:25 What Is AGI and Why Should We Be Scared? 05:17 Roman’s Journey: From Optimism to Impossibility 09:07 The High Risk, Zero Reward Equation 13:01 Why Superintelligence Is Uncontrollable, Unexplainable, and Unverifiable 18:00 How Long Do We Have? The AGI Timeline 21:24 How Superintelligence Could Actually Kill Us 23:28 Are We Living in a Simulation? 28:21 Can AI Become Conscious? 31:28 Ad: BiOptimizers 32:41 The Possible Timelines: Terminator, the Matrix, or the Zoo 42:24 I-Risk, X-Risk, and S-Risk: Three Ways It Goes Wrong 46:31 The Human Meaning Crisis: Jobs, Purpose, and What’s Left 49:02 Ad: Based Bodyworks 50:20 What Empowers Us as Individuals Right Now 59:37 The Race to Doom: Who’s Building It and Why They Won’t Stop 1:07:41 Can AI Be Conscious — and Does It Already Have Internal Experiences? 1:12:41 Hacking the Simulation: Quantum, DMT, and Escaping the Code 1:18:30 Simulation Theory, Religion, and the Same Ancient Map 1:29:34 The Deal Roman Would Offer Altman, Dario, and Elon 1:39:44 What Is Humor? A Computer Scientist’s Theory 1:43:03 What Comes After: Singularity, Death, and Knowing Thyself ___________ Episode Resources: https://www.romanyampolskiy.com/https://www.amazon.com/Unexplainable-?tag=lifeboatfound-20… / andreduqum / knowthyself / @knowthyselfpodcasthttps://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com Listen to the show: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX
___________ 00:00 Intro 01:25 What Is AGI and Why Should We Be Scared? 05:17 Roman’s Journey: From Optimism to Impossibility 09:07 The High Risk, Zero Reward Equation 13:01 Why Superintelligence Is Uncontrollable, Unexplainable, and Unverifiable 18:00 How Long Do We Have? The AGI Timeline 21:24 How Superintelligence Could Actually Kill Us 23:28 Are We Living in a Simulation? 28:21 Can AI Become Conscious? 31:28 Ad: BiOptimizers 32:41 The Possible Timelines: Terminator, the Matrix, or the Zoo 42:24 I-Risk, X-Risk, and S-Risk: Three Ways It Goes Wrong 46:31 The Human Meaning Crisis: Jobs, Purpose, and What’s Left 49:02 Ad: Based Bodyworks 50:20 What Empowers Us as Individuals Right Now 59:37 The Race to Doom: Who’s Building It and Why They Won’t Stop 1:07:41 Can AI Be Conscious — and Does It Already Have Internal Experiences? 1:12:41 Hacking the Simulation: Quantum, DMT, and Escaping the Code 1:18:30 Simulation Theory, Religion, and the Same Ancient Map 1:29:34 The Deal Roman Would Offer Altman, Dario, and Elon 1:39:44 What Is Humor? A Computer Scientist’s Theory 1:43:03 What Comes After: Singularity, Death, and Knowing Thyself ___________.
Thirteen years ago, I sat down with Ken Hayworth and asked him a question most people spend their whole lives avoiding.
What happens to the self when the body fails?
Ken is president of the Brain Preservation Foundation. He is also a neuroscientist who refuses to flinch. His answer was not comfort. It was logic.
Brain preservation, he argued, is the logical lifeboat that people have access to today.
Here is the part that has stayed with me ever since. Ken imagines our grandchildren looking back at us. They will see that we had the science. They will see that we understood the brain holds our memories, our skills, our personality. And they will ask why we did nothing.
His verdict is brutal. We were not killed by bad technology. We were killed by bad philosophy. We simply could not accept that we are physical machines.
13 years ago, I sat down with Doug Wolens to talk about a word almost no one was using: the singularity.
Doug was a lawyer who walked away from the courtroom to make films. His documentary, The Singularity, did something rare. It refused to cheerlead. It asked questions instead.
One thing he said has stayed with me ever since. Science is a means, not an end. It does not deliver a scientific destination. It delivers a humanistic one.
That distinction matters more now than it did in 2013.
Back then, machine intelligence surpassing human intelligence was a thought experiment. Today, it is a product roadmap. We used to argue about whether it would happen. Now we argue about what to do while it does.
But the sharpest question in Doug’s film was never about the machines. It was about us.
Stars shine because atoms fuse in their interiors, releasing energy. When a very massive star has exhausted its nuclear fuel, radiation pressure can no longer provide sufficient counterforce to gravity. The star then collapses under its own mass until only a single point remains: the singularity.
While the formation of a black hole appears plausible, black holes themselves continue to pose major challenges for science. How can 10 billion solar masses concentrate at a single tiny point? How can spacetime be curved infinitely at that point, the singularity? At this stage, the laws of physics break down, making it impossible to predict what happens. Moreover, black holes conceal all information from observation: Everything, including light, disappears irretrievably beyond the event horizon.
What happens when an economist starts designing a future society?
Thirteen years ago, I sat down with Robin Hanson for a second time. It became the most vigorous debate ever recorded.
I rarely disagree with a guest. With Robin, I disagreed more than I ever had.
Here is what unsettled me. His work on the Em Economy reads like social science. It uses the language of markets, incentives, and equilibrium. But underneath the economic reasoning sit choices that are not economic at all. Policies of social discrimination. The full privatization of law and punishment. Minds run a thousand times faster, and handed a thousand times more voting power. Emulations deleted when they cannot pay their storage fees.
These are not technical footnotes. They are ethical and political decisions wearing the costume of impartial analysis.
Adam Smith, the father of economics, was first a moral philosopher. He understood where the tools of his discipline stop being useful and start being dangerous.
