The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast hosting Dr. Ben Goertzel

Talking AGI, humanity and decentralisation with Joe Rogan.

Ibby Benali
SingularityNET
5 min readDec 4, 2018

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Here we are. Only two months after SingularityNET surfaced the idea of having Dr. Ben Goertzel join The Joe Rogan Experience podcast for an interview, the rendezvous has been set: 1PM (PST) on December 4.

In September of this year, following the much covered appearance of Elon Musk on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, we asked our community on Twitter if they would have liked to hear more about the fascinating Artificial Intelligence discussion that had taken place, and if they would have liked to hear Dr. Ben Goertzel engage in similar talks on Joe Rogan’s podcast. We were met with overwhelming support, funniest memes, and suggestions for discussion topics.

Following this weekend’s announcement of the actual meeting between the maverick Joe Rogan and AGI pioneer Ben Goertzel, we saw interest permeating to all corners of the “Twitterverse”. The event of having the father of Artificial General Intelligence, or that elusive dimension of AI that has animated most of Rogan’s fears about AI, explain to Joe and his public how it is being engineered and how we control it, is bound to be groundbreaking.

The interest generated by this encounter goes well beyond Singularitarians; we saw many encouraging shoutouts from the crypto community in general, excited to see the first blockchain project on the podcast, and from AI enthusiasts or field practitioners that are thrilled to have another highly educated conversation with vast audience reach take place.

At a time where AI is mired in a nexus of admiration, dread, and prudence, and shrouded by techno-business lingo, it is important to take the time to unpack and explain.

Joe Rogan is a regular now in talks about AI — especially scary ones. Indeed, the podcast has received quite a few names to talk about AI and society:

  • Elon Musk, the world known CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, discussed the weaponization, regulation and development of AI, and the technological singularity.
  • Professor Lawrence Krauss, the theoretical physicist and cosmologist engaged in a passionate debate about benevolent AI, and coexistence of humans with AI .
  • Dr. Lex Fridman, the computer vision and machine learning researcher at the MIT, argued about human-centered AI and innovations surrounding AI.
  • Dr. Sam Harris, the famous American author and neuroscientist was invited multiple times to talk about the boundaries between artificial and biological brains, the use of AI to combat poverty, and AGI.
  • Dr. Will MacAskill, the Scottish philosopher and ethicist talked about conscious experience, simulations, and collectively bracing for radical technological change due to AI.

It is no surprise that in most, if not all, of the discussions relating to AI that have been hosted on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast have contemplated human-level AI and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Engineering AGI and incorporating benevolence in such entity seems to be the most important topics lingering over all past interviews. Dr. Ben Groetzel will thus be an ideal interviewee to shed light on these topics and propose original approaches.

Today, as we are on “the verge of creating AGI” it is crucial to go over the ways that we will structure it and assure that as “many people as possible” will be able to understand it and be part of the related decision processes. Decentralisation will be central to that conversation. Finally, as is common in the Joe Rogan Experience podcasts, Dr. Goertzel also expects the discussion to jump on many more topics, be it the technological singularity, life extension, applications of AI in Enterprise, or decentralisation.

We here at SingularityNET are thrilled about what is about to be an eye-opening educational podcast and hope you are too! We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on the live stream of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that will be taking place at 1PM PST on December 4th here: bit.ly/snetonjoerogan to watch.

Next Steps

SingularityNET plans to keep on striving toward a future where the access to AI is democratized and where the A.I. algorithms and services are created and contributed by a diverse group of people. We plan to reinforce and expand our collaborations to shape the coming AI Singularity into a positive one for all. To read more about our other partners, click here.

The best way forward is to come together and work practically towards creating a better future. We hope you will join us in our mission to democratize AI and to use its transformative powers to enact real, positive and lasting change. SingularityNET has a passionate and talented community which you can connect with by visiting our Community Forum. Feel free to say hello and to introduce yourself here. We are proud of our developers and researchers that are actively publishing their research for the benefit of the community; you can read the research here.

For any additional information, please refer to our roadmaps and subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed about all of our developments. You can connect with our passionate and talented community by visiting our Community Forum.

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Ibby Benali
SingularityNET

CMO HyperCycle - Advisor & Ecosystem Leader SingularityNET. Growing our decentralized AI ecosystem every day.