What changes when artificial intelligence begins doing work as humans do? I do not see this as simply acquiring one more convenient tool. The time it takes for technology to develop changes. Technologies we regarded as belonging to the distant future, such as reversing aging, may arrive much sooner than expected. At the same time, the conditions supporting human employment and the economic system may begin to shake. In that sense, we have boarded a time machine bound for the future. The question is who will enjoy the abundance it brings, and what will happen to those displaced along the way.
This conversation did not begin with the intention of discussing only AI. Instead of continuing the Liberation and Civilization series, I wanted to talk with viewers. Since I call myself an arahant, you are welcome to bring questions about Buddhism, something you read in a book or scripture, or something someone said on another YouTube channel. Social controversies and personal concerns can also be subjects for conversation. While waiting for your questions, I intended to share my weekend experience with AI and introduce a video about reversing aging. Those two subjects ultimately became one conversation.
Trying Astra Myself, and the Thought That We Are Entering AGI
In the preceding Friday broadcast, I discussed the release of OpenAI’s GPT-6, Astra. My point was that an enormous social transformation is approaching. Have you tried GPT-6? I spent some time over the weekend giving it a few tasks. I installed the ChatGPT desktop application that supports GPT-6 and tested whether it could operate the browser and other applications directly on my computer.
It did not work as quickly as I had imagined. Nevertheless, I witnessed something remarkable. There is little need for me to show every demonstration now: searching for Astra on YouTube brings up a flood of information. One person has it edit a video; another has it create a 3D program; another has it make a game or perform an everyday task. People in different fields are testing what they can accomplish with it.
I find myself wondering whether this can already be regarded as the beginning of AGI. OpenAI’s Sam Altman said we would probably be entering AGI by the end of the year. Yet, after Astra’s release, talk of AGI has been coming from other quarters. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang reportedly made a passing remark along the lines of, “Isn’t this AGI?” I think that was probably on X. That is how much of a shock GPT-6 Astra is delivering.
But the point I want to make does not end with admiration for the name or performance of a new AI. What will the availability of this intelligence do to the pace of development in other technologies? Reversing aging provides a very concrete way to think about that question.
A Question That Began with a Video about Reversing Aging
I have talked about reversing aging several times before. Then I came across a Korean video that explained the process, from stem cells to age-reversal technology, in more detail than I had. It was by a physician who runs the channel Dr. Dingyo. In about thirty-three minutes, a relatively short span, he explained the scientific and medical material well. When I showed it during the broadcast, the video had 1.35 million views only four days after being uploaded. Many people were already watching it without any recommendation from me.
The phrase on the screen, “World’s first rejuvenation injection begins administration,” was the starting point. It concerned the beginning of a human trial intended to make the eyes younger, something I had previously discussed. Eyes age too. As people grow older, many experience problems such as cataracts. My mother was also diagnosed with cataracts and was told to have surgery. I once told her not to have it immediately. That makes the aging of the eyes and technology intended to reverse it feel closer to home.
The video described the progression from experiments with mice and other animals to a human clinical trial of an injection intended to rejuvenate the eyes. It also connected the story of stem cells and the Nobel Prize to age-reversal treatment. At the time, I had looked through the video but had not yet watched it carefully from beginning to end. I want to retain that qualification. Still, I liked the explanation I had seen, recommended it to viewers, and posted the link in the chat.
The physician said he did not know about himself, but at least the generation after him would receive injections that could reduce their age by ten years or return them to their twenties. He seemed unwilling to guarantee that it would happen in his own lifetime. I think somewhat differently. Unless he is already in his sixties or seventies, I suspect he, too, will be able to receive such a treatment. In my view, we may be receiving those injections in less than ten years.
That naturally invites a question: “If even a physician cannot be sure he will receive it in his lifetime, why do you think it will be possible within ten or twenty years?” My reason is artificial intelligence. If we isolate age-reversal research and simply extend its historical pace into the future, we may fail to grasp the changes ahead. Many technologies are entering an era of acceleration that is difficult to compare with anything in the past.
The Time Computers Compressed
To understand what I mean by acceleration, first consider the computer. Computers were compressing time long before AI arrived. What kind of time? The time required for calculation. Imagine multiplying one number in the hundreds of millions by another number of that size. How long would it take a person to work that out manually? Completing the calculation would require considerable time.
What happens when we use a calculator? It could be a handheld calculator, a calculator on a computer, or one on a mobile phone. Enter the numbers and ask it to multiply, and the answer appears almost immediately. A result that a person could obtain only after a lengthy calculation is available now. In calculation, at least, we have pulled time from the future into the present.
This effect made many things possible. Computers were used in launching rockets and landing on the Moon. Calculating trajectories and performing many other tasks required computation and judgment within very short intervals. Computers accomplished work that people could not easily calculate by hand in the available time. As a result, the pace of scientific and technological development increased enormously.
Now artificial intelligence has arrived as the next stage. We can apply intelligence, going beyond faster calculation. This is why I use the image of a time machine. If computers compressed the time required for calculation, AI is changing the amount of intelligence that can be applied to research, learning, and experimentation.
Human Intelligence Requires Training and Has a Limited Lifespan
In the past, deciding that a research project was important did not allow us to suddenly apply vast amounts of human intelligence to it. Even a genius can do only so much alone. Whether scientists or engineers, the people conducting experiments, making judgments, and trying different approaches were still people. They needed sleep. A genius who seemed poised to accomplish something important could suddenly die. People could become ill or grow old.
It also took a long time before a person could work in a specialized field. They had to learn and train. This applied whether they became a scientist, a physician, an artist, or someone with outstanding intellectual abilities in economics, society, culture, or industry. We had to develop people. Only after a long process of preparation could someone leave a mark in a field, develop or discover something, and help bring about change.
Using a person’s intelligence therefore required accounting for both the years of learning and the time spent working in a specialty. Someone developed through all that effort could die while still at work. Spending more money did not produce a million outstanding researchers overnight. These conditions underlay our expectations about how quickly technology could advance.
Once AI reaches intelligence comparable to human intelligence, those conditions change. I think GPT-6 can be regarded as approaching a broadly comparable level. The kinds of intelligence are, of course, somewhat different. Ours is biological intelligence, while artificial intelligence remains in the early stages of development, so there are many differences. But those differences do not justify ignoring capabilities that have already appeared.
From Perfect Exam Scores to Intelligence Produced with Energy
Take South Korea’s university entrance examination, the CSAT. A student had been testing AI systems on its questions. According to those experiments, around last year or early this year, systems such as GPT, Claude, and Gemini achieved perfect scores in most subjects but still missed one or two questions in some. That was roughly the level around March. The newly released GPT-6 Astra, by contrast, was reported to have scored perfectly in every subject.
We should think about what “every subject” means. Human students do not take every elective subject on the CSAT. They choose some from areas such as science. The claim here includes even subjects an individual student would not select. How much would you have to study before you could be certain of a perfect score? How many perfect scorers appear in a year? Even measured against that achievement, attained only occasionally by a handful of people, one can say that some forms of intelligence have already far surpassed humans.
We can acknowledge that the types or directions of intelligence differ while also recognizing that AI has moved ahead in particular capacities for learning or research. What matters now is how that intelligence can be increased. Previously, we had to raise and train people before deploying them in specialized work. With AI, we put in energy and produce intelligence. Electricity goes in, and the AI operates on that energy. We have entered an age in which we can produce intelligence through energy.
Whether electricity comes from the Sun or from hydroelectric generation, that energy can be supplied to AI. If we can keep supplying energy, we can keep increasing the intelligence applied to a task. Isn’t that the role data centers now play? I think we need to reflect seriously on the significance of this change.
Elon Musk has also considered placing satellites that run AI beyond Earth and obtaining energy from the Sun. Too close to the Sun would create problems with excessive heat, so an appropriate distance would have to be considered. In any case, the idea is to collect solar energy in space and use it to run AI. I mentioned the combination of X and SpaceX in that connection. My central point is that securing energy becomes linked to expanding the intelligence that can be deployed.
What If We Applied a Million Einsteins’ Worth of Intelligence?
Let us return to age-reversal research. In the past, even with tens, hundreds, or thousands of people participating, the amount of intelligence available remained limited. However much money was spent, researchers faced limits in conducting experiments and examining their results. Once AI can be applied extensively, that process accelerates.
What would happen if people decided that reversing aging was important and likely to be profitable? They would apply more AI to the research. Work once undertaken by a few PhDs or a handful of exceptional minds could be approached in a different way: “A hundred geniuses’ worth isn’t enough. Put in a million.” What would happen if we could apply a million Einsteins’ worth of intelligence to a single research effort?
With human beings, we cannot do that today even if we want to. But an era is opening in which intelligence could be deployed in that direction, provided sufficient energy is available. The same applies to DNA and life sciences, reversing aging, and computer technology. AI can even be used to make better AI.
AI companies now compete by releasing better models every few years or months. One gets a slightly higher score, then another does better. Astra, according to what I discussed, is already being used in OpenAI’s development of its own inference chips. Rather than depending entirely on semiconductors from companies such as NVIDIA, Intel, or AMD, it intends to develop its own.
Why make them itself? Energy is supplied, and intelligence emerges through semiconductor hardware and AI software. Dependence on another company for the hardware can leave that part of the process uncertain. Hence the effort to develop it internally. But AI is also involved in the design of those chips, and Astra is being used in operating systems for them and in AI development itself. AI is already participating in the process of making better intelligence.
A Time Machine That Keeps Accelerating
This is why I think age-reversal technology may arrive sooner than expected. Consider this year and next. What happens if an AI better than today’s Astra appears toward the end of the year? The world is already being shaken up. A more capable intelligence would bring forward everything from age-reversal technology to the development of AI itself.
We have boarded a time machine. It travels toward the future, not the past. I think we are at the very beginning, when acceleration is just starting to take hold. The countdown toward the end of this year and into next year has begun, and the journey has already started. Over the next year or two, I expect its speed to increase further.
A KTX high-speed train begins slowly, reaches something like 300 kilometers per hour, and then travels at that speed. That is different from the acceleration I mean. This does not reach a particular speed and remain there. It keeps getting faster: acceleration upon acceleration upon acceleration. It is exponential acceleration. That is what I mean by approaching the moment when we truly seem to be traveling in a time machine.
A technology we imagined would arrive a hundred years from now could suddenly appear. Consider room-temperature superconductors. Many people have worked to develop them. In Korea, reports of a development provoked arguments about whether it was genuine or false and whether it had been verified. We may assume development will continue to take a long time. Yet something could abruptly emerge.
AI can intervene throughout the process: determining which materials might exhibit room-temperature superconductivity, finding ways to produce them, developing hypotheses, and designing experiments. What if we applied the million Einsteins’ worth of intelligence mentioned earlier to this problem, too? We cannot do that now, but that is the direction I am describing. It is why I say that age-reversal and other future technologies will arrive sooner than you imagine.
Technology Is Thrilling, but What Are Humans For?
On one side, this is exciting. Technology and industry advance, and things we could not do become possible. On the other side arises the question: “What are humans for?” If AI now does something that once required a human genius, how will someone who devoted a lifetime to that work understand their own existence?
Imagine a mathematician who spent a lifetime trying to prove one result. After countless hours of effort, an AI suddenly produces an idea, checks it itself, and proves something. Would that not prompt the person to ask, “What have I been working so hard for all this time?” One of Astra’s advertisements concerned mathematical proof. To be clear, what I saw did not mean it had completed every part of a proof; it concerned findings in certain parts of a problem. Even with that qualification retained, we need to consider the impact on people.
When human intellectual activity and labor are replaced, two problems arise together. One concerns the individual’s sense of self. The other concerns economic activity and the economic system. First, consider what kind of people we are. Humanity has experienced enormous changes, from agricultural and industrial revolutions to new weapons, mobile phones, and the internet. Yet human maturity concerning the question “How should we live?” has not sufficiently kept pace with technology.
Massacres, abuse, and discrimination have continued. Those without money, strength, political power, or military force have been ruthlessly driven to death, suicide, suffering, and poverty. That is also how modern society is structured. What happens when powerful AI is added to these conditions? The image that comes to my mind is giving nuclear weapons to an elementary-school child. If people acquire a weapon based on astonishing technology before their character has matured, what effect will it have on the world?
Production without Human Labor, and the Monopoly of Resources
Until now, cooking, a blacksmith’s work with iron, research and experimentation, and a physician’s surgery and diagnosis all required human intelligence. Many of these activities are now being replaced by AI. Aren’t we already seeing this in translation? I would go so far as to say that the ship has already sailed for human translators. Even an outstanding person would struggle to interpret and translate three or four languages. AI is moving toward real-time translation of dozens, and eventually hundreds, of languages. Real-time translation is already in use.
If AI replaces most of the work humans have performed, the current economic system is bound to break down. However much the rich want to become richer, is it enough for them alone to be wealthy? When a factory produces goods, someone must buy them. How can it keep operating if there are no buyers? People without money cannot purchase its products.
But there is an even more frightening aspect. The factory itself may be able to keep running even without buyers. Previously, energy and resources were not enough if no people were available to operate it. The intelligence needed for its work and decisions was missing. Now AI can be added. Resources, energy, and AI could make production possible without human labor.
Could those with money and power monopolize Earth’s resources, monopolize energy and AI, and create a world in which they alone produce and enjoy the results? Will they live in a heavenly realm while everyone else remains poor? Are we heading toward a world in which they say, “Take whatever money we give you and live in poverty. Keep your eyes off what belongs to us”?
Or will we share resources and enjoy the abundance technology produces together? Even if countless technologies emerge as we ride this time machine into the future, the question of how to share their results remains. This is why I cannot speak about technological development with unqualified delight. While we discuss future abundance, a few may monopolize the very conditions needed to access it.
The Employment Tsunami That May Arrive before Abundance
Before we enjoy abundance, a tsunami may arrive. We are already watching opportunities for human labor disappear as AI gradually replaces them. As this accelerates, the widening gap between rich and poor and the problems of economic activity will intensify rapidly. I want the Lee Jae-myung administration to recognize this clearly, explain it to the public, and begin a debate.
Bring intellectuals together, and invite representatives of workers. Scholars in the humanities, philosophers, economists, AI experts, and people from different fields should join the discussion. What future is unfolding? What should we do in that future? Who will hold sovereignty over AI? Will resources be shared or monopolized? Will we permit energy and resources to remain concentrated in a few hands? These are questions we need to discuss.
Remember what happened when COVID-19 struck. Many people were confined to their homes. They could not visit places where people gathered at night; exercise became difficult; going to university or school and commuting to work were disrupted. Restaurant access was restricted by time, and people wore masks and practiced distancing. How much did the poor suffer? Countless self-employed people went out of business. Some are still going under because of the aftermath.
The economy should have recovered afterward, but it has not. In my view, South Korea’s economic system continues to make the rich richer rather than allowing the population as a whole to become more prosperous. That remains the case under President Lee Jae-myung. It was also true under President Yoon Suk Yeol and earlier administrations, but the gap between rich and poor is now becoming more severe.
If AI begins taking people’s jobs under these conditions, a social catastrophe beyond comparison with COVID-19 will follow. People need money in order to spend money. The self-employed will be among the first to collapse. Many have already failed, fallen into debt, and are still struggling to repay it as they close their doors. But will only small businesses fail? Aren’t cinemas already struggling? Will supermarkets and traditional markets be safe? If ordinary people lose their jobs and cannot earn money, where will they go and what will they buy?
I describe this as a tsunami comparable to a natural disaster even greater than COVID-19. It has already begun and is bearing down on us. Why is no one properly speaking up about it? Shouldn’t we hold meetings every month or every two weeks to discuss our response, with public debates the whole country can watch?
If We Amend the Constitution, Address the Society That Has Arrived
There is talk of amending the Constitution. What, exactly, is to be changed? Twenty years ago, it might have made sense to focus on changing the presidential system or rearranging institutions. But today, more urgent than arguments about the presidential system is the fact that people are going hungry and may face even worse hunger ahead. A truly maddening situation is approaching. What should we do first?
We need to debate how to solve the social problems AI is bringing, including those already here. If we amend the Constitution, shouldn’t those discussions form the basis of the amendments? What are we accomplishing by simply announcing that the Constitution will be changed? This is why my voice rises toward the end of the discussion. What we need now is a broad public debate and the sharing of information.
Of course, many people may not yet feel the change. Someone who shoveled yesterday and today, or goes to the factory today and tomorrow, may feel that life remains the same. They may not understand what has supposedly changed so much. Yet some people are already losing their jobs, and young people who want to work cannot find employment. The change is happening in certain fields. Is it someone else’s problem simply because it has not happened to you? Does that mean it ends there? Do you believe your own work cannot be replaced?
Introducing a video about reversing aging led me into a discussion of AI and society. Hope for faster technological development and concern about a society unable to keep pace are two sides of the same conversation. We must discuss now what kind of future we will share, and who will suffer along the way before it arrives.
If you have questions or subjects you would like us to discuss, please raise them. Even if you cannot ask in the live chat, you can leave your thoughts in the comments below a video. Recently, I have tried to keep broadcasts under an hour and move into the subject more quickly so that others can watch comfortably. Even within that shorter time, I hope we can have a conversation in which questions move between us.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.