Practical philosopher Known for bringing rigorous, pro-human thinking to energy and environmental issues. Now doing the same for AI and data centers.
Laguna Beach, CA
Joined April 2009
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Alex Epstein retweeted
"Ultimately, ultimately, ultimately, what technology does, but particularly this technology does, is it allows you to spend more time in the way you would ideally want to, and less time in the way that you don't. This is true of both the stuff you're doing and the stuff we do with others.
"I think people are going to look back in 10 or 20 years, and they're going to say, oh my gosh, I was doing all this stuff that I didn't really like doing, and now I don't have to do it anymore.
"And you're also going to say, wow, there's all this stuff other people were doing, and they were so attached to it. It's like it's their job or whatever, and they didn't really like doing it either, and I didn't really care if a human did it or a robot did it.
"Now, some things we really like doing as ends in themselves, and some things we really like other people doing for various reasons, from being a night nurse to you want an actual doctor and you want an actual teacher, and sometimes you just want a good coworker versus a robot.
"What's going to happen is we go to a world where more of our time is time stuff that we would do, our work is stuff we would do for no pay, and the stuff other people are doing is the stuff that really takes advantage of their what they like to do, their capabilities, and just their humanity.
"And I think that's going to be a much better world to live in. And it's it's hard for people to imagine how much different it is.
"But I think since we have a pretty prosperous group here, if you know how to use your prosperity to choose work you really love, and to choose dealing with people that you really want to deal with, you have some sense of what AI is going to mean for everyone.
"It's going to mean everything from: people like their work more to a lot more, people are going to be able to see the world, and it's going to be a lot more enjoyable to see the world.
"And I would like people to be excited about this future instead of afraid that there's nothing for them to do, and they're going to be bored, or AI is going to take over, or something like this.
"Those are very avoidable problems or impossible problems, but the good stuff is really, really good.
Let's all be clear that any permitting bill much weaker on freedom-to-build than BAAJA is a bill Donald Trump won't sign.
Our options are: 1) something extremely close to BAAJA or 2) no permitting reform for the foreseeable future.
xitter.cf/AlexEpstein/status/210…
Yesterday I taught a group of CEOs how to use AI agents to improve their lives.
I ended with a tribute to what I love most about AI: it "allows you to spend more time in the way you would ideally want to, and less time in the way that you don't."
I hope it inspires someone.
⬇️
"Ultimately, ultimately, ultimately, what technology does, but particularly this technology does, is it allows you to spend more time in the way you would ideally want to, and less time in the way that you don't. This is true of both the stuff you're doing and the stuff we do with others.
"I think people are going to look back in 10 or 20 years, and they're going to say, oh my gosh, I was doing all this stuff that I didn't really like doing, and now I don't have to do it anymore.
"And you're also going to say, wow, there's all this stuff other people were doing, and they were so attached to it. It's like it's their job or whatever, and they didn't really like doing it either, and I didn't really care if a human did it or a robot did it.
"Now, some things we really like doing as ends in themselves, and some things we really like other people doing for various reasons, from being a night nurse to you want an actual doctor and you want an actual teacher, and sometimes you just want a good coworker versus a robot.
"What's going to happen is we go to a world where more of our time is time stuff that we would do, our work is stuff we would do for no pay, and the stuff other people are doing is the stuff that really takes advantage of their what they like to do, their capabilities, and just their humanity.
"And I think that's going to be a much better world to live in. And it's it's hard for people to imagine how much different it is.
"But I think since we have a pretty prosperous group here, if you know how to use your prosperity to choose work you really love, and to choose dealing with people that you really want to deal with, you have some sense of what AI is going to mean for everyone.
"It's going to mean everything from: people like their work more to a lot more, people are going to be able to see the world, and it's going to be a lot more enjoyable to see the world.
"And I would like people to be excited about this future instead of afraid that there's nothing for them to do, and they're going to be bored, or AI is going to take over, or something like this.
"Those are very avoidable problems or impossible problems, but the good stuff is really, really good.
Alex Epstein retweeted
For years, climate hysteria won most every argument.
Now, finally, the craziness has diminished.
In my full interview with @AlexEpstein we cover the shift, and also: why AI matters, Trump’s energy policies, ESG, and more:
Alex Epstein retweeted
Too many people who claim to care about the poor are more interested in making life harder for the rich than making life easier for the poor.
Thank you to everyone who creates modern AI.
Making computers perform highly context-specific mental tasks (without specific preprogramming) is one of the greatest achievements ever.
Your achievement will eliminate so much mental drudgery and unleash so much creativity and joy.
Alex Epstein retweeted
This is fantastic. @BenAffleck understands and can reasonably explain something that many of the so-called AI "experts" seem determined to over complicate and mislead people on.
In fact, many of these experts are rapidly losing credibility with people who actually understand how this technology works. Unfortunately, they've already convinced a lot of people that AI is something it isn't.
And as the saying goes, it's easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled.
An LLM is a computer program. We designed it. We know the architecture, the mathematics, and how inference works. Much of the underlying code and research is open for anyone to inspect.
All LLMs processes tokens through mathematical operations using learned weights and context to predict what comes next. The results can be astonishingly accurate, useful, and convincing.
But the LLM isn't alive. It doesn't love you, hate you, care about you, or sit around contemplating its existence or understanding.
And yet people insist that somewhere inside those matrix operations, consciousness has magically materialized.
Seriously?
This isn't biological life evolving in nature. It's software executing computations on hardware we designed and built. If you're claiming those computations somehow produce subjective experience, explain the mechanism (I'll wait...).
The remarkable achievement here is that we've created software capable of convincingly emulating aspects of human intelligence and behavior.
That's freakin' amazing and cause to celebrate the technology!
But please stop confusing a computer program with a living, conscious being. It's absolutely not.
The fact that so many people have fallen for that illusion is a testament to how convincing the technology has become.
But here's the clincher: when we misunderstand this, and we start treating computer programs as conscious, independent beings, the legal implications could be disastrous.
Suddenly, "the AI did it" becomes an excuse to shift blame away from the people and companies responsible for building, deploying, and operating these systems.
AI cannot be held accountable. But people and companies can be, and must be held accountable.
Ben gets it. More people should.
Ben Affleck says AI is simply matrix multiplication, linear algebra and floating point calculations, and however convincingly it sounds like a person, it has nothing to do with thought, humanity or feeling
“Nor do I believe, and I think it’s important to draw the distinction between what AI does, which is simply predict the next token or the next word in a sentence, then add that word on, run it back to the machine, do a lot of computation and pick the next word."
"That is a very different thing than sentience or thought. And I think we need to be really clear about that because it can be convincingly, in an illusory way, sound like thought or like a person."
"But let’s be real clear. This is matrix multiplication. This is linear algebra. These are floating point calculations. It has nothing to do with thought, humanity, or feeling.”
Steve Jobs was obsessed with making compute empower humans.
It's hard to think of anything more empowering than "agentic AI" that spares us chores and expands our abilities—so we can spend more time envisioning, creating, and doing what we love.
.@WalterIsaacson says Steve Jobs would be appalled by agentic AI.
"[Steve Jobs] says the goal is to connect human creativity to the processing power of our machines."
"What we're doing now with agentic AI is where I worry."
"When I start using agents that try to do things without me and to be out of my control, Steve Jobs would be appalled by that."
"It doesn't connect human creativity to the product. It doesn't have the music that makes our hearts sing, as Steve said, with the iPod."
"These people aren't stepping back and saying, 'Why are we making this?' The answer should be to help humanity."
"That was Steve's lodestar."
Alex Epstein retweeted
The tragedy is that it needs any defense at all. The greatest achievement of the human mind since the printing press must plead for permission from men who distrust the mind as such.
Walsh claims earlier jobs were changed while these are eliminated. Consider the blacksmith, the lamplighter, the switchboard operator, the typesetter, the men whose title was "computer." Their work did not change. It ceased to exist. In 1800 nine of ten Americans farmed. Today fewer than two in a hundred do. An entire mode of existence was abolished, and the result is the wealthiest nation in history. What Walsh calls a nightmare is the record of the last two centuries.
"Takes the human out of the equation" reverses the facts. The human is the one who holds values. A machine values nothing, because it has no life to sustain. Everything it produces, it produces for a man who wanted it.
If machines come to do most of the work, that is abundance: more of everything, for less, for everyone. To call abundance a catastrophe one must believe that a man's worth consists in being needed for toil. That belief is altruism, and it is the error beneath all the others.
There are intelligent defenses of AI but this is just not one of them. This is nothing like the invention of the printing press or the automobile or the airplane or anything else. AI is not merely a faster and more efficient tool for humans to use (as was the case with the printing press and cars etc). The whole point of AI is that it takes human out of the equation entirely. Horse and buggy drivers had to get used to driving cars instead. AI at scale means nobody drives at all. That category of job is not simply changed. It’s eliminated. Now repeat that process across the entire economy. Now add in RSI and humans don’t even make or train AI anymore. AI just does everything. Thats the concern and it’s obviously, at the very least, legitimate and rational. The pro-AI side relentlessly strawmanning and pretending not to understand the very basic point being made is, to say the least, frustrating.
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What an amazing time to be alive.
People are already doing things like this, and we’re about to have way, way more help from our new mental assistance machines.
I have no expertise on the financial prospects of OpenAI and Anthropic. But I can say there's business or consumer product I've ever used that's as valuable as theirs are, measured by amount of money I would regularly pay for them if the market required it. It's not even close.
Alex Epstein retweeted
“In the future” is doing a lot of work here. Given a long enough time horizon it’s unfalsifiable.
What we do know:
Getting rid of EV subsidies/mandates (as US is doing *now*) leads to much fewer of them!
US EV share of new car sales fell from 10.5% to 6.4% over the last year.
OpenAI’s Dot agent is so good, I haven’t seen anything close in terms of quality of judgment of what will be valuable to me.
Alex Epstein retweeted
Russia is engaged in slaughter, not Ukraine. It's a longstanding tradition of theirs to occupy and erase nationalities of their neighbors--Ukraine included. See what Soviet Russia did to my people in Lithuania last century.
Russia attacks civilians, kidnaps children, and is bellicose by nature. Zelensky, whether you like him or not, hasn't been brutally ruling his nation for 25+ years, isn't aligned with Iran or China, nor killing off his political opponents.
Please hear me out: I'm not a Democrat. I'm a longtime Republican and conservative who supports many Trump policies. America needs to be on the right side of this issue. And not supporting Ukraine is the wrong side to be on...
Alex Epstein retweeted
Another day, another letter signed by a tiny group of people demanding that we set up committees of tiny groups of people to make hard, inflexible rules to tell everyone else what to do.
Pound sand.
406 researchers, including Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Stuart Russell and Ron Rivest, signed an open letter today.
They want cyber-capable AI models airgapped by default until safer ways to give them internet access are standardized.
For models that need outside access, they propose an international body, built with governments and AI and security experts, that would standardize containment practices and track failures, with breaches reported to it and eventually made public.
"I think this calculation is a mess that runs on bad assumptions."
– One of my full-time researchers commenting on an idea of mine
One of the things I'm proudest of is surrounding myself with smart people who are rewarded for giving me negative feedback.