Geo-Strategy END: Psychohistory (The Science of Imagining the Future)

Okay, well, this is it, the end of the journey, the final class. We've done a lot this year. Last semester we did the great books: The Iliad, The Odyssey, the Bible, the Republic, Divine Comedy. This semester we did how scary the world is. The world is hopeless, we're all going to die. In this final class I want this class to be about hope, and I want to show you the future.

The argument I want to leave you with, the thing that I want you to remember, is that Dante in Divine Comedy said the future is not what happens to you, it's not something that you wait for. The future is what you imagine and fight for. The future is what you make happen. There is a God, but God gave us the ability to imagine and the capacity to love, and it's these two things that will guide us and enable us to build a better world. So that's a message I want to give to you today. The future is what you imagine, not what we have to put up with. So if we don't like the future, if we don't like the way we live our lives, then we can change that with our imagination, and today I want to show you how.

Just to summarize what we did this semester together: we analyzed the world and we made certain predictions about the world. For example, that Trump will be elected again in November and that he will declare war on Iran, and this war in Iran will be a disaster for the United States and it will mean the end of the American Empire, and it would lead to a multipolar world, which will mean endless war and the of millions and billions of people. And because of climate change our world will eventually collapse at some point. So this is an extremely hopeless, extremely bleak and dark picture of the world. But remember, where there is darkness there can also be light. So in this final class I want to show you some hope and some light.

This is what we call psychohistory, and psychohistory is the idea that the future can be predicted, and if it can be predicted then it can be controlled and harnessed for the betterment of humanity. So where does this idea come from, psychohistory? In the 1950s there was an American science fiction writer named Isaac Asimov, and he's probably the most famous science fiction writer.

If you happen to read science fiction, he's really famous. He wrote a series called Foundation, and I think there's a TV series now based on the Foundation books. It's terrible, but you can have a look at it. In the Foundation books he introduces the idea of psychohistory. This book is set in the future, like a million years from now, where there is a Galactic Empire. Humanity has colonized the entire Milky Way, there are billions of planets, and there's an Empire that brings peace to this Milky Way. But like all Empires it has to collapse, and this will lead to 30,000 years of war, violence, barbarity, and the Foundation proposes a new science called psychohistory, which is to mathematically map out human behavior over the course of a million years. If you do that, what you discover is that there are certain patterns to society, and if that's the case then you can predict the future. If you can do that, then you can manipulate the course of events to make a better future. This is what they called psychohistory, and it's a science fiction concept, and a lot of people have been trying to make it into reality.

So there's this very prominent historian, his name is Peter Turchin, and he's one of the founders of something called Cliodynamics. Clio is the goddess of history, dynamics just means movement, so basically Cliodynamics is trying to figure out the mathematical movement of history. He's trying to create history as a mathematical model, and when he did that there are certain interesting trends and patterns that he discovered. One idea that he discovered is something called the overproduction of the elites. The overproduction of the elite, and this concept explains why societies collapse. Traditionally we've understood the collapse of societies as having to do with maybe too much debt or too much inequality or maybe climate change or war. What Peter Turchin points out, and it's a really interesting idea, is that the reason why societies collapse in the end is you have too many elites.

Let me explain the concept. Society has many elites. You have people like Jack Ma, you have people like Jo Jae, movie stars, you have famous military. So over time elites become more and more numerous, the number of people go up, the number of famous people go up, the number of entrepreneurs go up.

The problem, though, is they all want power. Wealth and fame are all resources, but power will always be a finite resource. In fact it's what we call a zero-sum game. For example, in this classroom there can only be one teacher. If we're all teachers there's no teacher. So in society there can only be a few powerful people. If everyone has power, no one has any power. So what happens over time is that all these people who believe they should have power struggle for power, and because there are too many of them, this internal struggle of the elites ultimately leads to social collapse.

The most famous example is in Imperial China, where you had the keju system, people taking the imperial examinations to become officials. The problem is you have too many candidates, not enough positions. And guess who ultimately gets upset with society and leads revolutions? It's the keju candidates who did not become officials, and so they become angry and they lead revolutions to overthrow the society. The most classic example is the failed keju candidate Hong Xiuquan. Do you guys know who he is? The leader of the Taiping Rebellion.

Why did he become a Christian? Why did he lead the rebellion? Because he failed the keju.

So that's the idea of the overproduction of the elite, and he discovered this principle using mathematical modeling of history. He just compared different societies and tried to figure out why they collapsed, and what he discovered is that it's because of the internal struggle among the different elite groups. That's why the Roman Empire collapsed as well. Does that make sense?

What I'm proposing to you is that we can actually go a step further than what Peter Turchin is doing, because we now have something called AI, artificial intelligence, and we can harness the power of AI to create real psychohistory, which is the ability to not just analyze the past but to predict the future.

All right, so let's first figure out what AI is. First I want us to understand what artificial intelligence is, because most of you think you know but you don't actually know. So what is AI? The technical term is learning. That's the technical term. AI is the popular term, but supervised machine learning is the technical and correct term.

Have you guys heard of this term, supervised machine learning, yes or no? Have any of you taken science? This is called supervised machine learning. So what is this? In computer programming you're taught to write the algorithm, and then the input, you put in information, it gives you the output. This is traditionally how computers work. You write the algorithm, the computer program, you put in information, and then there's an output. For example, the algorithm could be like a plus b. You put in two numbers, two, two, you get a four. That's how computers work.

Now supervised machine learning is that I will turn the output into the input, and the reason why I want to do that is that as a human being I myself may not be able to write the algorithm, so I want the computer to refine the algorithm for me, to optimize it using the output. Does that make sense? All right, so let's talk about a very specific example. Let's look at facial recognition technology. You go to the airport and you scan and they know who you are. You go to a supermarket, you scan your face and you pay, and you're like, wait, how does that work?

How this works is that there's a database of about one billion people, like everyone in China, and now what I need to do is figure out how to differentiate the faces of everyone in China in this database. Does that make sense? So what I do is, for the face, I create a mathematical model based on topology. Does that make sense, topology? I turn everyone's face into a mathematical model, which looks like something like this, and you're like, I don't know what this is. You don't need to know what this is, this is like super pop kit. But all you need to know is that within this model there are different equations. For example, this model is trying to analyze the distance between your eyes and how big your nose is. All right, does that make sense? And so once I create this model I am now able to differentiate everyone in China. Does that make sense? In fact this mathematical model is so precise that I can only look at your eyes and I know who you are, because what I'm trying to do is match your model with a model in the database.

But what's important to remember is that if you're not in this database you can't be recognized. Do you understand?

All right, now what I will show you is how this model is created. What happens is this. I teach the computer how to create this database, so I have input, I have output, and then what I do is I create a working thesis or a working theory of what this model should look like. Does that make sense? So it could be like this, and then what I do is I put in faces, and the output should match what's in the database, and if the model returns something that's different, I tell them this is wrong, and what the computer then does is we find this model until it becomes this. Does that make sense? So what all AI is is infinite. Does that make sense?

All right, so the problem with AI is I need to be able to solve three things, and if I can solve three things then I can create an AI. The first thing is that I need clear metrics, or clear outputs.

Does that make sense? I need outputs that I can define as a model. So if I'm an airline, I'm going to use AI to maximize the amount of money I make on a flight. That's my output: how much money can I make out of a flight, I want to have the maximum amount of profit. That's the first thing I need to solve.

The second thing I need to solve then is data, for input, but the thing about data is that it has to be clean. Does that make sense? It has to be clean data. So for example, if I want to teach this AI to recognize animals, I need to give it different data sets of different animals. I need to label my data. But I can't make an AI that's like, this is the best ice cream in the world, and the reason why is I can't find data on the best ice cream. You understand? Because the best ice cream is subjective, so I cannot turn that into a data set. Does that make sense?

Okay, the third thing I need to do is create a working algorithm structure.

Do you understand? Computers can only refine and optimize the algorithm structure, it cannot create it by itself. So if I'm able to do all three things then I'm able to use AI to optimize what I wanted to optimize. All right, any questions so far before I move on?

What this means is that there are certain problems that I can solve using AI and there are certain problems I cannot solve using AI. So what are easy problems that AI can solve? Well, for example, facial recognition technology. Also translation software. I can create an optimal translation software. Also recommendation engines, so if you watch a movie on Netflix it recommends another movie. Now let me ask you this question: can I ever solve self-driving cars? Can cars drive by themselves, yes or no? Why? You ask, Sally? Okay, the answer is no. Why is it no? The answer to no is, whatever I do, I cannot solve something called the edge case. The edge case is, if the car is on the road, what could happen that would screw up my AI system?

You guys know why self-driving cars can't be solved? Why can't we have self-driving cars on the roads? What's the edge case, or the thing that I can never solve? What is it? Yeah. And what is not, they can plan for traffic. What can they not plan for? And this is why we'll never have self-driving cars. They can plan for accidents. What can they not plan for? They easily planned for traffic rules. What can they not plan for? Okay guys, the edge case with self-driving cars is if I, as a human being, intentionally want to crash into that car. Do you understand? Does that make sense to you guys? Every other situation I can plan for, but in a situation where I'm the human being and I don't like self-driving cars because I'm a taxi driver and it's stealing my job, it's stealing my livelihood, and I want to crash into that car, there's no way for that AI to avoid the accident. Does that make sense?

Okay, listen, AI is a scam. It does not exist. What exists is supervised machine learning. What is supervised machine learning? What I just told you.

That's it, that's the extent of our technology. It does not have self-awareness, it can only do what the algorithm tells it to do, and there's no way you can design an algorithm that plans for and prevents a human being who intentionally wants to crash into you. Does that make sense? So AI, in other words, is an extremely limited tool. If you think about actual application of AI, it's very limited. You also look at self-driving cars. Now there are cars that have features, but they are not 100% self-driving. In fact they tell you, don't rely on the autopilot, it's there to help you but don't sleep in the car, because they don't have a system in place to prevent people from crashing into them. Does that make sense?

All right, so now that we know what AI is, let's talk about how we can use AI to predict the future. Basically what you need to do is three things. You need to be clear about the output, you need to have clean data, and you need to have a working algorithm. Does that make sense?

And so that's what I've been doing this semester. For example, remember my predictions: the Israel lobby, Saudi Arabia and the American Empire, basically the need to protect the petrodollar, will force America to go to war with Iran. These are the push factors. The problem is that there is no force to counteract this. For example, the military will be for this because they have shotgun all and they are very confident they can win this war. Iran itself wants this war because it wants revenge against America. And then the president of the United States will be Donald Trump, who wants this war in order to cement his position as president. Because of this we can predict that there'll be a war in Iran. Does that make sense?

Now given this prediction, what we can then do is use mathematical modeling and statistics to turn this into an AI model. Does that make sense? Now we have the AI model. Now that we have the AI model, what we need to do is to refine it, and the way we refine it is by going back in history and looking at every single war that started.

Does that make sense? So you take this model and you look at the different wars. For example, the 415 BCE invasion of Sicily by Athens, you look at 1941 Operation Barbarossa. You have basically hundreds of wars that you can look at, and then you take this model and you test it using each of these wars, and what will happen is that the model will begin to refine itself. Does that make sense? So it becomes more and more refined. But then that's one model for what causes war. I also said that Trump will become president. Well, then that's another model that you can use, and once you start putting all these models together, what eventually happens over time is you develop psycho. Okay, does this make sense, guys?

All right, so the question then is, how would this AI model work, or what are some of the ideas behind this model? We talk about game theory analysis a lot. The idea of game theory analysis is that, okay guys, there's really no good and evil. There are different players in a game and they're all self-interested, they all want to win this game, so they're going to develop strategies that optimize their ability to win this game.

So you can use game theory analysis, but then you can also develop new ideas that would help you better understand how the world works. Let's talk about certain ideas that have come up in this course.

One thing I want to talk about is this week's European elections. Have you guys seen the news, the elections to the European Parliament? The results are pretty shocking because it signals a clear shift to the right. For example, Marine Le Pen's party in France picked up a lot of votes. The AfD, the Alternative for Germany in Germany, which is considered a right-wing organization, almost neo-Nazi, has picked up a lot of votes as well. The results were so dramatic that Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, has called for an early election, and it's possible in 3 months' time Marine Le Pen's party will run and govern France. So how do we explain this shift to the right? I want to explain three reasons.

The first reason: anti-migration. For the last 10, 20 years there have been a lot of immigrants to Europe from Libya, from Syria, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia.

These are mainly Muslim people who threaten the Christian social fabric of Europe, and now Europeans are rebelling or revolting against that. The second thing that they don't like about Europe so far is the idea of federalism, or they can say bureaucratism, but it's the idea that a foreign power, Brussels, mandates rules that they must follow. So they think it's very okay. And the third thing that they rebel against is the idea of pan-Europeanism. What the people of Europe are saying is there's no European identity, guys. There's a German identity, there's a French identity, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, but there's no European identity. They're rebelling against the entire project of the EU. In fact I would bet that in about five years' time the EU would be dead.

Why are they opposed to pan-Europeanism? Because ultimately they believe that it's about destroying local identity, it's about destroying local community, it's about destroying my relationship with my neighbors and my friends and my relatives and my family. Does that make sense? It's imposing a foreign identity on me. And proponents of the European Union would argue that no, this is just an idea. The entire idea of the EU is that for hundreds of years, thousands of years, Europe has been at war.

Why has Europe been at war? Tribalism, religion. So the entire project of the EU is to get rid of the factors that lead to war: local identity, nationalism, religion. And what the European voters are saying to the EU is, sorry, we don't want secular liberalism because we want to be human. What we strive for is not an abstract liberal idea. We strive for meaning and purpose in our lives. What we really strive for is a capacity to love, create and learn, grow. Does that make sense? That's what we are fundamentally as human beings, and when you ask me to obey an abstract foreign entity that is very far from me, then you are limiting or destroying the structure, meaning and purpose in my life. So that's what's going on not just in Europe but throughout the world. You think about Brexit, you think about the election of Donald Trump. All these things have to do with this fundamental human urge to have structure, meaning and purpose in our lives, agency. Does that make sense, guys?

All right, any questions so far? Yeah, Eric. Okay, so Eric asked, what is the source of all this?

What Dante and Homer would say is the human heart. The human heart, this is just who we are, and if we cannot fulfill our human heart we will rebel, we will destroy, we will want to kill. So in other words, one idea in this AI model is that there is a fundamental underlying structure to human society. If society conforms to the structure of the human heart, this society will prosper. For example Athens, the ancient Greeks, that society prospered. The word we use was. But if a society represses the human heart, then ultimately the society will have to collapse at some. So that's another principle that we can use when developing this AI model.

The last idea that we can use in developing this AI model is the idea of civility. The idea of civility is, as a society, how willing are people in following the rules. Does that make sense? So when you drive the car, do people actually follow traffic rules? When you're in the subway, do people actually give up their seats for the elderly, for children, for pregnant women? When you go to the park, do people actually pick up garbage and throw it in the garbage bin?

Civility tells us that there's cohesion and trust in society, that society is okay, and that society can grow or learn from its mistakes. So societies that have high civility will do better in the long term than societies with low civility. Societies with high civility would include Japan and Germany, and societies with low civility would include India and Brazil and China. Does that make sense?

All right, so these are all of the ideas that we've developed this semester or in this year: that there's an underlying truth and meaning to human society, and if we embrace these truths then society will prosper, but if we try to deny these truths then eventually society will have to collapse and we have to start over again. Does that make sense? Any questions so far? Yeah, Selene.

Okay, that's a great question. One thing that was not supposed to happen is the idea of mass society. Mass society, you can say that mass society is a complete, what's the word I'm looking for, deviation from human history. We're not supposed to have mass society, and mass society is completely an accident, a historical accident.

But when you have mass society, what happens is that you need an elite. But guess what, guys, the elite, the people in charge, they're not better than you and me. Do you understand? We in this classroom could swap for the leadership of the world, and guys, nothing would change. You understand? So you have mass society and therefore you have to have an artificial elite, because you need people in control, and because they're in control they need to now maintain the illusion of their power. They need to create fictions. For example, maybe, well, I went to Yale or Harvard and therefore I should be at the top, or maybe I have a higher IQ than you do, or maybe, you know, my dad or my great-great-great-great-grandfather was king. They had to create these fictions. Now what happens over time is that these fictions fall apart because they're not that confident. The most recent example is you look at the global management of the economy, and you look at the global management of Covid, you look at the global management of war. It's incompetent and so people sort of wake up and are like, wait a minute, these guys don't really know what they're doing.

And so now the elite is forced to suppress us. That's a lie, we have to use force to make us obedient, and that's what's happening today. This repression can go on for a long time, but to control us they must repress the human heart, because it's in the human heart to want to question, to be curious, to grow. If you think the people in charge don't know what they're doing, then you're sort of compelled to challenge them, and so what they have to do is suppress the human heart, and they do that by trying to get you to focus on buying things rather than thinking. Does that make sense?

All right, any more questions? Yes. Yes, Allie. Yes, yeah, it has to turn it into a mathematical model. You understand, the human heart has to become like a model, like a facial recognition model. Does that make sense? Okay, so Sally's question is, isn't it true that we're all individual and unique, and isn't it true that over time we change? That's great, point.

But what Homer and Dante would say is, no, no, no, at the fundamental level we all have the desires, we're motivated by the same needs. There's no one in this world that does not want structure, meaning and purpose. The way you want to achieve this may be different, but that's your underlying motivation, and there's no person in this world that does not seek to achieve these three things: to love, create and grow as people. That's when you achieve full happiness as a person, when you feel that you're married to someone you love and you have children, when you're doing a job that is creative, and when you're constantly learning every day and growing every day. When you achieve these three things, what do we call this? When you achieve all three things, what do we call this? Eudaimonia. This is eudaimonia. This is what the Greeks meant by a happy and self-fulfilled life. Does that make sense? So there may be differences in needs and motivation, but at the fundamental level we're all human beings and we're all driven by the same fundamental needs. Does that make sense? Yes.

Okay, so Sally asked the question, how do you construct this AI?

For this AI to be valid, let me explain how we would actually do it. First of all, you need at least 50 to 100 years to actually create this AI, and the reason why is that for this AI to be valid you constantly need to be testing it. What I've been doing this class is basically doing a self AI, where I have an analytical model and I have a prediction, but guess what, guys, we won't know if my predictions are fully correct until like 50 years from now. Is that correct? Therefore I can't validate my analysis until 50 years from now. Does that make sense?

You need to be constantly doing this, where you have to be constantly making these predictions and seeing if they're correct or not. If they're not correct, what you have to do is go and change these predictions and analysis. Does that make sense? Then what you have to do, and this is actually the most time-consuming, is you have to rewrite history. Do you understand? Because most of history is actually not correct.

So what you have to do is take this model and look back at history and say, according to the AI model, what actually happened in the Peloponnesian War, what actually happened in World War I, what actually happened during the Tang Dynasty. You basically have to challenge the entire discipline of history and reconstruct a new history that you think is more fully correct based on this AI. So you have to be doing these two things at once: making these predictions and seeing that you're correct, but also going back throughout history and seeing how history can be revamped or changed so that it's more accurate. Does that make sense? That's a project.

But then there's the technology, because you actually need mathematicians and computer programmers and historians to collaborate together to build this AI. I can tell you how I would analyze the issue, but then a mathematician has to turn this into a mathematical equation or a model, because computers only recognize data and numbers. They don't recognize ideas. I can't talk to a computer, I have to give a computer a number or an equation or a model for it to calculate on.

Does that make sense? All right, so it's not an easy project, but the argument is that if this project actually works it would change the fate of humanity forever. Because if there's one thing that you notice in this class, it's that we tend to repeat the same mistakes. The question is, why do we do that? It's because the history that we have is not complete, it's not true, it can't be. There are things that we believe which, if you just think about it, can't be true. We did that last semester when we talked about the rise of Christianity. You're telling me that this illiterate guy named Jesus was able to spread Christianity all by himself after he died? I don't believe that. I think a much easier explanation is that it became coopted by the Roman Empire in order to control the. But if you were to talk to a historian, they would say you're just wrong. So not only are you trying to predict the future, but you're trying to also correct the past, which is, I think, an even more difficult job.

Any more questions? Yeah, Eric. Excuse me. Oh, so Eric asked a great question: will this psychohistory model encounter edge cases?

The answer is, that's the best question, that's a great question, and the answer is yes. What are edge cases? Do you guys know what edge cases are in this model? What would be edge cases here? History, okay. It's called great man theory, and this is a problem. Meaning we argue that these underlying historical forces control humanity, but now and then you have this great man come out of nowhere and he changes the course of human history forever. The example is, before we had Homer, then we had Dante, then we had Plato, Jesus, Julius Caesar, Octavius, Putin today. We can't account for these people because by definition they're beyond history. They can step outside of history and control history. That's what great men are. So how does your model account for that? And the answer is, in Foundation, the solution, there's a solution to this. The solution is to create another organization. Remember that psychohistory is an AI model, it's basically a computer, but as Eric points out you will always have edge cases. You'll always have someone appear out of nowhere, and for whatever reason he's able to manipulate events to control and direct history in his favor.

So what you do to solve this problem is you create another organization, and in I think Asimov's Foundation it's called the. The idea of the second Foundation is that there is a computer, there is the AI, but behind the AI are a team of specialists who observe the AI, who observe history, and who correct the AI for edge cases. Does that make sense? So if Putin appears and it's like, okay, well, clearly I'm not accounting for Putin, well then I change the equations in the AI to account for Putin. So this team of experts, the second Foundation, will correct the AI.

Now what's interesting about the second Foundation is that these people are telepaths. Telepaths, meaning that they can read your mind, and not only can they read your mind, but they can control your mind. And that's another really interesting thing about psychohistory. There's a promise that we can predict the future, but there's also the promise that within our minds there are some special abilities that we might have the potential for, but we never ever fully attempted to achieve.

Does that make sense? And is it possible in the future that telepaths will rise? I think yes. The answer is that you can make the argument that these edge cases that Eric refers to, these great men of history, they're actually telepaths. Does it make sense? They're actually telepaths. So someone like Putin, why is Putin able to do what he does? You can make the argument that he has almost some telepathic abilities. He can read other people's minds, he can control other people's minds. How else can you explain that someone who does not come from a special background, he's not of the Russian elite, but he's able to amass so much power all by himself in only a few decades, so that today he's basically the Emperor of Russia and all Russia heeds his command. Russia just moves the way that he wants it to move. So you can make the argument that Putin is almost a telepath, and is it possible that in the future we'll have more telepaths and we can over time harness the power of these telepaths to create the second Foundation and to control psychohistory? Because how else do we explain great men?

You look at someone like Homer and Dante. The only explanation that you can have for Homer and Dante is that they had God giving gifts, or maybe God was speaking to them, or maybe they were just speaking for God. That's the only explanation that you can have for Homer and Dante, because they so clearly stepped out of history and directed history. Does that? Okay, but thanks for the question, Eric. So edge cases are great men who appear now and then, and you cannot ever predict these people.

Any? Yes, yes, Ellen. Oh, that's a great question. How do you model love, learn and create? The answer is that there has to be a certain amount of autonomy or agency in the lives of people. Does that make sense? What we call freedom and liberty, because if you have freedom and liberty then you're able to do what you want, and what you want to do is love, create and grow. So you need to model agency and freedom into the structure. The second thing is interaction. In other words, the more we're able to interact with each other, the more we're willing to love, create and grow, because these powers come from others.

You can't love yourself, you have to love someone else. You can't create by yourself, you have to create in a group. You can't learn by yourself, you have to learn from others. So you also have to model in as much group interaction as possible.

The last thing is you also have to model in the idea of compassion. The idea here is if I put you all on an island together and you must survive, well, you will become compassionate with each other because that's the only way to survive. But if I put you guys into a bank and I say to you that if you make a million dollars, and I give you $2 million, whoever makes the most money I will give a Ferrari to, guess what, guys, you all hate each other, you will all want to kill each other. You understand? So this model also has to factor compassion: how compassionate is society? Because if you have compassion then people are willing to work together, and if people are willing to work together then people have the greater capacity to love, create and grow.

Does that make sense? Actually, guys, we have all these theories, it's just like no one's turning this into a mathematical model for society.

Any more questions? Yeah. So Eric asked the question, is it possible to completely understand human behavior and motivation? There are two different ways of looking at the issue. The first way is to use a social science approach, so you look at economics, psychology, anthropology, sociology. What are they trying to do? They're trying to figure out mathematically what drives us. Do you understand? But there's another approach, it's called the literature approach, which is that we can actually quantify or explain human behavior, but there are truths that can be expressed in literature. Does that make sense? So about the very first book we read, the Iliad, where Achilles has killed Hector and Priam wants the body back, so Priam sneaks into Achilles' tent and kisses his hand. That moment you can never mathematically express, you can only write about it, but think about how much truth and power is in that one scene. Does that make sense, Eric? Okay, so I so again I think someone like Homer and Dante, their mission is to express to us in the most beautiful way the human truths, what drives us.

And Dante is very explicit, he says that what drives us is love and the willingness to imagine. That's who we are. If we love we'll be more human, if we imagine we'll be more human. And that's really the argument I make as well. All right, and that has to be the underlying truth of whatever AI model you create.

All right, any more? Yeah. Okay, so Selene asked a great question: well, if it says that we want to love, create and grow, then why do we end up destroying ourselves? The answer is that love and hate are one force. You understand? If I can't love you, I'm going to hate you. You understand? Guess what, guys, creation and destruction is one force as well. If I can't create then I want to destroy. Why? Because my need for creation can't be satisfied. Does that make sense? So a society that nurtures, that is willing to love and create and grow, like the Greeks, will flourish. But eventually you reach a point where the elite have a mass power.

They've centralized and consolidated power, and so they want to turn everyone else into basically a slave. When you're a slave you can't love, you can't create, you can't learn, you can't grow, therefore you rebel and you destroy the society. Does that make sense? But again, the fundamental human needs are these three things, but within each of these things is another force, and if love can't express itself then hate will express itself. Does that make sense?

All right, any more? Yeah. So Sally asked a great question, which is, who would control this AI and how can we ensure that this AI is not exploited by the elite in order to justify their corruption and cruelty? The answer has to be really the second Foundation, basically a group of scholars, academics, experts who dedicate themselves to this AI. The other thing is that it has to be open and transparent. That's why it's so hard to build. It has to be open and transparent. If it's open and transparent then everyone has to agree that this AI is going to be used for good, meaning that what this AI does is you can ask different questions and it will give you different scenarios, and we can all agree on which we want and therefore we can agree on what action to take.

So this AI has to be part of a democratic system where everyone is involved, otherwise, as Sally points out, it can only be abused, it can only be used against others. But the point of this AI is that it gives us a platform as humans to agree on certain actions, that we must stick together. Does that make sense? So for example, we can all agree that climate change is bad, we can all agree that war is bad, but this AI will actually give us solutions to these problems, because this AI can map out the future for us. The AI will say, well, if the United States intervenes in Ukraine then this will happen, if the United States attacks Iran then this will happen, and that becomes a very powerful argument for correct and proper behavior. Does that make sense?

All right, but again, guys, this is just conjecture. I've already said this, it's going to take at least 50 to 100 years to build this AI, and you will be up against tremendous opposition.

Historians aren't going to like this, the elite aren't going to like it. But at the same time we have to remember, guess what, Homer, I'm pretty sure if Homer were living in a centralized society the elite would be opposed to him, because he was making fun of very famous Greeks like Achilles and Agamemnon. Who was making fun of these guys? Well, guess what, when Homer was writing, society had collapsed. When Dante was writing, society had collapsed. So if it is true, if my predictions are correct and society is approaching collapse, then there should be a lot of space and leeway and flexibility to create this AI.

Any more questions? Yeah, that's a great question. So if different people, different nations want different outcomes? The answer is yeah. If you are alive today, if you're America you want America to be the hegemon, if you're Putin you want Russia to be the hegemon, if you're China you want China to be the hegemon. You want different outcomes. So my argument is that the structure of society today is not sustainable, everything's going to collapse, and we are going in transition from a population of about 8 billion people to a population of 1 billion people.

When you have 1 billion people and there's no place to grow crops and pollution is everywhere and war is everywhere, guess what happens? Humans are united in their goals, which is basically, how do we create a better civilization? Does it make sense? When all has collapsed, everyone's like, how do we recreate civilization? That's the goal, but in a more progressive, more democratic and more prosperous way. That's what I'm betting on, but I don't know. And again, if everyone's fighting over the AI, this AI cannot be created, because different people will want this AI to be biased in a different way. This AI can only work if it steps outside of history and steps outside of human interest, if it's speaking for all humanity rather than one nation or one group of people.

Any more questions? Is this clear to you guys? All right.

So this is the very end, and I'll spend like five more minutes to talk about this year. This is the very first time I've taught both courses. In the first semester we read the great books, and I was blown away by how much you guys enjoyed the great books and how much you benefited from reading the great books.

Quite honestly I don't think anyone has tried this before. I know there are great books courses in university, but not at the pace that we had and certainly not at the level of difficulty that we had. So you guys should be proud of yourselves, because the great books course was very hard and you enjoyed it. Even today most of you really like the Iliad. You guys still remember the Iliad and think very highly of it. So that's very impressive, so thank you.

This semester is also a new course where we looked at geopolitics, and I'm also very impressed by how much you've grown as well in this course. The way you guys think is much more logical, much more analytical, you guys are asking great questions. So thank you again, because you don't have to work hard in this course but you chose to work hard, and this is going to carry you very far in life. So the course has come to an end and I will share with you why I teach this course. As some of you know, I do have a very prestigious education background as well as a career background, and I could have been, what, a lawyer, I think a lawyer, a rich lawyer, a professor.

But instead I'm teaching high school in China. Why am I doing this? It's because I have three kids. I have three young kids, my eldest is six, my youngest is only about eight months. As a father you have to believe in a better world, but not only do you have to believe in a better world, you have to imagine and fight for it, because you have to leave behind a legacy for your children.

So why teach this course is to bring you a message of hope. Through your own imagination, through your own hard work, you can create a better world. You don't have to sit back and just let the world happen, you don't have to wait for the future, you can make it happen. If you really work hard at it you can make the world a better place, and I think this year has proven to me that I can make the world a better place if I work hard, because I've seen the growth in all of you.

So I hope we can stay in touch. I hope that you will tell me how you progress, because I'm very confident that all of you will do very well in university and in life, and maybe at some point we can share this dream of psychohistory. I know it sounds very complicated, it's very abstract, but to make this work you need a lot of people working together. It's something that's going to happen tomorrow, but it's something that we might come back to later on in our lives. So that's it, thank you, and we'll stay in touch.