Sean Parent

We should have a device with the raw capabilities of a human brain in our pocket sometime between 20 to 40 years from now. Okay. And if you think about the ramifications of that for society, that's huge. But there is huge risk. And I think we are underestimating the risk, right? When people talk about kind of, you know, oh, the existential threat of AI and think terminator, I don't think it's terminator. I think it's it's a massive wealth disparity and you know leading to war, right? Right. I think that's the existential threat. A civil war or you know, overthrow the government type of uh, you know.

Conor

Welcome to ADSP the podcast, episode 250, recorded on August 21st, 2025. My name is Connor, and today with my co-host Bryce, we interview Sean Parent and get his thoughts on AI, its impact on our industry, society, and more. So here's a question that uh it's been in the back of my head ever since you said that, you know, uh, you know, will your book go, you know, may maybe it's the last book that'll ever be read. What is your like you've had a very uh long, you know, experienced career. Like what is your take on where the our industry is going? Because, you know, there's lots of folks that are like us, they're treating this stuff like rocket fuel. It's uh it's an amplifier amplifier of your productivity. Other folks are super against it. And then yeah, you made the comment is like, you know, are books gonna be needed? Anyway, so I wonder if you have like larger thoughts on where the industry is headed uh and how people I guess not maybe not how they should be feeling about it, just your thoughts and then people can feel how they want.

Sean Parent

Yeah, so I don't think it's an industry issue so much as a societal issue. And if I kind of do the back of the envelope calculations, uh we should have a device with the raw capabilities of a human brain in our pocket sometime between 20 to 40 years from now. Okay. And and if you think about the ramifications of that for society, that's huge. Um that changes everything and in a relatively short time frame. And so there's all this like like you know, we're burning up the planet, building data centers and building power plants to power these data centers. Well, by the time most of those come online, uh if you plot the curves, they won't be necessary, right? The when we think about a human brain, you know, the advantages that a human brain has over a current silicon is it's a three-dimensional structure, which provides some amount of density. It's analog-based, which means you get you know more bang per neuron than you do if you're running your transistors as digital transistors. Uh, and the whole thing runs on about 20 watts. And well, we are not yet at the point where we're simulating the full number of neurons in a single human brain, even with our large LLM models. Uh, but we will get there relatively rapidly. And then you know, lots of people are working on like how do we build chips that are more 3D, right? Right? How do we expand out? How do we build the cooling infrastructure to them? How do we combine the RAM with the computation within the chip instead of having it on separate buses? How do we do analog chips? Right, right, all of these problems are being worked on, and all of them are going to going to fall. Uh, so the advantages of the human brain are going to eventually lose out. What I don't think we know yet is how does intelligence scale, right? I think with even open AI, what you're seeing is is uh a tapering. You're having to build significantly larger models to get marginal wins. And I suspect that intelligence scales by some quadratic function, right? Right, which may mean that there's, you know, people talk about a super AI. Um, I think we'll eventually build AIs that are smarter than us, but I don't know how much smarter. Right? There's going to be uh a law of diminishing returns on on how that intelligence scales. I also think there's a very fine line between you know intelligence and madness, right? Right. Intelligence is being able to see patterns in data and being able to apply patterns you see from one set of data to another set of data. And uh, you know, madness is seeing patterns that aren't there, right? Right, and there's a really fine line. And if you know super smart people, you see that line, right? So so that might also be a limiting factor, right? Right. We might build AIs that start to see, you know, the pattern in pi, you know, and just reach a reach a point where they're not useful because they they construct patterns that don't actually exist to fit data, you know. So so there's a lot of unknowns. Uh, but I think everybody keeps focusing on like what happens to the computer science industry.

Bryce

Yeah, I was I was I was just gonna ask John. This is a I think the toughest environment that I've seen for hiring in the the CS industry in in my in my time. And I I'm just inundated by people asking for advice, looking for jobs, and I wonder whether you, as uh a far more experienced than than Connor and I, can maybe pontificate on what you think this means for the industry, and also what should what should like a new college grad do or somebody who's in school and thinking about a CS degree?

Conor

But but also too, I think Sean was just about to say is that like there's a larger problem that is a larger scope than CS. So feel free to answer both, but I I'm curious to hear where you were headed before Bryce injected the CS.

Sean Parent

I think on this front, you know, we're the tip of the spear, and the only reason why we're the tip of the spear is because we're the ones building the systems, and so the problems we're solving first are the problems we have. Um uh uh uh but like I said, I think this is a societal issue, not a computer science issue, and and it's going to become a larger societal issue rapidly, you know, and I don't know how society adjusts for that. 20 to 40 years put the kind of the the late stages of my life, assuming I make it that far out. So this is more of a problem for you guys than it is for me. Uh, you know, that said, take it all with a bit of a grain of salt. When I switched my major in school uh from uh double E to computer science, uh my dad gave me this very long lecture about what a what a bad move that was, because by the time I graduated college, computers would be programming themselves and I'd be out of a job. So uh, and that was just all around, you know, expert systems were the the rage at the time. And uh you can look up what an expert system is, but it's basically just a decision tree and not particularly interesting these days. Uh but that was the thinking at the time. Uh, you know, but I do think that this is is very much different, and the the the pace of change is incredibly rapid here. And you know, for a new computer science student, you know, what I would be saying is is learn to use the tools, uh including AI, and use AI to learn and and and learn the fundamentals and learn when the AI is wrong. That will be the probably the best bet you have uh to extend your career. But that would be kind of general advice to any college student, right? If you're coming out saying, I'm gonna be a lawyer or an accountant or whatever, right? Right, uh the legal industry is very much getting hit by the AI wave. So are medical doctors, so are everybody, right? You know, if you're a medical doctor, you have an incredible diagnostic tool sitting right next to you, you know, uh, with a huge amount of knowledge and more than you could ever hold in your head. Plus, you know, with things like deep research, the ability to go do significant research on a on a given problem and come back with something well structured and well thought through. So I think focusing on AI is or focusing on computer science is is way too narrow. Like I get asked frequently, you know, do we hire more senior people so that they can use the AIs and be more productive, or do we hire more junior people who are willing to learn the AIs and so they can grow into senior people who know how to use the AIs? And I'm like, it is way too soon to tell. This, you know, the the the generational rate that that that's going on with the models right now is every six months the equation changes. Uh that's nuts, right? So so and I think it will, I don't think it's it's you know, a lot of people are like everybody makes this mistake as people, you know. When you're at the start of a curve, you project things linearly, and you miss the fact that it's going to exponentially ramp up. And then when it's exponentially ramping up, you overshoot because almost everything works out to be an S curve, right? Right, exponential growth is not sustainable, right? Right, almost nothing follows a linear path, right? Right, it's it's 10% better than it was the previous time, not not a unit of 10 better than the previous time. And so, you know, and then it will follow an exponential taper off at the top of that S curve. And it's very hard to predict where you are in that curve, right? Right right now, I think we are, I don't think we are yet near the top. We are someplace, my guess is bottom middle. And so the next five to ten years are going to be nuts, and then it's going to taper off. And and there's going to be a lot of bad decisions made along the way. People are going to both underestimate the capabilities and then they're going to overestimate the capabilities and make decisions based off bad projections.

Conor

Do you have I'm I'm curious, I mean, this is uh clearly you've spent I mean a lot of time thinking about this. Do you have uh like concrete uh examples or predictions of the kind of uh both mistakes and on the other side, like uh not mistakes, but just like you know, um inevitabilities uh that are gonna happen along this curve?

Sean Parent

So like like everything kind of in the in the political structure, right? The mistakes that are frequently made in war are fighting the last battle. And in political structures, the mistakes that are are made are are fighting the mistakes of the of the last administration or or the last round and and not looking forward and planning for the future. You know, so how we're approaching uh from kind of a political standpoint, uh uh you know, job growth and profits for the the wealthy and trickle-down effects, especially if you're in the US these days, right? You know, my taxes are I think ridiculously low for how much money I make. Uh, and yet our administration thinks that I need more money in my pocket and uh the people down the street from me need less. And that's uh ridiculous. And what they're trying to do is say, well, we're gonna cut out infrastructure nets and try to provide reasons for these people to work where you're about to hit a phase, and in some industries it's already hitting, where jobs, even high-level jobs, are going to start to go away relatively fast. And and so I think that's you know, not planning for that and not getting out front of that from a societal nature is is the underestimation that's going on right now. You know, what happens if you have 20% of your workforce, which is unemployable? Okay, uh, you know, they'll burn burn the place down, right?

Conor

Um picture occupy Wall Street, but way worse.

Sean Parent

Way worse. Yeah. So how how do you navigate that and how do you avoid that? Uh, you know, I'm not saying that that's gonna happen because people are very reactionary, right? Right, they will they'll adjust as the problem starts to manifest, but it's kind of societal natures to wait until the problem is critical before you address it, and then you probably overcorrect. So I think we're we're going to to run into that. Uh, you know, I think we need to give some serious thought, is the society that we want, where there is uh a half dozen organizations that own the AI, and basically everybody else is subservient to them. That's kind of the I'm watching on Hulu, the uh uh alien earth, and that's kind of part of the background premise on that, which is that there's uh uh basically uh uh a can a small number of of AI companies, six or seven, that that run the entire planet. Basically governments are gone. It's just just businesses in charge.

Bryce

Or it reminds me of some of Neil Stevenson's uh books like uh Snow Crash.

Sean Parent

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's uh uh you know, or even if you just look, you know, you had had kind of the last century, you had you had robber barons and you had whoever controlled the transportation infrastructure ruled, you know. So if you if you built the railroads, you were in charge. I think we're we're hitting a a similar point in history, but greatly amplified. And I don't think our political structure is set up to try to address this, at least not now. In many ways, it's getting worse.

Bryce

This is this is why all the tech people are you know big on the universal basic income, right?

Sean Parent

Yeah, yeah. You know, historically I would have called myself conservative. Uh now, you know, I'm a registered Democrat, but I still consider myself uh kind of you know, George Bush the first conservative in nature, you know. Oh, I think the the Republican Party is toxic as it stands now. But I think there is huge value in work. Uh I don't think people function well in a society where they don't have to work, at least the vast majority of people. There are social aspects to work, there's a sense of accomplishment, there's a sense of meaning and purpose that comes to your life through work. And so I don't think the answer is hey, we'll just guarantee that you all have a home and food and a place to live. I think there should be a basic substrate that is guaranteed, but I don't think that's the answer. You will end up with a huge number of societal problems from people who just you know have too much time on their hand, right? Right. I think the pandemic kind of showed showed us the damage that that kind of isolation does to uh to mental health for a society. So I think we need to figure out how do we make people productive, right? Right, how do we how do we provide opportunities, how do we provide meaningful work, how do we provide a sense of accomplishment in a world where the machine can do it better? Uh-huh. You know, and I think that's really hard, right?

Conor

Oh man, this is this is podcast gold, Sean. I mean, uh it's not even podcast gold, this is just pure gold. I mean, so many, so many thoughts. And uh it makes me think about there was a guy I used to work with uh thirteen, fourteen years ago in 2011, my first co-op when I uh came to Toronto, worked for an insurance company, this guy named Paul. Uh Paul was great. I loved Paul. I didn't work directly with him, or maybe I did. He was on my team, but I I never worked with him, but uh he was at a couple functions. And I remember him telling me once that because you know, actuaries, they get paid quite well. And he's like, Well, if you're an actuary, you have to be, you have to be, you know, you have to lean left. I was like, Well, you don't have to. You can choose whatever you want. And he's like, no, no, no, you you have to be like a whatever it is, liberal, democrat, whatever you are. And I and I was like, okay, what's your reasoning for that? And he's like, well, at some point, you know, we're gonna get to this point where we're gonna evolve, you know, with with, I'm not sure he was talking about AI, but he just thinks there's gonna be, you know, kind of people that are working and people that aren't working. And in that society, like you want uh welfare systems and universal basic income, and you you need a way to support everyone in society, because otherwise uh the actuaries are gonna have to go and uh get a shotgun, go take over their local no-frills, which is like a grocery store, and we're gonna have to like fend for ourselves because like society is gonna flip the board game table, you know, uh uh proverbially. Uh because yeah, it's it's not gonna work out if you don't like we need to care about all humans in society. You can't just uh this whole I pay less taxes so I can be more rich. Uh it just doesn't work. Anyways, and yeah, that's basically what you were touching. And I never even thought of the fact that right now, unfortunately, America is undoing uh a ton of these safety nets and programs. And uh obviously that sucks. But I didn't even think about it in in the context of you know, unemployment could be skyrocketing in the next, I don't know, if it's five years, ten years, however long. But um, I mean if you if you go to it's only the the tech uh layoffs that it tracks, but there's a website called trueup.io slash uh layoffs. I can I can put it in the chat and you guys can both click on it. But it doesn't look great. Um it's basically if you take uh the average, it's either a linear line going up or a uh a parabolic curve that's uh growing. It is uh kind of biased because Intel laid off uh 21,000 people in July. They they track it by month, and uh Microsoft has been doing a bunch of layoffs. And they're pretty they're pretty high on the software's dead. I can't remember if it was the CEO or CTO that said something. But anyways, yeah, a lot of thoughts. I don't really I have no solution. Um I'm not sure. Are you it sounds like uh you read quite a bit of history because you're you're quoting the uh I don't know much about George Bush number one.

Bryce

Brutal brutal at Microsoft. Brutal at Microsoft here.

Conor

Yeah, yeah. I'll put a link in the show notes, folks, uh, if you want to go check. But uh and I guess if you go layoffs by year, I guess Can you look it up?

Bryce

Can you look at it by company?

Sean Parent

Uh you know, I was actually a voting adult during you know George Bush's the first.

Conor

Oh so you don't need to be a scholar of history.

Sean Parent

I'm like, no, I lived a lot of history.

Conor

You just have to have been alive for it and paying attention. Uh I guess I I was I was born, I think, like in the middle of his term. So uh I think that that's the uh H Bush, right?

Sean Parent

Yes.

Conor

Yeah. He was 88 to 92.

Sean Parent

Yeah, so I was working at Apple during the uh during the uh uh Iraq war.

Conor

So I uh yeah, was I think Bryce and I were both born then, so we weren't uh Yes. Yeah, I guess we should we try and end on like a is there is there hope?

Bryce

I mean uh we didn't even talk about we didn't even talk about the robots. You know, eventually there's gonna be robots that all these things are gonna be plugged into, you know. Yeah. Would you have one of the robots in your in your home?

Sean Parent

Uh sure. Yeah, I would love to. I mean, it's like I I've always liked, you know, we were promised by the you know from the Jetsons that we were gonna have flying cars and and and you know, Rosie the maid, who would vacuum our house so we would have more time for our creative endeavors. And instead what we've got is uh uh uh uh you know image generation and song generation, and so so we we've automated the creative endeavors so we have more time to fold the laundry and vacuum the house. Um have you heard about the loom? The loom. Yeah. We know what a loom is.

Bryce

What this it's it's spelled L-U-M-E. You gotta go to the website and and watch. They could play a little video for a second, and then you gotta tell me, you gotta tell me your thoughts, both of you.

Sean Parent

Okay. You might have to cut out the navigate to the loom here.

Conor

No, I'm already watching.

Bryce

This is just wait for it.

Conor

Uh yeah, maybe not. Maybe not attached to the bed. I'm like, I've already seen the robots that are like a version of this that are on wheels that go around and pick things up and put them in a way, and we're definitely getting that because I don't want to talk poorly of uh my beloved, but uh she is a little less organized than me in terms of I'll talk about I'll talk about Ramona.

Bryce

There are clothes everywhere. There are cl she literally will not do the laundry. She will not do the laundry. I'm the only person. Does laundry in the house. But okay, so to describe for for the listening, the loom, it it it the video starts off where there's this bed in front of you, there's some furniture next to it, and there's these two lamps, tall lamps next to the bed. Um and uh the somebody comes and leaves some clothes on the bed and then they walk away, and then suddenly the lamps come alive, and the little claw hands stick out of the end of the lamps, and then the lamps sort of bend over and they start folding up the clothes. And uh when I first saw this, I really I really thought it was a joke because it it I mean it's an interesting form factor. It's just it it does seem like it's like it's a joke, right?

Sean Parent

Yeah. I want it though.

Conor

You need a different version of this though, because you don't want it just to fold it and put it on the end of the bed. You want it to go like organize your closet and hang everything and fold it there, right? Like uh attached to the bed makes no sense.

Sean Parent

Uh on on the on the on the upbeat, you know, I I think there's incredible stuff going on here, right? I think uh uh you know, in in every aspect of the of the AI, right? I use generative AI for a bunch of stuff, coding, you know, uh editing photos, being an adobe, of course. Uh writing, it helps me out. I would love to have it driving my car. I don't have a self-driving car yet, but I'll get there. You know, I'm also looking at, you know, probably 10 more years I'm gonna need a self-driving car. I'm hoping that that coincides. So so I will have just a fully automated car.

Bryce

Wait, you you think in 10 years time, Sean, you will be in such a state where you would not be able to drive a car.

Sean Parent

I think I'm getting close enough now, right? Uh I'm past 60 and uh feeling the age. So so definitely feel feeling like I I have slowed down a lot in the last five years. So yeah, you know, I think there's huge potential upside. I just think there is a challenge to navigate this.

Bryce

Yeah.

Sean Parent

Societies may navigate it well. I suspect it will be chaotic. Hopefully it will be chaotic and navigated well, but there is huge risk. And I think we are uh underestimating the risk, right? Right. When people talk about kind of, you know, oh, the the existential threat of AI and think Terminator, I don't think it's Terminator, I think it's it's uh massive wealth disparity and you know leading to war, right? Right. I think that's the existential threat.

Bryce

A civil war or overthrow the government type of uh you know, okay, because you know if you uh if you have a huge amount of unemployment, you know.

Sean Parent

Yeah, yeah. I think if you have a uh, you know, uh you know, it looks more like uh uh you know the the fall of the of the SARS in Russia, uh right, which unfortunately probably leads to to you you end up with an you know in a in a in a takeover like that, you you end up with with also an undesirable political structure, and that has to go through a period before it gets gets you know reformed or overthrown. And and you know overthrowing governments tends to be violent and messy. I think we tend to think of society as progressing along a linear path, but historically there's no evidence that that society always improves, right? Right, empires rise and fall, you end up with dark ages, you end up with huge, huge periods of of turmoil. You know, I don't think there's any guarantees that we navigate uh uh uh this transition well. My hope is we do. My hope is is it is it remains a great opportunity, and maybe the AI has helped us navigate this better.

Conor

When you said Terminator, I was not Terminator, it's gonna be more like I thought you were gonna say WALL-E, where everyone's floating around in their you know, hover chairs sipping on soda. But that's that's naive of me, I guess, to think that everyone's gonna accept their lack of purpose and meaning, and it's gonna be closer to on the way to that, people are like, nah, this sucks. Like, why yeah, why why stand for this and uh they take matters into their own hands? Um I guess there's no movie for that yet. I pick I've heard that uh Andrew Garfield has been cast to play Sam Altman in a movie called Artificial. Uh really. So uh maybe that's how that movie's gonna end. We don't know.

Sean Parent

Yeah. You know, I think Star Trek is kind of the canonical, you know, bright future uh uh society here, right? Of course, they if you're a Star Trek fan, they had to go through a third world war to get there. But uh, you know, they they have have a vision of a society where people are are are meaningful and productive and and taken care of, right? So is there UBI in uh in Star Trek?

Bryce

I've only seen it's no money, that's like a post-money society, right?

Sean Parent

Yeah, it's like a post-money society. You have uh uh uh they certainly have you know intelligent computers, not nearly as intelligent as I think is what we're headed for.

Bryce

It is funny how sci-fi always underestimates the computers and overestimates everything else.

Conor

Yeah. So wait, what do they what do they uh because I've seen uh this is I'm gonna lose some nerd cred here, uh even though I've mentioned that you know we're reworking our way through. I'm reworking my way through Hishima's seeing them for the first time, Star Wars. Uh I've seen the latest Star Trek movies, which were uh starring Chris Pine and the very good-looking Zachary Quinto, I think was the guy that played Spock. Anyways, I think there was one or two or three of those. I saw those. I don't think there was much talk of uh the the infrastructure of how society monetarily or fiscally operated. So what's the what are the basics of uh Star Trek uh lore?

Sean Parent

Uh you know, they don't go into details as far as how society is structured or or or governed, but it's uh it's a uh uh a worldwide government, a single worldwide government. It's uh it's uh uh a non-monetary, uh somewhat uh uh socialist structure of some form. Um uh uh they ended up there after the Third World War, which was a eugenics war. Uh you know, a faction of society was modifying genes to uh to try to basically become superhuman and divide the structure being of society between the superhumans that ruled and the uh uh the rest of the people, and that ended up in a big war.

Conor

And was that where Khan came from? Yeah, that's where Khan came from. Okay, okay. That was in the movie.

Sean Parent

I remember that. Uh uh, you know, and and in many of the movies they have, you know, shots of their cities, and San Francisco is you know commonly comes up in the movies, and it's like, oh, these beautiful cities with everybody nicely dressed and and clean and walking around, and they have lovely apartments and and everything's automated, but they still go to work every day, and they all have jobs and they all have tasks to do. So, you know, it's a it's a very uh uh uh uh idealistic uh view of society.

Conor

So aim for that minus the the third world war.

Sean Parent

Yeah. If we can if we can get there without the third world war, that would be nice. If we could stop threatening, you know, taking over Greenland, that would be nice.

Bryce

Sentences I wouldn't have thought we would say uh some number of years ago. Given Canada's in in uh given Connor's in Canada, maybe we can start with threat not threatening to do things to Canada.

Sean Parent

How how is things in our 51st state up there?

Conor

It's alright. We elected a very, very uh you know, unknown right until he was uh nominated, and then everyone fell in love with him, uh, Prime Minister. He's uh yeah, he's great. I mean, uh I was always a fan of Trudeau. I've might have lost a couple listeners there, but I thought he was a great PR guy, always did the right thing, shakes the hands and Tim Hortons. He was a great, you know.

Bryce

Is that the Canadian thing? It's shakes the hand shakes the hands and you don't kiss the baby beads, you just go to the Tim Hortons.

Conor

I think people misunderstand what politics is a lot of the time, and a lot of it is just PR, and I think for the most part, he was great at PR, and he his his downfall was just that he was the incumbent, you know, and people were upset globally, and so it was his time to end. But he was he always did these things where he would go to Tim Hortons and shake hands with someone, and I was like, that's just brilliant. It's just brilliant, you know. Like everybody knows us for Tim Hortons, nobody hates Tim Hortons. Like, I'm not a huge fan of their donuts, but nobody hates it. It's a it's a good place for a cup, a cheap cup of coffee and a donut. And uh, anyways, we we uh we elected the new guy, and he's been great. Just watching him and how he deals with your leader is amazing. It's amazing. His first interaction, he comes out, he was the first, he was the first nation state leader to come out and start talking about how Trump was doing great things, you know. Didn't actually give any specifics. He just said, I think you're you've made some really bold uh you've done some bold things and you could see Trump being happy about it. And then look at this. Uh just in the last week, you've got all the leaders of the European countries copying basically what our guy did and uh saying a bunch of uh oh you're great, you're great. We're we're gonna get our podcast shut down now, you know. I guess South Park is they're still being aired, so uh as long as South Park is up, we're probably safe.

Bryce

But um You don't have to worry because you're not you're not the one who's gonna get thrown in the in the gulag. You're you're up and and they'd have to they'd have to, you know, come for you, right?

Conor

Uh I mean I mean we shouldn't start making predictions about what what what your president will and will not do, because uh he's already done a bunch of stuff that I never thought I'd see in my lifetime from a uh you know uh a US present US president. Um anyways, I feel like we've kind of flown off the rail here. But that was uh somewhat hopeful. Aim for Star Trek minus the uh minus the world war, and hopefully definitely not uh Terminator or uh the other show that comes to mind is Project Carbon, when you mentioned the wealth uh disparity is because that's kind of the you know, wealth disparity gone to a hundred percent or two hundred percent, and the rich people live above you know the sky and they're basically immortal because they can pop in and out you know their consciousness, uh and they they treat bodies as you know just like replaceable things, and so the wealthy people they always have sp spare bodies uh and their consciousness backed up, whereas poor folks have none of that and death is real for them. Anyways, let's not do that. Let's not do that. Uh fun show to watch, probably a terrible reality to live in. Um be sure to check these show notes either in your podcast app or at adspthepodcast.com for links to anything we mentioned in today's episode, as well as a link to a GitHub discussion where you can leave thoughts, comments, and questions. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed and have a great day.

Bryce

Low quality, high quality, that is the tagline of our podcast.

Conor

That's not the tagline. Our tagline is chaos with sprinkles of information.