The Race to Superintelligence — And Why It Should Concern All of Us

Is Artificial Intelligence a gift to mankind — or its greatest threat? In this episode of My Brother's Journey, Greg and Baron tackle one of the most consequential questions of our time. Greg shares alarming warnings from former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo — who walked away from $2 million rather than stay silent — and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who estimates a 25% chance of catastrophic AI outcomes. Baron counters that AI is simply a tool with no moral compass, and that the real danger lies in how much authority we're willing to hand over to it. It's a candid, faith-grounded conversation about technology, human purpose, and what it all means for the future God entrusted to us.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, welcome back again. Again, as I always normally say, I'm part of the tag team here. I'm Greg Joseph Chuck, and with me is my good co-host Baron Fink. Great to see you on this rainy day, which by the way, we need the rain here so badly in North Carolina. So welcome rain. You're welcome to rain. And we're certainly the Lord is blessing us today and tomorrow and with lots of it. So thank you. Thank you. In the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Dear Lord, we first of all we thank you for the rain for uh for this part of the country, which we we desperately need so badly. But uh we also pray for those who uh are in areas where they receive too much rain and some of the damage that uh that that that has caused. And we ask that you would continue to send uh volunteers and and workers to to assist those in need. We ask you to bless our day today and bless uh our thoughts. Let them be holy ones, and please bless this podcast because we are not entirely sure where it's heading. In your name we pray. Amen. I think it's okay to have maybe a little humorous bent to the prayer. I don't think the Lord will mind that too much. Um so today is going to be a very interesting conversation, I think. Um, because it's it's first of all, it's it's it's an area for me that I'm not um knowledgeable uh uh on. I'm just I'm kind of trying to get myself up to speed on. Um, but I think it's more going to be a sweet spot for you uh because you're kind of an IT, I mean, not kind of, you are, you're an IT guy. You started your own IT company, and uh so you you you you probably have a greater understanding of this technology. What what I what today's topic is going to be essentially is artificial intelligence and whether AI is actually something that's good or something evil. And uh, you know, there's and there's people weighing in uh all over the place on on that question. Uh there are certainly uh many who uh think that AI is going to be the best thing that potentially has ever happened to our country, that it's uh you know, that it's gonna increase productivity and uh wealth in the country and prosperity and safety and security and better health results and all kinds of things. Um and so they're they're they're they're certainly painting a uh a very positive upside to what AI is uh what AI, what the future of AI could look like and how it could benefit mankind. On the other hand, there are other people, um, and I'm probably somewhat closer to this group, uh, being the skeptic than I am, um, that say that AI is a potentially very dangerous tool, and one that can certainly lead to um not just negative repercussions, but potentially the extinction of the human race. Um and and so I'm gonna tell you kind of uh or give you a little background as as to how I got involved in this, because it's really only been over, believe it or not, it's only been over the last 72 hours. So I'll be the first to admit, like I use AI like most people do, you know, to write better letters or write better articles or do some marketing, things like that in in in my business. Um but I I you know I probably use it uh you know a decimal, a rounding error point of 1% of what its capabilities are, right? Um but I came across I'm a I'm a big uh uh viewer of YouTube. Okay, I I I I don't I don't particularly watch television too much um in terms of like syndicated shows, but um, but I do watch you different YouTube channels. And um there's a YouTube channel. Um I'm trying to remember what it's called now. Uh I can't believe I believe it's called the um The Diary of a CEO. That's what it's called. Okay. And um about 10 days ago, I think it was July 13th, they did a session uh with a gentleman by the name, and I'm probably gonna butcher his last name, uh, Daniel Kocatelo, I believe. Uh I'm I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it. He is an ex-open AI researcher, and he was on the show. This is a gentleman who, by the way, walked away from $2 million rather than stay silent on what he's discovered working within an AI company. And as I recall, his job he had was he was a forecaster to kind of forecast where AI could be could be going, could be useful, could could create some sort of economic benefit in different areas. And um what he said in there is that um that he believed that there was a 70% chance that AI leads to human extinction, which was alarming to me. And he also believed that what he explained is because I'm not knowledgeable about this, right? Is that there's a race going on right now. There's actually there's actually kind of two races, if you will, at least two. One is between the United States and China to develop super intelligence. That's what they call it. Superintelligence. Superintelligence, as I understand it, is intelligence far exceeding human uh intelligence. Okay. And as I also understand it, we're not quite there yet in the AI race. Um, but we're exceedingly close. Um and the other race is within the United States, between these big AI companies, predominantly Anthropic, um uh Google, uh Open AI, and there's probably one other that I can't think of, but but amongst those, that that's kind of where the big race is going on right now. To to get, by the way, to superintelligence. So um, and he this this guy, Daniel, uh, who formerly worked you know for Sam Altman over at OpenAI. Um, and if for those that are listening, Sam Altman is the uh CEO uh and and one of the co-founders of of OpenAI, which is where ChatGBT, for again, for most people that maybe don't recognize that, chat GBT, which they probably do recognize, is an open AI uh product. Um so he uh he is this guy, Daniel, he's the founder of AI Futures Prod Project, and he is the lead author of something called AI27, which anyone can go out and and look up as AI2027.com. He actually wrote it in 2025 and published it, and it predicted where AI was going to be in 2027. And I can tell you it it's fairly it's it's it's almost 100% spot on. Now he had pre preceding that, he had written another white paper like five years earlier than that, that had predicted where it was going to be. And again, he was pretty much dead nuts on on right on that. And the gist of it is he believes that they are going to reach superintelligence by 2027 or 2028 at the latest. So they will have achieved that. And that by 2030, this is how rapidly this AI thing is exponentially kind of um, I'm not even sure if I'm gonna say this the right way, is learning, is is, I mean, it it's its intelligence is growing exponentially with each new development of an a a new series of AI. Um on the magnitude of not like 10x, but like 100x, a thousand X of where it used to be. So that's why it's gonna get to superintelligence so quickly. Anyway, this got me down this path of beginning to think. And I was like, whoa, and he's like, yeah, and by 2030, we could, because he believes that um by that time robots are going to, there's there's gonna be robot factories out there, they're gonna be creating robots, and in by 2030, 2031, robots are gonna be replacing the majority of US workers out there because they will already have the intelligence that will be downloaded to them, and they'll be able to do anything physically that um that we humans can do. So a plumber, uh an electrician, they'll be able to do all that. A robot will. Um his projection is, and it's pretty bleak, is that yeah, like unemployment is gonna go up to like 98, 99 percent. Already we're seeing that the engineers who write code already almost completely replaced, even within the own AI companies, they're not writing code. The AIs are writing code themselves. The humans are simply monitoring and checking it, uh, and maybe adding it, editing it. But by and large, the AIs are already writing code for the next generation of AIs. So I'm gonna pause there because I want to just kind of get your take. You're you're an IT guy, and I guess the first question, now that's just one person's take on it so far, right? I will uh let me just throw one other thing in there and then I'll I'll ask you. But so Dario Amadi, I and again I might be pronouncing his name right, he is the CEO and the brains behind Anthropic. He is the AI guru, if you will. Okay. He himself has famously warned on multiple interviews with the media when asked a question about what he thought the chance of a catastrophic outcome with AI in the trajectory AI development is currently on. And he said that he believes right now it's about 25%. Now think about that. If you were gonna get on an airplane to go anywhere, and someone said to you there's a 25% chance that the outcome is gonna be very bad. Are you gonna take that flight? I'm not. Okay, so um, so here, these are the things that, you know, I I mean, like I said, I you know, we put all of our faith and trust in the Lord, of course. But we also have to deal with the realities of our world and what we're living in. And so I'd love to hear kind of your thoughts on what do you think? Uh you I mean, you you you know the AI's development story probably even better than I do. You're an IT guy, you've you followed this technology. I'm sure you've used AI um in different applications. Do you think AI is something that's gonna be beneficial or harmful?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Well, Greg, I don't I don't think AI itself is is either good or bad. I mean, it you know, intrinsically, it's just a it's a tool. But you know, you and I are sitting here using the benefits of technology to record this podcast. They didn't exist 10 years ago. That's right. Uh or we you know, 30 years ago, we'd be in a switchboard, you know, and nobody would be out on the internet because there was no internet. That's right. A mere 30, 40 years ago. Think about that. Yeah. There was nothing. Right. Okay. So so here we are 40 years later, and we use all these things, okay, for good and for bad. Social media is a mix of good and bad, okay? Absolutely. You know, I mean, think about that. You know, the premise of Facebook built upon connecting people, you know, friends, everything else. That's a great premise, okay? But but companies cannot resist the profit motive because that's what capitalism is all about. So they're gonna find ways to use that data to draw you in, to sell you product, do everything else. Does that make the technology underlying Facebook bad? No, it just means it was used in a way that wasn't necessarily the best way, okay? So AI, I mean, you think about this, one of the one of the things that AI is really, you know, the promise is is really big is in advancements in medical uh technology, both medical technology and medical research. Right. You know, think about the way we treat cancer today. It's barbaric. I mean, we basically bring somebody through chemotherapy and through radiation to practically bring them to death's door so that we can kill the cancer and practically kill everything else, and hopefully everything else comes back and the cancer doesn't. There's gotta be a better way. But we as mankind have not figured that out in the last 50 years. But is that something AI is gonna have a better chance at? More than likely, yes. So think about if AI comes up with the cure for cancer, how great that would be. But to your point though, you know, yeah, you know, is AI gonna replace jobs? Most certainly. Okay. But so did the industrial revolution, you know. And so in the fear back then was that, oh my gosh, somebody machines gonna go out there and plow the earth, and that what the what's the guy with the mule and the plow gonna do? He'll have no job anymore. Well, it's a good thing that that happened because guess what? We wouldn't be able to feed the world with a plow and a mule. Right. So so those things have a way of of working out over time. And and I was we were you and I were talking, I mean, Pope Pope uh Leo has written in a cyclical about this, you know, uh that's kind of a continuation of uh the uh Pope, I think it was uh you know, I don't know who it was, it was back at that time, it was 120 years ago when he wrote in a cyclical about the endowment of the industrial revolution and what that meant to our faith. The the thing that I think that I'm most alarmed about, uh potentially is is not what AI itself can do, it's what we as as humans what we what credit we give it. What how much do we rely upon it? Do we rely upon it for everything? Okay, and that if AI says it's true, then by golly it's true, and that we no longer have the human intellect to question what AI is is telling you is the case. And and that's and so if AI says, well, hey guy, guess what? You know, this this Jesus thing went back and looked at it, that you know, that's not it. How much how how much credit, you know, how much uh you know uh clout would that carry when humanity if AI says, yeah, that's a that's a fable. Okay. Because because it's right about everything else. Well, I can't call it wrong here. And so I think that that it's a danger is that it it it puts the power uh you know in in this this intellectual machine as opposed to knowing that we as humans are here you know because of God and to glorify God and and that be it. He also, you know, God great gave us this intellect to get to this point. So it can't be all bad, you know, because we were we were given this intelligence. So, you know, I think that that's that again, this could this direction go anywhere, you know, this conversation can go in many different directions. I think as far as AI goes, I'm not as fearful as far as as you know the world destroying itself over AI, but I think that we have to understand that AI is is a machine that does not have compassion, is a machine that does not have a conscience. Right. And so how that is how how that comes into decision making on things that are that that involve compassion and involve you know morals is where it gets tricky. And and that's gonna be something that I think that that you know the CEOs you hear you mentioned, they recognize that. They recognize they can they can program this thing to re to to do spreadsheet works that you and I don't have to. And quite honestly, that's not a bad thing. I've I've I've coded before, okay? Yeah, and it's a long thing. And if I could have something that would do it for me, I'd do it. And I think you find most coders say, yeah, I'd rather not write the code. I'd rather have if I can use a tool to write it for me, all the better. We don't have we use calculators now. We don't we don't use cycles, and that's a good thing. So you can't say that that's bad, but how we adapt to that world is where it's interesting. And the one thing about AI that's different than the industrial revolution is the is the speed of change, the velocity of advancement is is something that we're we're finding, we're finding, I think, that we're we're gonna be behind the times. It's like it's like trying to legislate again the the the ideas of Facebook and and Google and everything else, and what happens to all that data, as as you know, as a governmental you know, agencies, we found ourselves behind that. You know, we're we're trying to play catch up because the the the world is pushed past that and they're already identifying new ways to use this data, and we're like, well, yeah, but we need to protect you against that after the fact. Well, that's gonna happen with AI as well. There's gonna be there's gonna be advancements and they're gonna be good. And there's gonna be some unintended consequences and they're gonna be bad. You know, certainly employment is is a big deal, and it will lead to talk of universal basic income, UBI, all kinds of things like that that to give people money, but that's only one thing. If you take away their jobs, what is their purpose? And and that's uh, you know, yeah, I'd love to be on a perpetual vacation, but after a while vacation gets old, but I have no other, I have no purpose, no job to go back to, no routine to get into. That's a that's a question that has to be answered as well. And one that we can't answer, yeah, because we're not quite sure how it's gonna unfold. So you know I think I think for anybody who who who wants to kind of center this whole you know um conversation with their faith, I don't worry about it from a faith standpoint because nothing's gonna change God. AI's not gonna change God, God is God. And so uh, you know, whatever happens, if if AI decides that it wants to do without humanity, well then that just means I'll move on to the eternity faster than I was thinking about that's a healthy way of looking at it.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

That's so it's a very healthy way of looking at it. I'll remind uh everyone listening to this podcast right now. That's a healthy way of looking at my office. We make it to eternity a lot quicker than we had intended. Um so let me just let me just uh give you just a couple other things uh for those that are listening, because um uh here are some of the uh criticisms that are out there, okay. And and this is both industry insiders and then people looking on the outside, they kind of have the same same concerns, or at least they're saying one is uh loss of control. They're they're very concerned that they won't be able to control it at some point. The other is um lack of transparency and trust, okay. And then um we already talked about the economic disruption of having potentially large amounts of people unemployed, all right. And then, of course, probably the biggest one, the one that I think all of us are cons should be concerned about is malicious use. Right? And so, and virtually every CEO has agreed that yes, it because to your point, it's a tool, it's a tool that could be exploited and it could in the wrong hands by the wrong people, could cause unbelievable damage, right? Um, because we've seen even today with the technology that is here today, we've certainly seen all kinds of hacks in the system where people's personal information are exposed. I mean, it seems like I don't know, it seems like I get a letter almost every week month saying, oh, your your information.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

But rarely, though, and you bring up a good point though, Greg. That rarely, if ever, though, does it does it ever impact a bank balance or an investment you know balance or whatever else. Imagine, you know, it's like this with this Mississippi model model that this current model that they had had mothballed for or you know, said, hey, we can't release it for because of its danger of being able to you know hack systems that were previously thought to be unhackable. Right. If something were to happen on a wide scale event to where all of a sudden our bank balances are zero, well now you have something totally different. Right. Now you've got now you've got panic. Right. And and that's something that we haven't experienced. We haven't you haven't experienced panic in the industrial age. Right. You haven't experienced panic in a wide scale in in anything. Right. And that that panic draws out the worst on people. Absolutely it does. Um that you know could happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

I mean, you know, it this is interesting because uh I'm sure you remember this, and believe it or not, um you were on the IT side at the time. I was working for a company called Generic Power Systems. I was in the backup emergency power business, right? Um, and you might recall Y2K. Oh yeah, right? Y2K was gonna be exactly that. That everything was gonna stop, the world is gonna stop. You weren't gonna be able to access your bank accounts, right? And I mean, by the way, we sold tons of generic services.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

And we sold lots and we sold lots of IT services too.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

So the good news is that scenario did not happen. Let's just pray that the the negative scenarios that some people are out there talking about, the extinction of the human race potentially, also don't happen. And I think um so that is something that I hope people listening to this will number one research and learn more about AI because it is a much bigger picture than I think anyone is thinking about today. I think right now they're thinking, hey, I could write a much better letter.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yeah, I mean we we see the benefits of it, you know, and and you know, you and I talked about it offline too, about about again, we're I wouldn't call us intellectually lazy, but I would say that that we're just we're trying to find the easiest way to do something most of the time. And and AI has proved itself to be useful, really useful for that. And so we will we will continue to use things that are useful and rely upon.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

And you know, I would encourage people that if you do, if you are concerned about the development of AI not being regulated currently and and and wanting it to be regulated, then you should definitely talk to your congressman, write to your congressman or woman or senator, and let them know hey, you want this thing regulated, because as of right now, it does not appear to be regulated, but hopefully it'll be headed toward some sort of regulation by the government. Um, so listen, that's uh we to your point, you and I probably could talk another eight hours easily on this subject. We're probably already bored to people listening to this podcast who said, geez, I we're what does this have to do with my brother's journey? So I'll make it easy. It could potentially lead to the very end of my brother's journey for all of all of my brothers and sisters out there, but I pray not. All right, well, listen, hey, thank you all for tuning in and being part of my brother's journey. Hey, seek Jesus in all you do and be fishers of men. God bless you, and please join us again. Viva Jesus.