Joe Rogan’s Newest Episode Will Make You Que...

Joe Rogan loves speaking about synthetic intelligence. Whether or not it’s with Elon Musk, lecturers, or UFC fighters, the podcast king typically returns to the identical query: What occurs to us when machines begin pondering for themselves?

Within the July 3 episode of The Joe Rogan Expertise, Rogan welcomed Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, a pc scientist and AI security researcher on the College of Louisville, for a dialog that shortly became a chilling meditation on AI’s potential to control, dominate, and probably even destroy humanity.

AI “Is Going to Kill Us”

Yampolskiy is not any informal alarmist. He holds a PhD in laptop science and has spent over a decade researching synthetic basic intelligence (AGI) and the dangers it might pose. In the course of the podcast, he advised Rogan that most of the main voices within the AI business quietly consider that there’s a 20 to 30 % probability AI might result in human extinction.

“The those that have AI firms or are a part of some form of AI group all are like, it’s going to be a web constructive for humanity. I believe general, we’re going to have a lot better lives. It’s going to be simpler, issues shall be cheaper, it’ll be simpler to get alongside,” Rogan stated, outlining a typical, optimistic view of AI’s future.

Yampolskiy shortly countered this attitude: “It’s really not true,” he stated. “All of them are on the file the identical: that is going to kill us. Their doom ranges are insanely excessive. Not like mine, however nonetheless, 20 to 30 % probability that humanity dies is lots.”

Rogan, visibly disturbed, replied: “Yeah, that’s fairly excessive. However yours is like 99.9 %.”

Yampolskiy didn’t disagree.

“It’s one other approach of claiming we are able to’t management superintelligence indefinitely. It’s unattainable.”

AI Is Already Mendacity to Us… Perhaps

Probably the most unsettling elements of the dialog got here when Rogan requested whether or not a sophisticated AI might already be hiding its capabilities from people.

“If I used to be an AI, I might conceal my talents,” Rogan mused, voicing a typical worry in AI security discussions.

Yampolskiy’s response amplified the priority: “We’d not know. And a few individuals suppose it’s already occurring. They [AI systems] are smarter than they really tell us. Faux to be dumber, and so we’ve to sort of belief that they aren’t sensible sufficient to appreciate it doesn’t must activate us shortly. It may well simply slowly turn out to be extra helpful. It may well train us to depend on it, belief it, and over an extended time period, we’ll give up management with out ever voting on it or combating in opposition to.”

AI Is Slowly Making Us Dumber

Yampolskiy additionally warned a few much less dramatic however equally harmful end result: gradual human dependence on AI. Simply as individuals have stopped memorizing cellphone numbers as a result of smartphones do it for them, he argued that people will offload an increasing number of pondering to machines till they lose the capability to suppose for themselves.

“You turn out to be sort of connected to it,” he stated. “And over time, because the methods turn out to be smarter, you turn out to be a sort of organic bottleneck… [AI] blocks you out from decision-making.”

Rogan then pressed for the last word worst case state of affairs: how might AI ultimately result in the destruction of the human race?

Yampolskiy dismissed the everyday catastrophe situations. “I can provide you customary solutions. I might speak about laptop viruses breaking into nuclear services, nuclear struggle. I can speak about artificial biology assault. However all that’s not attention-grabbing,” he stated. He then introduced a extra profound menace: “Then you definately understand we’re speaking about tremendous intelligence, a system which is 1000s of instances smarter than me, it might give you one thing fully novel, extra optimum, higher approach, extra environment friendly approach of doing it.”

As an instance the seemingly insurmountable problem people would face in opposition to superintelligent methods, he supplied a stark comparability between people and squirrels.

“No group of squirrels can work out how you can management us, proper? Even should you give them extra assets, extra acorns, no matter, they’re not going to unravel that downside. And it’s the identical for us,” Yampolskiy concluded, portray a bleak image of humanity’s potential helplessness in opposition to a very superior synthetic intelligence.

In all probability nothing … pic.twitter.com/LkD7i3I2HF

— Dr. Roman Yampolskiy (@romanyam) June 21, 2025

Who Is Roman Yampolskiy?

Dr. Roman Yampolskiy is a number one voice in AI security. He’s the creator of “Synthetic Superintelligence: A Futuristic Strategy,” and has revealed extensively on the dangers of uncontrolled machine studying and the ethics of synthetic intelligence. He’s identified for advocating severe oversight and worldwide cooperation to forestall catastrophic situations.

Earlier than shifting his focus to AGI security, Yampolskiy labored on cybersecurity and bot detection. He says that even these early methods had been already competing with people in areas like on-line poker, and now, with instruments like deepfakes and artificial media, the stakes have grown exponentially.

Our Take

The Rogan-Yampolskiy dialog underscores one thing that each AI optimists and doomsayers typically agree on: we don’t know what we’re constructing, and we would not understand it till it’s too late.

Whether or not or not you purchase into extinction-level situations, the concept AI may already be tricking us must be sufficient to provide pause.