Welcome to Manifold podcast. My [Steve Hsu] guest today is Robin Hanson, a famed economist and freethinker and polymath. We are here at the Manifest conference sponsored by Manifold Markets. It’s a crazy rationalist EA fun fest here at the Lighthaven campus in Berkeley, California.

Robin Hanson: …So I went back to physics. So to get a PhD there [at the University of Chicago] in conceptual foundations of science, you had to get a master’s in the field of science. So I had started on that in physics and then having answered the questions, I moved into physics back and then I still read more things and I had more questions. And so after 3 years, I went off to Silicon Valley because I had read about artificial intelligence and I had read about hypertext publishing and those [were the] most exciting and [had the most] potential for doing things.

And that pulled me away from physics. And this was, what year was this? 1984 is when I left the University of Chicago to go to Silicon Valley. But, and so 1981 is when I arrived in Chicago to study philosophy of science. And I guess, again, I just had these topics and interests and I wanted to go pursue them.

But I think artificial intelligence and hypertext publishing, in contrast with the others, had this vision of, of something being created and new things were going to be created, not just discovered or learned. And I wanted to be part of that creation. I wanted to make AI. I wanted to make hypertext and that inspired me.

Steve Hsu: And looking back, were you doing AI during what we now call the ‘AI winter’? Is that right? [of GOFAI—Lisp machines, expert systems etc]

R Hanson: I started AI in 1984. So that was still a high activity period of AI. Okay. And part of what drew me in is with all these newspaper articles etc talking about how AI was going gangbusters and it would all be over soon if you didn’t get in there soon.

S Hsu: Yes. We’re close to the Singularity.

R H: Yeah. Yeah. So I learned my lesson, I guess. So ever since then, I’m a little less susceptible to them, “we’re almost there and it’s going to be a big boom. You need to get in now before it’s too late.” As I, as I fell for that once.