Experience Other Lives | Founders Space CEO Steve Hoffman

So the other thing is, you wouldn't— and this gets to the gentleman's question. You know, we have our own life, right? Like, I have my life, you have your life. I feel my pain. But if I'm in pain, if I'm very sad, or if I get injured, you might feel empathy towards me. You'd feel like, oh. You might feel sad. For me. For me, but what you feel is your own sadness. You can't feel my sadness. Only I can feel my sadness, and only you can feel your sadness. But as soon as we connect our brains to the internet, there's— emotions are also data. We could start literally to feel somebody else's pain. You know how we say, I feel your pain? We don't really feel their pain. But in the future, we may actually really feel their pain. Like, if they're sad, all of a sudden we could tap in, you know, to your wife or girlfriend or boyfriend, and you could be like, oh my God, I feel your pain. I feel your anxiety, you know? You would really bond. Now, what does this mean? All of a sudden, we wouldn't be trapped. Like, all of us right now, we are trapped in our own little bubble, right? We feel and we experience things, but there's always this kind of barrier. In the future, that barrier is going to come down. So I can not only feel what you're feeling, like, we could literally merge. I could experience your life and you could experience my life. We could be living potentially— remember, this is like science fiction now, what I'm talking about, but this is what we have to do, right? Because some of this will come into being and others won't. But potentially, we could actually experience other people's lives, and we could actually live lives that are a combination of lives. So we wouldn't have a single life, we would have— you would have almost an infinite number of lives to explore. I could go back, and people could upload their lives, and you could go and experience them, and we could merge our lives. It gets very strange, and I don't even know how to articulate this, but there's something there. So my point is that as this technology emerges, we will be creating our own new realities. So there will be a reality, like what we all live in now is The reality of being in these bodies that have been around, that evolved over millions of years, and have been the same for over 100,000 years, we are entering that world of Neo-Sapiens, where there is going to be a reality beyond anything any human being has experienced in the past. We will literally also, if we are connected to the internet, We will become the internet. We will end up becoming one giant organism where all of us are interconnected, where my emotions and my pain and my memories and my life and your emotions, we're just swapping them, you know, just like we swap all this data online right now. It is just becoming one giant thing. Now, a lot of mystical philosophers And great thinkers have posited the idea that heaven is that ultimate unification of all of consciousness, right? So, you know, whether you call it nirvana or heaven or any other name, it's transcending yourself, becoming more than yourself, and entering a space where you are truly part of— Of the universe. of a being greater than yourself. So there is that potential, as we create the internet, to create a sort of heaven where none of us are— all of us are together, and all of us, we're in this greater world of sensations and ideas and sharing than we have ever had before. But there's also a danger. So, you know, like any technology, there are great things we could do, and then there are very horrible things that could result from it that are unanticipated. Now, if somebody hacks into your cell phone or your bank account, they can steal your identity, but it's not your real identity. It's more like your money. And that's bad enough, right? Right? That's pretty bad if you get hacked and they steal your, you know, they do identity theft. But if they're connected, if your brain is connected directly to the internet, then it will be real identity theft. They could take you. They could literally erase you. They could reprogram you in a way without you even knowing it. So you think you're in control of your own will, but it's actually somebody else. And who do we trust with this technology? Well, apparently not Mark Zuckerberg. He didn't do that good a job at protecting our data. Do we trust a government? Do we trust Donald Trump? Do we trust— who do we trust? Decentralized. Yeah, decentralized, a blockchain, right? You're going to have to have technology that protects us, technology which really doesn't exist today, and it has to be so foolproof, and we have to have so much faith in it, that we're willing to open up our brains to that potential of being hacked. So my final slide here is that, you know, our future could go 2 ways, right? We could literally create heaven on earth. So we are all one giant being, and we are all working in unison, and we are experiencing these amazing things. Or it could be hell, where there's some evil AI or evil people controlling everything we do, and we're more like zombies, you know, where we don't even know it. Like, we think we're free, and we're not actually free. So, Whichever path we go down, I'm speaking to entrepreneurs around the world because I think we want to raise awareness for this. All of you in the room here are some of the super creative, ambitious people who are embracing technology. Well, you're going to be building a lot of this. And in essence, you're going to be setting the direction for the future of humanity. So what you build, whether you like it or not, whether you think deeply about it or not, is going to have a profound impact on where we are headed as a human race. So I believe these discussions that just— I'm just going— I'm just kicking it off, but we're about to have an open discussion— are something that we need to have around the world, and we need to start talking about The morality of it, and where we want to take it. Because if you honestly believe we won't go there, right, people won't allow this to happen, I will tell you, it's going to be very hard to stop. It is going to be very hard to stop. Think about it. I talk to people all over the world who say, you know, I wish I didn't have to use a cell phone. Because it interrupts me all the time, and there's too many distractions. I'm not spending enough time with other people. And at the same time, we all use these cell phones because we can't live without them. Well, this technology is going to be way, way beyond the cell phone. Right? Look, everybody around you is suddenly going to gain infinite storage capacity. They're going to be able to communicate on a level that you can't even communicate. They're going to be able to feel and see things you can't do. They're going to be super smart because they're going to have the cloud processing power of the whole internet. You will believe— if you don't connect, you are totally on the outside. And those people who connect are going to be so much more powerful simply by the nature of that connection. So technology has a way of forcing— it's sort of a one-way path. I've never seen humanity Roll back technology. What we can do is control it. So like with nuclear weapons, we've barely kept those in control, you know? With other weapons, not so much, like chemical weapons. But we need to start talking about this now. I know Elon Musk is a big person talking about this. Many other people will be discussing it. So that is my talk. I just want to say before we open it up— Thank you. To questions. If you want to reach me or any of our team— Steve Austin, are you here? Yes. Steve's on our team. He's our lead instructor. He's an amazing guy. If you think— if you like me speaking, wait till you hear Steve. He's a passionate man. He's like amazing. And then Naomi's there. But you can just go to founderspace.com and you just contact us. We always respond. So we'll always respond. You won't be ignored. And okay, thank you very much for being here, and we are going to open it up. Thank you.