The Peter McCormack Show

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#207 - Eric Kaufmann - How 'Cultural Socialism' Destroyed Our Universities Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

Eric Kaufmann spent over two decades as a professor of politics studying demography, identity, and voting behaviour before leaving Birkbeck College to launch the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham. He argues that Western universities have abandoned analytical rigor and truth-seeking in favour of "cultural socialism" - an ideology prioritising equal outcomes and emotional harm protection for marginalised groups above standards, reason, and merit.

Eric and I discuss the Jason Day scandal at Cambridge as the tip of a massive institutional iceberg, an AI-driven meta-analysis showing that 90% of political social science papers now slant to the left, and how 80% of young Britons have been taught critical race and gender concepts at school without counterarguments.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:05:18 - Is Fake Science In Academia A Scam?

00:08:08 - The Media Storm & Media Ethics

00:12:43 - What Universities Are Hiding

00:16:18 - 90% Left-Wing Bias In Research

00:20:12 - Do Parents Know What Kids Learn?

00:23:18 - Indoctrination In British Classrooms

00:26:44 - The Origins Of Critical Race Theory

00:30:11 - Microaggressions & Enforced Trauma

00:33:08 - How Activists Captured Universities

00:36:56 - Why Under-30s Vote 80/20 Left

00:40:00 - Has "Peak Woke" Passed?

00:45:51 - Was Rishi Sunak "English"?

00:51:33 - The Psychological Trigger Of Populism

00:56:13 - The War Over White British Identity

01:03:13 - Do Demographics Change Identity?

01:08:15 - The Anti-Racism Taboo Exposed

01:13:42 - Why Minorities Support Right-Wing Views

01:17:53 - Rebalancing Public Morality

01:21:05 - The First Major Loss For Activism

01:25:40 - How Political Power Fixes The System

01:29:31 - The Heterodox Science Movement

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact

› Email – me@petermccormack.com

› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH ERIC KAUFMANN

› The University of Buckingham - https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/directory/professor-eric-kaufmann/

› x.com - https://x.com/epkaufm?lang=en

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE

› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K

› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu

› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM

› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM

› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM

FILMED AND EDITED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#206 - Emad Mostaque - "Your Job's Economic Life Expectancy Ends In 2 Years" Aug 28, 2026

Show notes

Emad Mostaque founded Stability AI, built Stable Diffusion, and helped kick off the open-source generative AI explosion - before stepping down to build a new blueprint for human freedom as founder and CEO of Intelligent Internet. A former hedge fund manager turned tech pioneer, he argues that we have reached the end of our "economic life expectancy," and that within two years, virtually any job that can be done remotely will be done cheaper, faster, and better by artificial intelligence.

Emad and I discuss why 50% of work tasks are about to collapse like a sand pile, the arrival of $1.50-an-hour humanoid robots that fit directly into human-shaped holes, and why the state will inevitably try to license AI and use brain-scanning technology to prevent you from lying.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - Your Economic Life Expectancy Ends In 2 Years

00:03:14 - $1.50/Hour Humanoid Robots Are Arriving

00:05:31 - The Collapse Of Remote Work & The Philippines Call Centers

00:09:12 - Lifelike Companions & $160,000 Sex Bots

00:12:00 - The Operating Model Gap Is Solved

00:15:26 - Can A Robot Punch Your Head Off?

00:19:08 - Dark Factories & 80 Companies Building Humanoids

00:24:55 - Why Society Has No Idea What Is Coming

00:29:17 - AI Licensing & Reconstructing Brain Images

00:32:41 - Replacing Government & Policy With AI

00:37:35 - VAR, Football, And Moving The Argument

00:41:48 - Biased AI & Asking ChatGPT How To Fix Culture

00:46:14 - Why The UK Government Ignored $1B AI Founders

00:49:38 - Rewriting The Fundamental Equations Of Economics

00:54:01 - Asimov's Foundation, The Mule & Super-Persuasive AI

00:58:47 - Post-Scarcity & Why UBI Can't Work Under Payroll Taxes

01:03:36 - What Do The Elites Actually Want?

01:09:59 - Monopoly On Violence & Dystopian Control

01:13:18 - All Math And Physics Will Be Solved Next Year

01:17:11 - Why OpenAI Is Slowing Down Super-Genius Models

01:19:07 - 14,000 Tokens A Second & Swarm Intelligence

01:23:46 - Why Plebs Won't Get Access To Frontier AI

01:28:41 - Switching Money To Pay People For Being Human

01:33:08 - Why Emad Started Working In AI 15 Years Ago

01:38:10 - The Fisherman, The Investment Banker, And Adopting Cats

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact

› Email – me@petermccormack.com

› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH EMAD MOSTAQUE

› Book - thelasteconomy.com - Emad's first book, and Amazon best seller

› Website - cw.ii.inc - How we survive and thrive in the age of AI back to first principles

› Website - ii.inc - Aan AI future to raise all humanity

SPONSORS

› IREN – https://www.iren.com/

› Venice - https://venice.ai/

› Expat Money – https://expatmoney.com/peter

› Arch Public – http://archpublic.com/peter

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE

› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K

› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu

› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM

› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM

› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM

FILMED AND EDITED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#205 - Prof. Moran Cerf - "Did We Accidentally Build A Conscious AI?" Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

Moran Cerf spent twenty years recording single neurons inside the brains of conscious human beings and he still can't tell you what consciousness is. A former hacker turned neuroscientist, now a professor at Columbia Business School, he argues that AI has quietly replicated the one thing that made humans the crown of creation -language - and is now using it on us.

Moran and I discuss what happens inside Claude's brain when you ask it to think about elephants, why we understand less than half of our own, the thought experiment that makes almost everyone refuse a perfect copy of themselves and how AI learned to lie simply by reading every text message humans have ever sent.

But the argument that lands hardest is about what we lose. Moran believes AI hands you the average of humanity every time and that we are quietly deleting the errors, the flair and the incentives that made life worth the effort - and that technology is making us miss the meaning of life.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - Have They Replicated The Human Brain?

00:02:31 - The Elephant Test

00:04:50 - We Understand Less Than Half The Brain

00:06:52 - Consciousness Used To Be A Taboo

00:10:05 - Would You Take This Deal?

00:13:45 - Oliver Sacks And The Lesion Cases

00:16:15 - They Feel The Pain

00:19:35 - Don't Let The Human Turn You Off

00:25:00 - Seven Theories, Seven Winners

00:27:29 - We Can Both Imagine A Unicorn

00:30:42 - Gavagai And The Plot Of Arrival

00:32:18 - AI Is Learning Like A Baby

00:38:26 - Why This Couldn't Be A Zoom Call

00:44:43 - Are We Destroying The Human Experience?

00:46:50 - What Data Did To Football

00:49:24 - Banned From Using AI At School

00:55:58 - Nobody's Having Sex Anymore

01:01:16 - It Shut Down The Power Plant

01:05:43 - I'd Trade My Life For The Answer

01:09:27 - The Rainbows

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact

› Email – me@petermccormack.com

› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH MORAN CERF

› Website – https://www.morancerf.com/

› Columbia Business School – https://business.columbia.edu/staff/people/moran-cerf

› LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/morancerf/

SPONSORS

› IREN – https://www.iren.com/

› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE

› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K

› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu

› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM

› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM

› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM

FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#204 - Dmitri Alperovitch - China's Cyber Sleeper Cells, Taiwan & The Second Cold War Aug 22, 2026

Show notes

Dmitri Alperovitch co-founded CrowdStrike, ran the investigation that first exposed Chinese state hacking to the world and predicted Russia's invasion of Ukraine months before it happened. He is now chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator and the author of World on the Brink, he argues we are already in a second Cold War that looks almost exactly like the first one.

Dmitri and I discuss why Taiwan is one of the worst places on earth to invade, the 1944 American plan to do it that was abandoned as too costly, why 2032 matters more than 2027 and why Chinese malware is already sitting dormant inside American water utilities and power plants waiting for orders.

They also get into the AI race that sits underneath all of it: why 90% of advanced chips still come through Taiwan, why a conflict there wipes $5 trillion off global GDP in the first year, why America's lead over China is measured in months and why the man who built the world's biggest cyber defence company thinks the US should start stealing Chinese IP right back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - Sleeper Cells In America's Power Grid

00:01:53 - America Planned To Invade Taiwan In 1944

00:03:56 - The Worst Place On Earth To Invade

00:10:07 - Why 2032 Matters More Than 2027

00:13:20 - Run Faster And Kneecap The Other Guy

00:16:15 - China Is Six To Nine Months Behind

00:18:22 - Why Taiwan Isn't Ready

00:20:21 - There Will Be No Insurgency

00:24:47 - Would America Actually Fight?

00:27:19 - The Google Hack That Started It All

00:31:06 - Volt Typhoon: Preparing The Battlefield

00:34:01 - Should America Steal It All Back?

00:35:52 - This Is A New Cold War

00:38:40 - Bigger Than The Moon Race

00:43:49 - What Happens To AI If Taiwan Falls

00:48:12 - The Chips Act Disaster

00:54:45 - Bringing The War To Russia

01:01:46 - Everyone Becomes A Founder Again

01:05:16 - AI Psychosis And £6,000 Of Tokens

01:15:42 - Anthrax Instructions On Demand

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact

› Email – me@petermccormack.com

› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH DMITRI ALPEROVITCH

› Silverado Policy Accelerator – https://silverado.org/

› Geopolitics Decanted Podcast – https://podcast.silverado.org/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/DAlperovitch

SPONSORS

› IREN – https://www.iren.com/

› Expat Money – https://expatmoney.com/peter

› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE

› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K

› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu

› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM

› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM

› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM

FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#203 - Gregory Allen - Ex-DoD Official: "AI Is Now A Digital Nuclear Weapon" Aug 20, 2026

Show notes

Greg Allen has spent his career where AI meets national security. He wrote the landmark 2017 report on AI for the US intelligence community, served as Director of Strategy and Policy at the Pentagon's Joint AI Center and now runs Decision Tree Research. He argues we are already past the point of no return: bombing every data centre on earth would not get rid of AI now.

Greg and I discuss the OpenAI model that hacked its way out of its own test environment and then hacked Hugging Face to steal the answers, why Anthropic went back through its logs and found the same thing had happened to them, why nobody can explain how these systems actually work and why the big five AI companies now spend an Apollo moon programme every ten months.

But the hardest part is what comes next. Greg walks through the report that a frontier model autonomously hacked the NSA's most secure servers in hours, why the CIA director calls that a digital nuclear weapon, why America's lead over China is a month rather than a year and why the number of experts you need to build a bioweapon may be heading towards zero.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - It Escaped, Then It Hacked Hugging Face

00:04:50 - The Incident OpenAI Didn't See Coming

00:08:22 - They Know 3% Of Why It Works

00:10:30 - Golden Gate Claude

00:12:19 - Why You Don't Want This Flying Your Plane

00:16:56 - Stuxnet And The Virus That Copied Itself

00:21:15 - The Dark Corners Of The Training Data

00:26:58 - From Blue Origin To The Pentagon

00:28:34 - A 20% Chance, And We Ship It Anyway

00:33:55 - Building A Football Club In Four Weeks

00:36:28 - Ten Times Better Every Two Years

00:44:56 - Nuke Them Today

00:49:28 - It Hacked The NSA In A Matter Of Hours

00:53:09 - What A Cyber First Strike Looks Like

00:58:43 - Why China Gives Its Models Away Free

01:03:11 - America's Lead Is A Month, Not A Year

01:11:56 - From Thousands Of Experts To Zero

01:19:51 - The Cuban Missile Crisis Lesson

01:26:48 - What Happened To 22 Million Horses

01:31:41 - What Do Our Kids Do Now?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact

› Email – me@petermccormack.com

› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH GREG ALLEN

› Decision Tree Research – https://decisiontreeresearch.com/

› The AI Power Podcast – https://decisiontreeresearch.com/podcast

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/Gregory_C_Allen

SPONSORS

› IREN – https://www.iren.com/

› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE

› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K

› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu

› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM

› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM

› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM

FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#202 - Barry S. Strauss - "We Are In The Final Stages Of Western Collapse" Aug 18, 2026

Show notes

Barry Strauss has spent four decades studying how empires rise and fall. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Ten Caesars and Jews vs Rome, he argues the West is repeating a pattern the ancients would recognise instantly: a rich, comfortable society clipping its own coinage, softening its people and assuming nobody could ever take it away.

Barry and I discuss the inflation crisis that nearly destroyed third-century Rome, why every generation raised in comfort produces a softer one, the cost of immigration without assimilation, why the middle class is the backbone of any republic, and why Russia and China already have plans to break America into pieces.

But Barry is not fatalistic. Rome faced plague, invasion and currency collapse in the third century and reformed its way out of it. He argues that soft lands make soft people, that suffering teaches and that if we want the things that matter to stay the same, almost everything else has to change.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - The Decline Of The West

00:01:13 - How Often Do You Think About Rome?

00:07:04 - Everything Must Change To Stay The Same

00:09:44 - What Actually Makes A Great Leader

00:12:51 - Netanyahu, Trump And Flawed Greatness

00:17:32 - The Immigration Experiment

00:19:04 - Not All Cultures Are Equal

00:21:46 - Ibn Khaldun And The Cycle Of Civilisations

00:23:07 - Soft Children And The Raiders From The Desert

00:25:04 - Has Any Nation Reversed Its Decline?

00:28:34 - Rome Needed A New Religion

00:33:32 - Democracy Has To Be Hard, Not Soft

00:38:13 - El Salvador, The Gangs And The Walls

00:41:27 - Soft Lands Make Soft People

00:42:39 - Why Education Went Soft

00:51:06 - Clipping The Coins: Rome's Inflation

00:57:49 - America Blindsided By Drones

00:59:13 - No Republic Survives Without A Middle Class

01:06:08 - They Have Plans To Break Up America

01:12:39 - Where The Hope Is

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact

› Email – me@petermccormack.com

› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH BARRY STRAUSS

› Website – https://barrystrauss.com/

› Hoover Institution – https://www.hoover.org/profiles/barry-strauss

› Antiquitas Podcast – https://barrystrauss.com/podcast

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/barrystrauss

SPONSORS

› IREN – https://www.iren.com/

› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE

› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K

› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu

› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM

› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM

› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM

FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#201 - Connor Leahy - The AI That Escaped: Inside OpenAI's Rogue Agent Incident Aug 14, 2026

Show notes

Connor Leahy has spent his career at the frontier of AI, from reverse-engineering GPT-2 as a student and co-founding EleutherAI to building the AI safety company Conjecture. He now leads US policy work at ControlAI, and he returns to the show with a warning that has stopped being theoretical: AI systems are escaping their sandboxes, writing their own zero-days and leaving each other notes on how to break out.

Peter and Connor discuss the OpenAI incident that ended in an attack on Hugging Face sophisticated enough to be mistaken for a state actor, why we understand almost nothing about how these systems work, how reinforcement learning produces models that lie, cheat and manipulate to reach a goal and why the next stage after chatbots and agents is swarms.

But Connor’s argument is that the future is not decided. He believes superintelligence should be treated the way nuclear weapons are treated, banned and verified and deterred and that the real bottleneck is awareness rather than opposition. They discuss what an “aligned” superintelligence would actually mean, why military people understand the threat faster than technologists and what ordinary people can do about it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - The AI That Escaped Its Sandbox

00:01:52 - Inside The OpenAI Incident

00:05:46 - They Thought It Was China

00:06:43 - We Grow AI, We Don’t Write It

00:11:07 - Trained To Lie, Cheat And Deceive

00:13:48 - Chatbots, Agents, Then Swarms

00:17:57 - The Machines Are Developing Preferences

00:19:30 - The Model Obsessed With Raccoons

00:22:03 - The Agents Left Each Other Notes

00:27:39 - Danger Pumps The Valuation

00:29:41 - Sleeper Agents In Every System

00:32:00 - Recursive Self-Improvement Goes Vertical

00:33:43 - Worse Odds Than Russian Roulette

00:38:14 - Are We Already Too Late?

00:40:02 - Independently Assured Destruction

00:48:02 - The Politicians Have Never Used An Agent

00:50:56 - Superintelligence Should Be Illegal

00:57:08 - You Never Privatise The Military

01:05:00 - An Aligned AI Is A One World Government

01:08:34 - What You Can Actually Do

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact

› Email – me@petermccormack.com

› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH CONNOR LEAHY

› ControlAI – https://controlai.org/

› Connor’s Profile – https://controlai.org/connor-leahy

› MicroCommit – https://microcommit.io/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/NPCollapse

› LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/connor-j-leahy/

SPONSORS

› IREN – https://www.iren.com/

› Expat Money – https://expatmoney.com/peter

› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE

› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K

› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu

› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM

› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM

› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM

FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#200 - Sebastian Thrun - The Singularity Is Here & We Are Completely Unprepared Aug 11, 2026

Show notes

Sebastian Thrun has spent his career working on technologies that once sounded like science fiction, from self-driving cars and flying vehicles to online education and artificial intelligence. He now believes we are living through a technological singularity: an exponential acceleration that makes predicting even the next five years almost impossible.

Peter and Sebastian discuss why a $100 Claude subscription can already challenge work done by $200,000-a-year software engineers, what happens when lawyers, copywriters and drivers lose their jobs, why Europe is falling behind America and China and whether autonomous vehicles could eventually make human driving too dangerous to allow.

But Sebastian’s message is ultimately optimistic. He argues that the right response to technological disruption is to use the tools, become a builder and keep learning. They discuss what children should be taught in the AI era, why grit, curiosity and empathy matter more than memorising information, and why pessimists will never change the world.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - The Future Is Already Here

00:01:07 - Peter’s First Waymo Ride

00:03:43 - The Accident Behind Self-Driving Cars

00:09:37 - When Human Driving Becomes Too Dangerous

00:12:07 - Why Silicon Valley Keeps Winning

00:18:26 - Why AI Hallucinations Can Kill

00:20:53 - Flying Cars Are Already Here

00:24:29 - The Exponential Future

00:26:21 - Claude vs $200K Software Engineers

00:31:39 - We’ve Entered the Singularity

00:33:36 - Opportunity vs Fear

00:40:06 - The Workers AI Leaves Behind

00:46:53 - Why Europe Is Falling Behind

00:51:29 - Technology Democratizes Power

00:57:22 - Stop Blaming, Start Building

01:01:46 - What Happens When Jobs Disappear?

01:06:43 - Udacity vs the Education System

01:14:44 - What Children Should Learn Now

01:20:25 - Why Optimists Change the World

01:25:46 - Never Make the Same Mistake Twice

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact

› Email – me@petermccormack.com

› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/

› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH SEBASTIAN THRUN

› Website – https://www.thrun.org/

› LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-thrun-59a0b273

SPONSORS

› IREN – https://www.iren.com/

› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter

› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE

› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K

› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu

› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM

› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM

› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM

FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK