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Moonshots · · 37 分钟

Palmer Luckey:自主武器早已存在,以及 Anduril为何不造人形机器人|EP #295

Peter DiamandisSalim IsmailDave BlundinAlexander Wissner-GrossPalmer Luckey

机器人航天与国防技术企业经营
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TL;DR
  • Anduril赢得野火 XPRIZE,证明其自主化工作流同样适用于民用紧急事件,而响应速度会改变工程方案。 这笔220万美元奖金中包括 Lockheed 提供的100万美元,项目涵盖火情探测、分类、误报过滤、灭火剂选择和投送。不同于炸弹的是,“10分钟响应和1小时响应之间的差别,需要完全不同的工具”,因为火势会在系统行进途中持续扩大。

  • Luckey认为,与其担心AI灭绝人类,更大的风险是恶意人士利用“能力中等的AI”制造伤害。 他的基准情景极具通缩色彩:AI应把农业和纺织业已经实现的规模经济带到社会其他领域。衡量丰裕程度的标准是:购买2周所需的热量,成本已经低于联邦最低工资的1小时收入。

  • 前线自主化在作战层面不可避免,因为集中式智能会带来通信链路和指挥中心的脆弱性。 链路可能被干扰、拦截或切断,对手也可以直接攻击控制中心;水下平台甚至可能完全无法接入网络。Luckey认为,概念上的分水岭几十年前、甚至几千年前就已跨过:Aegis、SeaWiz、SeaRAM、越战时期追踪无线电发射源的导弹、地雷,甚至按重量选择目标的陷阱,都能在无需实时人工确认的情况下执行预设意图。

  • 今天的通用基础模型,很大程度上是 Anduril 武器系统所需的错误技术。 Luckey称这类模型具有非确定性,难以验证:文本输入、文本输出的模型既不会对原始雷达数据分类,也无法处理被动声呐。Anduril自2017年起就在开发这一专业化类别,公司名称中的“AI”首字母“完全不是巧合”。

  • 通用防务机器人恰恰会在专业化溢价最高的领域失分。 在工厂、医院和餐厅等场景,一台差5%的人形机器人仍可能凭借通用性胜出;但稳定领先对手5%的作战能力,足以支撑巨额投入。因此,防务更像赛车运动,而不是大众汽车市场:“异形、极度专业化的机器人系统”仍会持续跑赢通用平台。

  • Anduril会使用人形机器人,但不会自己制造,因为 Luckey相信已经有其他团队能把这件事做好。 人形机器人可以在不让人员暴露于风险中的情况下,操作价值数百万美元乃至数亿美元的传统雷达,但 Anduril亲自制造它们的边际影响有限。基于同样的逻辑,Anduril也不涉足小型撞击式四旋翼无人机和发射服务,而是专注于太空产品、卫星和传感器。

  • Anduril的商业模式瞄准的是一个防务采购市场:几年前,5家公司拿下了主要防务采购项目约80%的份额。 公司先用自有资金开发产品,再出售可运行的系统,把成功的项目负责人转化为重复购买者。创始时的经济学叙事相当大胆:通过替换成本高达应有水平10倍的系统,每年为纳税人节省“数千亿美元”,同时赚取“数百亿美元”。

  • AI可能早在触及创始人最不光鲜的职责之前,就已经自动化了技术性工作。 Luckey预计,AI还会先推动其他业务流程加速约10年,之后才会触及法律责任、融资、产品架构、人事决策和冲突解决。他对想成为单人创始人的人的警告是:“当创始人一直感觉像是AI抢走了你的工作;只不过那份工作其实是被其他人拿走的。”

  • Luckey从VR得到的核心教训是人体工学,而不只是算力。 他的 Santa Cruz 原型机把电池和计算单元放在头后部,并称 CV1 的人体工学接近完美。他称赞 Meta 新款 View 眼镜把计算和电池移到头部之外,采用柔性的“可变形织物”,售价仅为 Apple 产品的三分之一,像素密度略高,重量则降至1/8。

摘要 · 为研究而整理的核心内容

1. 自主化让野火响应变成与损害复合式扩大赛跑

  • Anduril赢得220万美元的野火 XPRIZE,其中100万美元由 Lockheed 提供;Luckey形容 Lockheed 既是合作伙伴,也是竞争对手。这个项目源自 Anduril在2017年启动、2019年完成的自主消防坦克。在 Luckey看来,这项技术早在10多年前就已具备实现条件,只是这个问题已经“在政治上无法继续忽视”。

  • 这套经过演示的系统,从火情探测和分类开始,随后过滤香烟、篝火、道路信号弹等误报,再根据火势、地形和所需速度选择合适的灭火剂,最后“触达目标并将其扑灭”——流程几乎与 Anduril的军用项目完全一致。

  • 关键差别在时间尺度:无论投送需要1分钟还是1天,目标都还是同一个目标;但蔓延中的火灾可能在1小时后就需要完全不同的载具。Luckey将其概括为:“10分钟响应和1小时响应之间的差别,需要完全不同的工具。”

2. AI风险来自人类意图,战场自主化早已存在

  • 当被问及AI毁灭人类的概率时,Luckey拒绝接受这个前提:“我就是不担心AI会毁灭我们。”他表示自己“真的、真的担心”恶人掌握能力中等的系统,并批评近期转向末日论的人,因为他们此前并没有花多少时间研究更广泛的存在性风险。

  • 他的乐观情景是:资源开采、加工和转化成本在全经济范围内大幅坍缩。农业和纺织业展示了终点:“购买2周所需的热量,成本低于联邦最低工资的1小时收入。”他预计,AI会把这种规模效率扩展到整个社会。

  • Dave Blundin提出的问题是,智能应该放在哪里:总部拥有更多算力,前线系统则拥有更快的响应速度。Luckey认为,与生存能力相比,延迟是次要问题——成千上万的资产不能依赖敌人可以干扰、拦截或切断的链路,对手也可以直接攻击控制中心。他用《星球大战》中的 Naboo 战役作比:摧毁 Trade Federation 的中央AI后,“所有战斗机器人都失去了动力”。

  • Luckey也不接受自主武器是一个全新的类别。Aegis、SeaWiz、SeaRAM,以及越战时期能够识别无线电发射源的导弹,都能在人类划定任务区域后、无需进一步确认便自行行动;更早的陷阱甚至可以利用重量,有选择地捕获骑乘中的指挥官。“自主武器已经存在了非常、非常久。”

3. 在防务领域,可验证的专业模型比通用基础模型更重要

  • 提问者不是 Blundin,而是 Diamandis:Anduril会使用中国的开源基础模型,还是自己开发模型?Luckey的回答是,今天的基础模型“很大程度上是非确定性的”,无法针对相关任务完成充分验证。大型语言模型或许能用于防务,但“它们不会为我的导弹提供制导,也不会对雷达数据分类”。

  • Anduril需要的,是能够摄取原始雷达和被动声呐数据的系统,而不是处理文本提示的模型。Luckey称,公司自2017年起就在开发这一专业化类别,并有意将公司命名为 Anduril Industries,使其首字母缩写为 AI:“这完全不是巧合。”

  • 即将推出的1000万美元 XPRIZE则指向另一个方向:理解动物的思维方式,并用野生智能物种自己的语言,把沟通效果提升“10倍”。Luckey认为,非人类认知最终可能反过来启发AI,尤其是在能效、时间效率以及理解问题的替代方式上。

4. 防务将奖励异形机器,而不是一种通用机器人

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross问,自主系统是否可能最终收敛为一种通用杀戮机器人。Luckey认为,制造业、酒店业和医疗领域存在这种收敛的可能:一台煎汉堡肉饼的能力差5%的人形机器人,只要还能作为护士或装配技师使用,仍可能凭借同一平台的通用性胜出。

  • 防务会反转这笔交易,因为稳定领先对手5%,就可能值得投入巨额资金。Anduril制造的机器人潜艇可以下潜至6,000米并在海床停留数月,也制造能够开到山丘、停在那里等待的水面系统,以及各种专业化飞机。一台既能抵达海底、又能抵达月球的机器,“如果不必潜水,抵达月球会快得多”。

  • Diamandis原本预计 Luckey会制造人形机器人,Luckey的直接回应是:“你错了。”正因为他相信人形机器人前景强大,他才预计由其他团队提供这些平台,而 Anduril负责让它们操作传统雷达及其他由人类设计的设备。结论是,防务更接近赛车运动,而不是面向大众的汽车平台。

5. Anduril靠自筹资金造产品取胜,创始人仍需承担责任

  • Salim Ismail将防务部门描述为长期高度集中的机构,拥有强大的“组织免疫系统”。Luckey称,最初最难解决的问题是融资:投资者相信 Anduril能造出产品,却不相信政府能大规模采购。几年前,主要防务采购项目约80%流向5家公司。

  • Anduril的突破在于“与其说是承包商,不如说是产品公司”:公司用自己的钱先造出产品,再拿去销售。按时交付让政府人员能从选择 Anduril中获益,形成简单的重复购买循环:“我知道怎样让自己的工作更轻松,我刚刚把合同交给 Anduril。”

  • Luckey从 John Carmack那里借鉴了风险判断逻辑:即便直接冲击AGI只有1%的成功概率,风险加权后的结果仍可能要求你去尝试。Luckey把同样的逻辑用于防务,相比再创办一家游戏、汽车或火箭公司,他更愿意用一个小概率去解决一个规模巨大的问题。

  • 他还认为,一些已经退休的亿万富翁除了资本之外,还有一种未被充分利用的资源:号召力。由于人们相信他们有能力领导团队,他们可以围绕棘手问题聚拢人才和资本;在 Luckey看来,让这种能力闲置是不可接受的。

  • Luckey早期的训练来自 ModRetro:这是一个他在14岁或15岁时创建的在线硬件改装社区,后来发展到数千名活跃参与者。这个社区教会他如何推广、设计组织架构,如何让2个彼此憎恨的天才继续贡献而不“互相掐死”,以及公开与他人共同推进项目的价值。

  • 在VR领域,Luckey得到的产品教训是人体工学:他的 Santa Cruz 原型机把电池和计算单元放在头后部,而他称 CV1 的人体工学接近完美。他称赞 Meta 新款 View 眼镜把计算和电池移到头部之外,使用柔性的“可变形织物”,售价仅为 Apple 产品的三分之一,像素密度略高,重量则降至1/8。

  • AI不会消除创始人的负担。创始人仍需承担法律责任、融资、架构、人事,以及决定何时推翻错误决策;与此同时,技术工人可能会像艺术家面对相机那样看待代码生成。Luckey划出的分界线是:“如果你想和技术一起工作,就去给别人打工;如果你想没完没了地处理一堆破事,就去创业。”

完整逐字稿
Peter Diamandis

Wow, it’s much brighter here.

Palmer Luckey

That’s right. Well, you know, the future is bright. There are lens flares in the future.

Peter Diamandis

Yes. So, congratulations to everyone at the Oscars of optimism. Of course, we open the summit with the king of autonomous weapons systems.

Let me start by saying that this week we are awarding 3 XPRIZEs. Palmer, congratulations on winning our XPRIZE Wildfire competition.

Palmer Luckey

Thank you very much. We worked on this for a long time.

Peter Diamandis

Come on, let’s bring the slide up on the screen. Palmer won $2.2 million for Anduril—as if you needed it. A million of that amount is from Lockheed, which is quite interesting.

Palmer Luckey

We work a lot with Lockheed. We also compete with them, but in the defense sector, we compete with their fighter division and cooperate on some of their payloads. We do a lot of things together.

Peter Diamandis

You and I have both been trying to get this autonomous firefighting thing going for a long time. You announced this award back in 2019, and a lot of time has passed.

Palmer Luckey

One of Anduril’s first 2 products was an autonomous firefighting tank, which we started building in 2017 and completed in 2019. It’s crazy that we allow fires to become natural disasters before we put them out.

It’s ridiculous that people say, “Technology finally made this possible.” I won’t correct them publicly too often, but it’s been possible for more than a decade. It has simply become politically impossible to ignore this problem now.

Peter Diamandis

Now let’s watch a 1-minute video about what your team has achieved. Can you comment on it?

1. Fire Detection, Classification, and Response

Palmer Luckey

Of course. This was an example of what we were doing at the range, where we were detecting and classifying fires. What isn’t really visible here is that you also need to filter out false fires. This was also part of the tests.

You have to distinguish between someone smoking a cigarette, a bonfire, a road flare, and something that has the characteristics of a real fire. This is something that emergency services should be notified about.

Then you need to choose the right extinguishing agent depending on the type of fire in the area. You want to use the most effective tool that can react and arrive on time. If the object is moving faster, something else may be needed.

Depending on whether it’s a forest or a hill covered in bushes, different solutions may be required. It’s all about detection, classification, screening, selection of means, and then reaching the target and defeating it.

Lastly, in most of our projects, particularly for the military, you go through the same steps. But if you’ve found a target, whether it takes you an hour to get there or 10 minutes often doesn’t matter much.

When it comes to a fire, the difference between a 10-minute response and an hour-long response requires completely different tools. A bomb is still a bomb, regardless of whether it takes a day, an hour, or a minute to deliver it. But when a fire spreads, you need to choose the right means to put it out before it gets too big.

Peter Diamandis

We are going to announce the funding of the new XPRIZE in a month. Until then, it’s a secret, but now we’ll lift the curtain a little. Another prize of $10 million. Will you share with us what we will be doing?

2. Biological Intelligence and Animal Communication

Palmer Luckey

Of course. We have to keep the details secret because there are interesting nuances, but I’ll say this: I’m not interested in spending money on racing with artificial intelligence. I believe that the field of artificial intelligence is already well understood by many people.

I think we don’t do enough studying of biological intelligence, especially outside of humans. So this prize will be dedicated to understanding how animals think, so that we can communicate with them 10 times better than the current level allows for the most intelligent species.

And not just with trained animals, but with wild ones—in their own language. I think we will be able to learn a lot of new things.

If you look at the major language models, they are based on a distilled way of thinking and communicating developed by humanity. I believe we can learn a lot from all the other species on this planet.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this finds applications in AI, especially where greater efficiency is needed: energy efficiency, time efficiency, or a different way of looking at things. One head is good, but 2 are better—whatever metaphor you want to use.

Peter Diamandis

I like it. Okay, I’ll start with the first official question. Probability of death from AI, or P(doom): You’re in the AI industry and in the defense industry. What is your assessment of the probability of death from AI?

Palmer Luckey

I’m just not worried about AI destroying us. I’m not worried about AI killing us. I’m really, really worried about evil people who use moderately competent AI to commit evil deeds.

3. AI’s Impact on Costs and Society

I’m a little disappointed in a lot of people who have just gotten into this hobby of predicting doom. It’s like how we dealt with the war in Ukraine, when suddenly all these people who had the most absurd ideas about the army their whole lives—and people who believed that we were living at the end of history, that we had overcome conflicts, that we lived in a world where you could just write an angry letter to the UN—forgot that it only works when backed up by a real threat of violence.

Then they suddenly changed their minds. You see it with AI. People who haven’t thought about this problem for more than a few years, or maybe even a few months, are saying, “Oh my God, this is the biggest threat to humanity”—people who have spent almost no time analyzing what the biggest threats to humanity are.

They did not speak to any experts in the field. They certainly weren’t buying freeze-dried food or building bunkers like me and many of my friends, who indulged in fantasies about what the end of the world might look like and also actually thought about it.

So yes, the likelihood of death from AI is way down the list for me. I am a great optimist. I think this will significantly reduce the cost of extracting, processing, and converting resources.

You will see every part of society become subject to the same economies of scale and efficiency that industries automated without AI have already seen. Think about agriculture or the textile industry. You can buy a 2-week supply of calories for less than 1 hour of federal minimum wage. This is madness.

Peter Diamandis

Let’s give Palmer a round of applause. Dave.

Dave Blundin

I have a very urgent question. I specialize a bit in systems, chips, and basic AI models. When you put systems and weapons in the field, you can put intelligence into them. That has always been a big problem for the Air Force.

4. Autonomous Weapons and Historical Examples

For example, if we start using drones instead of pilots, who will use the weapons, and how will that decision be made? The downside of transmitting data back to headquarters is the delay. The advantage is that you have much more computing power.

What you can put locally in a device, in the field, or in an airplane is limited, but it is very, very fast. So what’s your philosophy? I think a lot of people are going to ask, “What, are we going to have autonomous decision-making systems roaming around hostile territory?”

Will we have control from headquarters?

Palmer Luckey

More or less. The real concern is not so much latency or computational speed. The problem is that if you rely on a central location for computing, you now need to have a management system that provides reliable, high-speed communication between you and potentially thousands or tens of thousands of active objects.

If the enemy jams your communication, intercepts it, or breaks it, you’re finished. Or worse, they simply won’t aim at the equipment in the field, but will go to where it’s all controlled.

You know, we saw it in a documentary that George Lucas was working on: The Trade Federation blew up its central AI control, and that’s how the Battle of Naboo ended. All the battle droids lost power.

That’s why I believe this is the practical reality that dictates the need to have autonomy not in the rear, but on the front lines. There are other realms, like underwater, where you can’t connect to anything.

Sometimes you can connect, but you don’t want to. Using radio radiation inevitably exposes you. So whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to do it.

I don’t really think it’s as big a change as many people think. There are a lot of people who look at this and say, “Oh my God, Pandora’s box is opening. You will have weapons that will make their own decisions about killing.”

5. Scaling Laws and the Future of Autonomous Robots

But they don’t realize the reality, which is that this has been going on for decades. Look at the Aegis system on destroyers. It has a fully autonomous mode. You can press a button, and it will shoot down anything that comes within a programmed radius, without any human confirmation.

Look at SeaWiz and SeaRAM for shooting down missiles, mortar shells, artillery fire, or approaching boats—the same thing. You can put them in a completely autonomous mode.

Ever since Vietnam, we’ve had missiles that could be launched from an airplane. They flew over the horizon, tried to identify radio emitters that corresponded to the positions of anti-aircraft missile systems, and then hit them without human intervention.

The person just decided, “I’ll send it to this area.” The missile would look for that signal, and the person knew there was a certain probability that it would get it right.

That decision will be up to people, but autonomous weapons are a separate, big conversation that we won’t have today, although I have a lot of thoughts on the fact that autonomous weapons have actually been around for thousands of years.

If we consider it a weapon capable of carrying out the intent of whoever programmed it, regardless of the operator or engineer, look, for example, at pit traps that allow people to pass through but trap a commander on horseback because he is heavier. You can look at certain poison traps that killed people with certain characteristics without harming other people or animals. You can look at many types of land and sea mines, and even torpedoes.

So it all depends on your exact definition, even if you think of myths where people created golems that could go out and fight on their behalf or defend their city. I guess my argument is that we've had autonomous weapons for a very, very long time. It's just a new set of technologies that makes them better.

6. Specialized Robots vs. Humanoids

Peter Diamandis

So the technical question about this is the basic models that are embedded in these remote systems, or in pitfall traps. Yes, now the open-source models are all Chinese, so I'm sure you won't introduce Chinese models into remote weapons. Are you going to create your own basic Anduril models, or how are you going to implement AI into these devices?

Palmer Luckey

Listen, we've been doing this since 2017, so we are way ahead of everyone. We are already decades ahead of this issue. I think the foundation models that people are creating now are not the models that are suitable for this. They are largely nondeterministic. They cannot be verified. This is a completely different category.

What we build, unfortunately, has very few consumer applications, and vice versa. Sure, there are use cases for large language models in defense that make sense, but they don't guide my missiles or classify radar data. We cannot create models that receive text and output text. I need to process raw radar data. I need to process sonar data from passive listening stations on submarines. This is a very specialized field.

And I take some credit for that. All these people talking about how AI will change everything are mostly recent neophytes. Anduril Industries—you may have noticed that the abbreviation is AI—so it was no accident at all.

Peter Diamandis

Okay, Alex, join in.

Alexander Wissner-Gross

I think, continuing our discussion about driving, we're now in an era where you can take advanced models, implement them in robots, and get some pretty amazing results. So I would like to ask you a question about the scaling hypothesis in relation to autonomous weapons systems, or autonomous systems in general. Extrapolating, does Moore's Law exist?

Is there an experience curve for how the capabilities of advanced foundation models evolve, whether from labs or AI companies, or are we seeing some equivalent of Moore's Law for autonomous systems themselves? And maybe the second part of the question is: Do you think we will eventually achieve some kind of convergence?

7. Centralized Defense AI and Military Robotics

You at Anduril create different incarnations in different form factors. Do you ultimately see some kind of universal killer-robot category that would be analogous to a generalist robot, just as we now have generalist models that can potentially perform any task?

Palmer Luckey

No, I don't think so in the defense sector. I think it's possible in manufacturing, hospitality, and medicine because there's an economy of scale that's really important for those types of businesses. And you know, a humanoid robot might not be the optimal shape for frying burgers. This may not be the optimal form for a firefighter. This may not be the optimal form for a nurse or assembly technician.

So you just smile. Even if it's not optimal, the fact that the shape is similar to a human's makes it a very, very successful form factor. And now I can create one robot that will perform all these tasks. I would probably be better off choosing a robot that is 5% slower or, say, less reliable than the optimal burger-frying robot if I can unify it with a robot nurse.

In the defense sector, this is not entirely true because you are constantly participating in races where you need to not just barely outrun your opponent, but significantly outpace him. The goal is not to win the conflict only minimally. The goal is to act dishonestly in order to have an overwhelming threat of force that underpins any diplomatic overtures or negotiations.

Everyone is always pushing the boundaries of what is possible. So, if I have a jet that consistently has a 5% advantage over the enemy, it's worth paying big money for, right? I think the loss of productivity due to a lack of specialization probably makes this approach unviable.

8. Why Palmer Avoids Building Humanoids

Taking this to the extreme, for example, I'm building robotic submarines that are specialized in shape to dive to depths of 6,000 meters and stay on the ocean floor for months. I also have other systems that work on the surface. These are robotic installations that drive up to the hills and wait. There are also other things, like aerial vehicles that perform very specialized tasks, and I just can't imagine a convergence that would make sense.

Unless you're saying we're going to get something cool, like humanoid robots with built-in fusion reactors capable of diving to depths of 6,000 feet.

Alexander Wissner-Gross

Why don't you build these?

Palmer Luckey

You could potentially build something like that, but you'd quickly realize that specialization would allow you to build something much better. You say, "Okay, I've built something that can dive to the bottom of the ocean and fly to the moon." Man, it could get to the moon a lot faster if it didn't have to dive to the bottom of the ocean.

9. Defense Contractors, Innovation, and Investment

So I think defense is going to be an area where you look at, for example, the difference between cars, where everything has common platforms within the same manufacturer, and they also use a lot of the same standards and interfaces. I think you're comparing it to motorsport, where everything is completely different and everything is constantly moving forward. I think the defense sector will probably always be this weird industry of exotic, highly specialized robotic systems.

Peter Diamandis

Palmer, I expected that if anyone was going to build humanoid robots, it would be you.

Palmer Luckey

No, no, you're wrong. I gave up on it because I believe in them. If I didn't believe that humanoid robotics had such a powerful future, I would probably build them. But I want Anduril to create things that wouldn't otherwise exist. That's what I generally want to do. I want to maximize my marginal impact, but they can do the right thing. All the other people are already doing great.

I want to use their robots and do things with them. I think humanoids will be an incredible common API interface between AI and remote systems, as well as many legacy platforms designed for a human to push a lever, press a button, or read a screen. We will be able to take all of this and automate it without completely replacing it.

You have a lot of things like radar systems that cost millions, tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars. No one wants to service them during a heated conflict because they are the first to be hit. But if I can put humanoid robots there, I can automate them without that risk. So, yeah, I won't be building humanoids.

This is also the reason why Anduril doesn't build small impact quadcopters, for example. Too many other companies do this perfectly well. There are many, many industries, and we will not engage in space launches. We create space products. We operate many of our own satellites and many of our own sensors in space, but I don't want to be a launch-service provider. This is for all the other billionaires.

10. Solving Big Global Problems

Salim Ismail

Palmer, you know, when you run Anduril Industries, you decentralize defense, right? The Pentagon and defense ministries around the world were the most centralized structures in human history. You are on the front lines and dealing with this. You probably have a huge problem with the organizational immune system, where people say, "No, we've done this before. We will do it better." They are either trying to pull you in or push you out.

How do you overcome this barrier? Because you do it in a way that, in my opinion, no one has ever managed to do before.

Palmer Luckey

I think this is a very, very difficult problem at the initial stage. Oh. I said something wrong. Oh, I have no idea what this is. Well, until someone turns on the intercom and tells us someone won a million dollars. Congratulations.

What were we talking about?

Salim Ismail

Pentagon centralization versus decentralization.

Palmer Luckey

I will keep talking until someone tells me to stop. So we've made some progress on this. I think there was a fear at the beginning that Anduril wouldn't be able to get through this. Our most difficult problem was raising money. Skippy, could you turn that off? I've been to many such meetings, and I know how it works. That's all. I imagine.

One of our early problems was that potential investors would say, "Palmer, listen, we believe you can create things that work. We believe that you can create great products, but we don't believe that the government is capable of buying them on a large scale," because of the centralization. You know about the problems if you're not in the know.

A few years ago, about 80% of MDAPs—the major defense acquisition programs—went to five companies. So, practically everything that matters: 80% of MDAPs was accounted for by five companies, and that's it. We observed incredible consolidation and centralization.

11. Billionaires, Innovation, and Expanding Participation

Anduril has succeeded because we're less of a contractor and more of a product company. We use our own money to build products, then we sell them, and now we've gotten to the point where people in government have really won by betting on Anduril. Somehow, we're completing everything on schedule, on time, and then the next program manager says, "I know how to make my job easier. I just gave the contract to Anduril."

Peter Diamandis

Got it. So it takes courage to enter the defense industry, right? The most nepotistic, closed-off system on the planet. What madness gave you the courage to do that?

Palmer Luckey

It was this madness that made me do this. The first page of our presentation said, “Anduril will save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year while earning tens of billions a year.” The idea is that we’re not just building products to sell; we’re replacing systems that unnecessarily cost 10 times more than they should.

And yes, it really seems crazy. I can’t put myself on the same level as him, but one of my mentors and idols in my childhood and early career was John Carmack, the founder of id Software. John is wonderful. John is incredible.

For those who don’t know, he’s actually the inventor of modern 3D game engines and first-person shooters. He also founded a rocket company that competed in the X Prize. He was one of the few, if not the only one, to do a vertical takeoff.

Peter Diamandis

That’s right. He did a vertical takeoff, which no one else had even tried to do.

Palmer Luckey

And I remember the name on the boards of his devices: NVIDIA.

Peter Diamandis

How is that pronounced correctly? I thought only you knew.

Palmer Luckey

That’s right. He built his own sensor-fusion algorithms and processed them on modern commercial graphics hardware, using his experience in game programming.

Peter Diamandis

It was called Armadillo Aerospace.

Palmer Luckey

That’s right. They were doing vertical takeoff and landing long before SpaceX even started doing anything.

Peter Diamandis

Yes, of course—before SpaceX even existed.

12. The Future of AI, Robotics, and Advice for Innovators

Palmer Luckey

Anyway, the point is that he eventually became the CTO of Oculus VR. I managed to lure him away from id, but after he left, he started working on AI even before I did. He founded his own company to work on artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

I said, “Why are you doing this? The chances of success are so low.” To be clear, I still believe that AI is going somewhere, but he said, “I’m going to start a company that’s just going all in for the bottom line. I’m not trying to gradually get to this point. This is simply a bet on general-level AI.”

He emphasized, “Palmer, even if I have a 1% chance of success—which is perhaps an exaggeration, but let’s say I have a 1% chance—and let’s say I can do it, the risk-weighted outcome seems to require me to do this.”

That’s exactly how I felt about the defense sector. If there was a 1% chance that I could help solve this problem, then that would be an extremely important task, unlike starting another gaming company, launching space rockets, or building a car company.

After all, all billionaires end up doing the same thing. We don’t have enough people who are focused on defense or who are putting on the Batman suit. It’s just cars and rockets, and they go in circles like that, over and over again.

Peter Diamandis

The last time I interviewed you for the Moonshots podcast, you mentioned that you were part of a billionaire chat group, a sort of "men's club." Are they working on anything noteworthy at this point? I criticized them and said, “My God, you have so much capital. Solve the world’s biggest problems.”

Palmer Luckey

I think the billionaire guys are doing much better now than they were a few years ago. They’re becoming more active.

For those wondering who we’re talking about, I’ve got a lot of people, especially some retired billionaires. I said to them, “What are you doing? You have so much.” Money is just one of the resources they have, but there’s a resource that people don’t talk about, especially with retired billionaires: their authority.

That authority allows them to rally people, teams, and capital around them. It just lies there doing nothing if they don’t do anything. They have authority because people trust them as leaders capable of leading such an organization.

They can put forward the same ideas and say the same words as someone else who is just as smart or smarter, and they will still achieve more because of who they are. I’m trying to convey to them that they have a responsibility not only as people with significant capital, but also as people with this underutilized resource—the ability to do more.

If you don’t do this, then what do you even do? Anyone can sit on a yacht. Few people can create another multibillion-dollar company that does something truly important.

The good news is that most of them—I think many of them—felt a desire to solve some of the existing problems.

Peter Diamandis

So nihilism is on the decline. We need more "tea boys" than there were "bee boys."

Palmer Luckey

Yes, that’s an interesting point. Although, as I said, most of the "tea boys" seem to be quite busy.

Peter Diamandis

That’s the point.

Palmer Luckey

I don’t even have anything against “B boys” who don’t do enough. Some people misunderstand my words. They say, “Palmer wants other billionaires to work on defense, energy, or biology.”

I don’t mean that people need to be distracted by a bunch of different things. Many people can only do one thing. That’s what I did for a long time. But I can’t stand people who do nothing at all. This is simply disgusting to me.

Maybe a message to the audience: you can join the "B boys" group on Slack or somewhere on Telegram if you’re creating something new and unique. The group was actually shut down, and we’re now discussing whether it’s time to create "B boys 2.0".

I think people were fasting, maybe "B girls" too? I think people have been posting inappropriate memes too often.

Peter Diamandis

Boom.

Palmer Luckey

There was a time when there weren’t any girls there, and then this article came out in Business Insider complaining about it. Really, it was just me and a few guys. This isn’t some Illuminati conference.

They said, “There’s this group, and they don’t invite women there.” I said, “It’s not that women aren’t invited. It’s just me and my friends.” But in the end, there was one girl there.

So yes, we need to restart this. We need to restart that group.

Peter Diamandis

You’re now starring in a Facebook ad.

Palmer Luckey

Yes. I am in a Facebook ad.

Peter Diamandis

VR is already out. How does it relate to the vision you wanted to achieve?

Palmer Luckey

It does a lot of things, but it’s not exactly what I would do if I were the one waving a magic wand.

Peter Diamandis

You have a lot of magic wands spinning around.

Palmer Luckey

Listen, Meta’s new VR headset is much closer in many ways. I’ve long believed that we need to separate the computing unit and battery from the head. It shouldn’t all be on the front of the head.

The Oculus Quest was the last thing I worked on before I got fired. The prototypes at that time were a series codenamed Santa Cruz, and we actually showed them publicly before I was fired.

Santa Cruz had the battery and the computing unit at the back of the head. The lightweight part adjacent to the soft tissues in front was as light as possible. Then, at some point after they got rid of me, they crammed it all into one big, massive unit in the front and ruined the ergonomics. They forgot why the top strap was needed.

This worries me the most. The Oculus Rift CV1, which was the first modern consumer VR headset, had more or less perfect ergonomics back in 2016. We showed it in 2015, and literally no one has done it as well since then. It’s been over 10 years.

Everyone—absolutely everyone—ruins everything, even Apple. I just can’t understand it. How could an ergonomic design led by a 19-year-old with no experience be better than anything anyone has come up with since then?

In any case, the new Meta View glasses are the closest thing to that. It’s very light. They took the computing unit outside, and they took the batteries outside. They have a really high-quality end-to-end video mode.

They also have a feature that I invented for the CV1 called “transformable fabric,” although they don’t call it that. They actually use fabric—a soft, flexible, black matte fabric that absorbs light, first to minimize glare and second to seal the cavity between and around the lenses.

That means the lenses can move, and the fabric simply stretches to accommodate the lens position for different interpupillary distances, instead of using sliding mechanical interfaces and plastic. They brought back transformable fabric for the first time since my time.

So I’m a huge fan. It’s one-third the price of an Apple product and has slightly higher pixel density. I think that’s quite extraordinary. It’s also eight times lighter.

Peter Diamandis

Surprisingly. Quite amazing. Pretty good.

Let’s end on this. We have 1,500 entrepreneurs and visionary innovators, along with tens of thousands of viewers watching live. What is your advice? What did you learn in high school that allowed you to succeed so quickly?

Palmer Luckey

We talked about it on the plane on the way back. I was very lucky—well, I guess I was unlucky. I did it myself.

Peter Diamandis

But you’re really lucky.

Palmer Luckey

That’s right. I am lucky. It’s even in the last name.

I created an online community called ModRetro when I was 14 or 15 years old. It was an online forum for people who modified vintage game consoles and computers, creating portable devices and improving their performance in various ways.

We had several thousand active participants, along with a whole team of volunteer moderators and administrators. For some reason, I was at the head of it all. I learned a lot of valuable lessons about how to build an organization, how to promote it, and how to get people to believe in what you’re doing.

I learned a lot about solving the problems you face when running a company with people. It's a story as old as the world: You have 2 people. They are both brilliant, they are both very good at what they do, and they hate each other.

They disagree about something. You need to somehow resolve the conflict or separate them in a way that benefits them, so that both can contribute to the big project, but so that they don't hate you, lose faith in the common cause, and, of course, kill each other. Sometimes this means you need to reconcile them with each other. Sometimes this means putting one here and another there. Sometimes you have to make sure they don't know you're doing it while you're doing it.

I'm not saying that the key to a successful business is solving the two-fool problem, but once it turns into a three-body problem, then it's a different story. That, like a hundred other things I learned while running ModRetro, came in handy when I started Oculus and in my subsequent work at other companies.

That's why I firmly believe that children should find jobs. I started working myself at 14, so I also learned how the real world works. I'm a big fan of people doing things on a scale bigger than themselves. In other words, don't just do a project; do it with someone else. Do projects together with other people. Create openly, and learn the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.

This was extremely helpful to me.

Peter Diamandis

Has creating anything changed in the age of AI? What is your advice? As we've been saying on the podcast for a long time: forget about a master's degree, and even college is another question. You didn't go to college. Do you know what high school students should do?

Find something you love and use AI to program it. What is your final advice on this?

Palmer Luckey

One of the reasons I'm not as upset as some people are is that—

Peter Diamandis

It's funny. Something appeared on the screen. It's not that we don't want to talk about anything. I just wanted to make sure you saw this.

Palmer Luckey

Yes, I saw it.

Speaker 1

We won't talk about it. Don't think about it. Elephant.

Palmer Luckey

Okay, great. There are many people who love their job and love what they do. They quite rightly mourn the end of the era when, for example, code was written by hand, from start to finish, as a true craft. I understand that.

It's the same feeling that many artists had when the camera was invented. They whined and complained that it ruined the art by allowing anyone to just press a button, and such changes are always painful for masters of their craft.

I've been burned by this for a long time. When you're a founder, you don't work directly with technology anyway. Everyone else is enjoying themselves. I like electrical engineering, optics, and mechanical engineering.

I don't do any of that, because the founder's job is to hire people to replace you and do what you thought you could do yourself, or what they do better than you. I often tell people: If you want to work with technology, work for someone else. If you want to constantly deal with nonsense, start a company.

AI doesn't really change much in the part of the job where there's a lot of nonsense. You are still legally responsible. You are still responsible for all interpersonal matters. You can delegate some things, but ultimately the decision is yours. It's your choice.

The same applies to attracting investment. The same goes for the overall product architecture. When people make bad decisions, it's you who chooses when to undo, change, or replace those people.

I don't see AI replacing this part of the job anytime soon. Not because it can't, but because the efficiency gains in other areas are so much greater that we'll have a good 10 years of accelerated development of all other business processes before it's time for this.

So, listen, AI is changing a lot of things, but I'm telling you: a lot of you are in for a bitter disappointment if you're an amateur programmer or an amateur engineer and you think you're going to start a company and do it all by yourself. No. A harsh lesson awaits you.

Being a founder has always felt like AI took your job. It was just taken away by other people.

Peter Diamandis

Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give Palmer Luckey a round of applause.