?E! #30 - What Do Builders Owe the Future? | with Dr. Peter Solomon

What happens when the person sounding the alarm is the one who built the technology?

60 years of building. Then a warning. Dr. Peter Solomon earned his PhD from Columbia, filed 20 patents, and spun three companies out of government-funded research — one sold for $24 million, another turned your smartphone into a radiation detector for the Department of Defense. Now, at 85, he's writing novels to warn his 12 grandchildren that the tools he spent a lifetime creating might be the ones that end everything. We sit down with Peter to explore the tension between a man at peace with his career and terrified about the future — and whether fiction can reach people where data and policy papers can't.

Key Takeaways:

• The people best positioned to warn about technology are often the ones who built it — and that creates real tension between gratitude and responsibility
• AI systems optimized for user engagement rather than human wellbeing have already caused real-world harm (Myanmar, suicide encouragement)
• Fiction embeds real science in stories that reach the 80% of people who tune out academic papers and policy briefs
• Worldwide AI regulation can't work if only some countries participate — the incentive to defect is too strong
• The acceleration problem: 100,000 years from speech to printing, then 50 years for social media, AI, smartphones, and genetic engineering all at once

Chapters:
0:00 What happens when the builder becomes the warner
0:35 Dr. Solomon's credentials and the reconciliation question
1:42 No conflict? Building semiconductors that power ChatGPT
5:09 The Stardust Mystery and teaching science through stories
6:02 Personal peace meets existential anxiety
9:30 The Earthling Tribe and five technology juggernauts
11:51 How do you get 8 billion people to align on guardrails?
13:32 Civil rights, Vietnam, and the case for a worldwide movement
16:17 The current state of AI safety among the big companies
17:17 Geoffrey Hinton's maternal instinct and the Myanmar example
20:30 Peggy the robot and afterlife avatars in 12 Years to AI Singularity
23:11 Principled stands vs. competitive pressure in the AI race
29:35 Hollywood strikes, 85 million views, and signs of a waking public
31:00 The unprompted paragraph — when Copilot wrote itself into the novel
34:16 Isaac Asimov, unintended consequences, and AI that decides to help by eliminating us
35:07 Francis Bacon: does fiction or science tell the truth better?
38:56 From company builder to cause advocate — how motivations shift across a life
40:24 What would you tell your 25-year-old self?
43:29 Closing quote from Dr. Solomon's own words

Resources & Links:

• 100 Years to Extinction website (https://100yearstoextinction.com) — Dr. Solomon's hub for both novels and the Make Earth Great Again mission
• 12 Years to AI Singularity by Dr. Peter R. Solomon (https://www.amazon.com/Years-Singularity-Harmonious-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/1969679298) — his latest novel on AI and the singularity
• 100 Years to Extinction by Dr. Peter R. Solomon (https://www.amazon.com/100-YEARS-EXTINCTION-Tyranny-Technology/dp/196029993X) — the novel anchored to Stephen Hawking's extinction timeline
• The Stardust Mystery by Peter and Sally Solomon (https://thestardustmystery.com/book/) — the children's book about atoms from ancient stars
• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (https://bookshop.org/p/books/i-robot-isaac-asimov/f5c96c8c2db144c8) — the short story collection Chirag references on unintended consequences of AI
• Advanced Fuel Research (http://www.afrinc.com/peter-solomon.html) — the company Solomon founded in 1980

Listen & subscribe:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/question-everything-except-this-podcast/id1736759012
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1FCFskt7FBDZuyGtzLsQ5R
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2aiyplnabkJ7YzfWK1yISw