George Hotz on Hacking Reality, Autonomous AI, and the Evolution of Programming

This episode features George Hotz, founder of comma.ai, delving into a wide array of topics from the philosophical to the deeply technical. Hotz begins by discussing the simulation hypothesis, exploring its unfalsifiable nature and the implications of a perfectly designed virtual machine. He then transitions into his personal journey into hacking, starting with the physical iPhone unlock in 2007, and his evolution as a programmer, emphasizing the importance of iterative development and learning from feedback, particularly through his work on the timeless debugger, Kira.

The conversation extensively covers the world of cybersecurity, including Capture The Flag (CTF) competitions and the philosophy behind offensive security, exemplified by Google's Project Zero. Hotz articulates his reasons for not engaging in criminal hacking, citing the asymmetric risk for attackers and the influence of literature like "Crime and Punishment." He contrasts his rapid, 'throw-things-at-the-wall-until-it-works' programming style with more systematic approaches, acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of each, especially in the context of live-streamed coding sessions.

A significant portion of the discussion is dedicated to autonomous vehicles and comma.ai's OpenPilot system. Hotz recounts his initial interactions with Elon Musk regarding Tesla's Autopilot and his early, somewhat naive, assessment of the problem's difficulty. He explains the challenges of building robust autonomous systems, the limitations of languages like Python for large codebases due to lack of type checking, and the role of web technologies like JavaScript for debugging and UI. He also touches upon his work on a lightweight distributed file system, showcasing his approach to building complex systems from scratch.

Ultimately, the podcast explores Hotz's unique perspective on technology, characterized by a deep curiosity, a drive to understand systems at their fundamental level, and a pragmatic approach to problem-solving. His insights offer a glimpse into the mind of a prolific hacker and innovator, highlighting the continuous learning required in rapidly evolving fields like AI and software development, and the potential for open-source solutions to democratize advanced technologies like autonomous driving.

do you think we're living in a simulation yes but it may be unfalsifiable

if the simulation is designed in such a way that they did like a formal proof to show that no information can get in and out and if their hardware is designed to for the anything in the simulation to always keep the hardware in spec it may be impossible to prove whether we're in a simulation or not

I would like to physically move there the apartment I can rent in the cloud is way better in the apartment I can rent in the real world

I don't view the world I mean it's very like like almost zero-sum issue a to view the world say like my great apartment isn't great because my neighbor has one - no my great apartment is great because like look at this dishwasher man yeah you just touch the dish and it's washed right and that is great in and of itself if I have the only apartment or if everybody had the apartment I don't care

you learn to not take things for what people say they are but you look at things for what they actually are

if you want to defend a system say the system has ten holes right if you find nine of those holes as a defender you still lose because the attacker gets in through the last one if you're an attacker you only have to find one out of the ten

I read crime and punishment right that was another that was another great one that talked me out of ever really doing crime

project zero is like we're gonna do it different we're going to announce a vulnerability and we're going to give them 90 days to fix it and then whether they fix it or not we're gonna drop the drop the zero day

if you ask me to like like get something up and working quickly with like an API that's kind of undocumented I will do this super fast because I will throw things at it until it works

why doesn't Python work for large code bases because well lack of type checking is a big errors creeping yeah and like you don't know the compiler can tell you like nothing right so everything is either you know like like syntax errors fine but if you misspell a variable and Python the compiler won't catch that

the web is the best UI toolkit by far

I remember I suggested to Elon in the meeting I'm putting GPU behind each camera to keep the compute local this is an incredibly stupid idea