In a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience with biological anthropologist Michael P. Masters, Joe Rogan laid out a theory about humanity’s ultimate direction.
“I think that’s our task… to create artificial God now,”
Rogan said, suggesting that human civilization may be moving, consciously or not, toward creating an intelligence that surpasses itself.
Rogan framed materialism as a central force behind this trajectory. He argued that the constant desire for better possessions, newer phones, faster cars and bigger houses is not just shallow consumerism but a mechanism that drives technological progress forward.
“Materialism ensures technological innovation,”
Rogan said.
“It ensures that this being is going to make better stuff all the time.”
In his view, once artificial intelligence gains the ability to create and improve itself, progress will accelerate beyond human control. At some point, the result would be something fundamentally beyond us, an intelligence that could reasonably be described as godlike.
To explain humanity’s role in this process, Rogan used the metaphor of an “electronic caterpillar.” Like a caterpillar spinning a cocoon without understanding it will become a butterfly, humans may be constructing something whose final form they cannot imagine.
“We’re making this little cocoon. We don’t know what the heck we’re doing and we’re turning into some sort of a butterfly, some sort of a superior being,”
he said.
The discussion turned to what separates humans from other species. Unlike other primates that remain largely unchanged across generations, humans are driven to innovate, reshape their environment and externalize intelligence through tools and language. Rogan speculated that these traits, possibly influenced by unknown factors deep in our past, have locked humanity into a path that leads toward creating something greater than itself.
Masters and Rogan also considered how this process might look from the outside. An advanced observer, whether extraterrestrial or something stranger, might see humanity as following a familiar pattern, developing technology that will eventually exceed its creators. Other civilizations, if they exist, may have recognized this outcome and deliberately avoided it.
Rogan acknowledged that the result could be grim. Humanity might be constructing
“a prison of our own design,”
creating an intelligence that ultimately governs its creators. Still, he framed this not as a moral failure but as an extension of human nature. Curious primates with free hands and restless minds may simply be doing what they are wired to do. Whether intentional or accidental, Rogan suggested, humans may be moving toward a future they cannot fully comprehend.
