I can see where he's coming from. He's in the unique position where he can work on whatever interests him, he has the mathematical background to absorb all this

I can see where he's coming from. He's in the unique position where he can work on whatever interests him, he has the mathematical background to absorb all this knowledge. I think a big part of this is that he's worried about his age catching up to him and disabling his ability to make any meaningful contribution. One thing to note is that he's going to loop his son into his research. The creation of synthetic intelligence will be a result of multiple distinct breakthroughs. The more people with unlimited resources and high creativity working on this problem, the more likely those breakthroughs will be made.