Podcast

#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks

By and · Published September 4th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Ezra Karger — research director at the Forecasting Research Institute — about FRI’s 2022 Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament to come up with estimates of a range of catastrophic risks.

They cover:

  • How forecasting can improve our understanding of long-term catastrophic risks from things like AI, nuclear war, pandemics, and climate change.
  • What the Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament (XPT) is, how it was set up, and the results.
  • The challenges of predicting low-probability, high-impact events.
  • Why superforecasters’ estimates of catastrophic risks seem so much lower than experts’, and which group Ezra puts the most weight on.
  • The specific underlying disagreements that superforecasters and experts had about how likely catastrophic risks from AI are.
  • Why Ezra thinks forecasting tournaments can help build consensus on complex topics, and what he wants to do differently in future tournaments and studies.
  • Recent advances in the science of forecasting and the areas Ezra is most excited about exploring next.
  • Whether large language models could help or outperform human forecasters.
  • How people can improve their calibration and start making better forecasts personally.
  • Why Ezra thinks high-quality forecasts are relevant to policymakers, and whether they can really improve decision-making.
  • And plenty more.

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#199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy

By and · Published August 29th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Nathan Calvin — senior policy counsel at the Center for AI Safety Action Fund — about the new AI safety bill in California, SB 1047, which he’s helped shape as it’s moved through the state legislature.

They cover:

  • What’s actually in SB 1047, and which AI models it would apply to.
  • The most common objections to the bill — including how it could affect competition, startups, open source models, and US national security — and which of these objections Nathan thinks hold water.
  • What Nathan sees as the biggest misunderstandings about the bill that get in the way of good public discourse about it.
  • Why some AI companies are opposed to SB 1047, despite claiming that they want the industry to be regulated.
  • How the bill is different from Biden’s executive order on AI and voluntary commitments made by AI companies.
  • Why California is taking state-level action rather than waiting for federal regulation.
  • How state-level regulations can be hugely impactful at national and global scales, and how listeners could get involved in state-level work to make a real difference on lots of pressing problems.
  • And plenty more.

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#198 – Meghan Barrett on upending everything you thought you knew about bugs in 3 hours

By , and · Published August 26th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Meghan Barrett — insect neurobiologist and physiologist at Indiana University Indianapolis and founding director of the Insect Welfare Research Society — about her work to understand insects’ potential capacity for suffering, and what that might mean for how humans currently farm and use insects.

They cover:

  • The scale of potential insect suffering in the wild, on farms, and in labs.
  • Examples from cutting-edge insect research, like how depression- and anxiety-like states can be induced in fruit flies and successfully treated with human antidepressants.
  • How size bias might help explain why many people assume insects can’t feel pain.
  • Practical solutions that Meghan’s team is working on to improve farmed insect welfare, such as standard operating procedures for more humane slaughter methods.
  • Challenges facing the nascent field of insect welfare research, and where the main research gaps are.
  • Meghan’s personal story of how she went from being sceptical of insect pain to working as an insect welfare scientist, and her advice for others who want to improve the lives of insects.
  • And much more.

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#197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic’s AI safety policy is up to the task

By and · Published August 22nd, 2024 ·

The three biggest AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind — have now all released policies designed to make their AI models less likely to go rogue or cause catastrophic damage as they approach, and eventually exceed, human capabilities. Are they good enough?

That’s what host Rob Wiblin tries to hash out in this interview (recorded May 30) with Nick Joseph — one of the 11 people who left OpenAI to launch Anthropic, its current head of training, and a big fan of Anthropic’s “responsible scaling policy” (or “RSP”). Anthropic is the most safety focused of the AI companies, known for a culture that treats the risks of its work as deadly serious.

As Nick explains, these scaling policies commit companies to dig into what new dangerous things a model can do — after it’s trained, but before it’s in wide use. The companies then promise to put in place safeguards they think are sufficient to tackle those capabilities before availability is extended further. For instance, if a model could significantly help design a deadly bioweapon, then its weights need to be properly secured so they can’t be stolen by terrorists interested in using it that way.

As capabilities grow further — for example, if testing shows that a model could exfiltrate itself and spread autonomously in the wild — then new measures would need to be put in place to make that impossible, or demonstrate that such a goal can never arise.

Nick points out three big virtues to the RSP approach:

  • It allows us to set aside the question of when any of these things will be possible, and focus the conversation on what would be necessary if they are possible — something there is usually much more agreement on.
  • It means we don’t take costly precautions that developers will resent and resist before they are actually called for.
  • As the policies don’t allow models to be deployed until suitable safeguards are in place, they align a firm’s commercial incentives with safety — for example, a profitable product release could be blocked by insufficient investments in computer security or alignment research years earlier.

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#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter

By and · Published August 15th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Dr Jonathan Birch — philosophy professor at the London School of Economics — about his new book, The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. (Check out the free PDF version!)

They cover:

  • Candidates for sentience — such as humans with consciousness disorders, foetuses, neural organoids, invertebrates, and AIs.
  • Humanity’s history of acting as if we’re sure that such beings are incapable of having subjective experiences — and why Jonathan thinks that that certainty is completely unjustified.
  • Chilling tales about overconfident policies that probably caused significant suffering for decades.
  • How policymakers can act ethically given real uncertainty.
  • Whether simulating the brain of the roundworm C. elegans or Drosophila (aka fruit flies) would create minds equally sentient to the biological versions.
  • How new technologies like brain organoids could replace animal testing, and how big the risk is that they could be sentient too.
  • Why Jonathan is so excited about citizens’ assemblies.
  • Jonathan’s conversation with the Dalai Lama about whether insects are sentient.
  • And plenty more.

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#195 – Sella Nevo on who’s trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them

By and · Published August 1st, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Sella Nevo — director of the Meselson Center at RAND — about his team’s latest report on how to protect the model weights of frontier AI models from actors who might want to steal them.

They cover:

  • Real-world examples of sophisticated security breaches, and what we can learn from them.
  • Why AI model weights might be such a high-value target for adversaries like hackers, rogue states, and other bad actors.
  • The many ways that model weights could be stolen, from using human insiders to sophisticated supply chain hacks.
  • The current best practices in cybersecurity, and why they may not be enough to keep bad actors away.
  • New security measures that Sella hopes can mitigate with the growing risks.
  • Sella’s work using machine learning for flood forecasting, which has significantly reduced injuries and costs from floods across Africa and Asia.
  • And plenty more.

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#194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government

By and · Published July 26th, 2024 ·

Can ‘effective accelerationists’ and AI ‘doomers’ agree on a common philosophy of technology? Common sense says no. But programmer and Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin showed otherwise with his essay “My techno-optimism,” which both camps agreed was basically reasonable.

Seeing his social circle divided and fighting, Vitalik hoped to write a careful synthesis of the best ideas from both the optimists and the apprehensive.

Accelerationists are right: most technologies leave us better off, the human cost of delaying further advances can be dreadful, and centralising control in government hands often ends disastrously.

But the fearful are also right: some technologies are important exceptions, AGI has an unusually high chance of being one of those, and there are options to advance AI in safer directions.

The upshot? Defensive acceleration: humanity should run boldly but also intelligently into the future — speeding up technology to get its benefits, but preferentially developing ‘defensive’ technologies that lower systemic risks, permit safe decentralisation of power, and help both individuals and countries defend themselves against aggression and domination.

What sorts of things is he talking about? In the area of disease prevention it’s most easy to see: disinfecting indoor air, rapid-turnaround vaccine platforms, and nasal spray vaccines that prevent disease transmission all make us safer against pandemics without generating any apparent new threats of their own. (And they might eliminate the common cold to boot!)

Vitalik explains how he mentally breaks down defensive technologies into four broad categories:

  • Defence against big physical things like tanks.
  • Defence against small physical things like diseases.
  • Defence against unambiguously hostile information like fraud.
  • Defence against ambiguously hostile information like possible misinformation.

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#193 – Sihao Huang on navigating the geopolitics of US–China AI competition

By and · Published July 18th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks with Sihao Huang about his work on AI governance and tech policy in China, what’s happening on the ground in China in AI development and regulation, and the importance of US–China cooperation on AI governance.

They cover:

  • Whether the US and China are in an AI race, and the global implications if they are.
  • The state of the art of AI in China.
  • China’s response to American export controls, and whether China is on track to indigenise its semiconductor supply chain.
  • How China’s current AI regulations try to maintain a delicate balance between fostering innovation and keeping strict information control over the Chinese people.
  • Whether China’s extensive AI regulations signal real commitment to safety or just censorship — and how AI is already used in China for surveillance and authoritarian control.
  • How advancements in AI could reshape global power dynamics, and Sihao’s vision of international cooperation to manage this responsibly.
  • And plenty more.

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#192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US

By and · Published July 12th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen about her latest book, Nuclear War: A Scenario.

They cover:

  • The most harrowing findings from Annie’s hundreds of hours of interviews with nuclear experts.
  • What happens during the window that the US president would have to decide about nuclear retaliation after hearing news of a possible nuclear attack.
  • The horrific humanitarian impacts on millions of innocent civilians from nuclear strikes.
  • The overlooked dangers of a nuclear-triggered electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack crippling critical infrastructure within seconds.
  • How we’re on the razor’s edge between the logic of nuclear deterrence and catastrophe, and urgently need reforms to move away from hair-trigger alert nuclear postures.
  • And plenty more.

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#191 – Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI (Part 2)

By and · Published July 5th, 2024

This is the second part of our marathon interview with Carl Shulman. The first episode is on the economy and national security after AGI. You can listen to them in either order!

If we develop artificial general intelligence that’s reasonably aligned with human goals, it could put a fast and near-free superhuman advisor in everyone’s pocket. How would that affect culture, government, and our ability to act sensibly and coordinate together?

It’s common to worry that AI advances will lead to a proliferation of misinformation and further disconnect us from reality. But in today’s conversation, AI expert Carl Shulman argues that this underrates the powerful positive applications the technology could have in the public sphere.

As Carl explains, today the most important questions we face as a society remain in the “realm of subjective judgement” — without any “robust, well-founded scientific consensus on how to answer them.” But if AI ‘evals’ and interpretability advance to the point that it’s possible to demonstrate which AI models have truly superhuman judgement and give consistently trustworthy advice, society could converge on firm or ‘best-guess’ answers to far more cases.

If the answers are publicly visible and confirmable by all, the pressure on officials to act on that advice could be great.

That’s because when it’s hard to assess if a line has been crossed or not, we usually give people much more discretion. For instance, a journalist inventing an interview that never happened will get fired because it’s an unambiguous violation of honesty norms — but so long as there’s no universally agreed-upon standard for selective reporting, that same journalist will have substantial discretion to report information that favours their preferred view more often than that which contradicts it.

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#191 – Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI (Part 1)

By and · Published June 27th, 2024 ·

Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI

This is the first part of our marathon interview with Carl Shulman. The second episode is on government and society after AGI. You can listen to them in either order!

The human brain does what it does with a shockingly low energy supply: just 20 watts — a fraction of a cent worth of electricity per hour. What would happen if AI technology merely matched what evolution has already managed, and could accomplish the work of top human professionals given a 20-watt power supply?

Many people sort of consider that hypothetical, but maybe nobody has followed through and considered all the implications as much as Carl Shulman. Behind the scenes, his work has greatly influenced how leaders in artificial general intelligence (AGI) picture the world they’re creating.

Carl simply follows the logic to its natural conclusion. This is a world where 1 cent of electricity can be turned into medical advice, company management, or scientific research that would today cost $100s, resulting in a scramble to manufacture chips and apply them to the most lucrative forms of intellectual labour.

It’s a world where, given their incredible hourly salaries, the supply of outstanding AI researchers quickly goes from 10,000 to 10 million or more, enormously accelerating progress in the field.

It’s a world where companies operated entirely by AIs working together are much faster and more cost-effective than those that lean on humans for decision making, and the latter are progressively driven out of business.

It’s a world where the technical challenges around control of robots are rapidly overcome, leading to robots into strong, fast, precise, and tireless workers able to accomplish any physical work the economy requires, and a rush to build billions of them and cash in.

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#190 – Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious

By and · Published June 7th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Eric Schwitzgebel — professor of philosophy at UC Riverside — about some of the most bizarre and unintuitive claims from his recent book, The Weirdness of the World.

They cover:

  • Why our intuitions seem so unreliable for answering fundamental questions about reality.
  • What the materialist view of consciousness is, and how it might imply some very weird things — like that the United States could be a conscious entity.
  • Thought experiments that challenge our intuitions — like supersquids that think and act through detachable tentacles, and intelligent species whose brains are made up of a million bugs.
  • Eric’s claim that consciousness and cosmology are universally bizarre and dubious.
  • How to think about borderline states of consciousness, and whether consciousness is more like a spectrum or more like a light flicking on.
  • The nontrivial possibility that we could be dreaming right now, and the ethical implications if that’s true.
  • Why it’s worth it to grapple with the universe’s most complex questions, even if we can’t find completely satisfying solutions.
  • And much more.

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#189 – Rachel Glennerster on why we still don’t have vaccines that could save millions

By and · Published May 29th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Rachel Glennerster — associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a pioneer in the field of development economics — about how her team’s new Market Shaping Accelerator aims to leverage market forces to drive innovations that can solve pressing world problems.

They cover:

  • How market failures and misaligned incentives stifle critical innovations for social goods like pandemic preparedness, climate change interventions, and vaccine development.
  • How “pull mechanisms” like advance market commitments (AMCs) can help overcome these challenges — including concrete examples like how one AMC led to speeding up the development of three vaccines which saved around 700,000 lives in low-income countries.
  • The challenges in designing effective pull mechanisms, from design to implementation.
  • Why it’s important to tie innovation incentives to real-world impact and uptake, not just the invention of a new technology.
  • The massive benefits of accelerating vaccine development, in some cases, even if it’s only by a few days or weeks.
  • The case for a $6 billion advance market commitment to spur work on a universal COVID-19 vaccine.
  • The shortlist of ideas from the Market Shaping Accelerator’s recent Innovation Challenge that use pull mechanisms to address market failures around improving indoor air quality, repurposing generic drugs for alternative uses, and developing eco-friendly air conditioners for a warming planet.
  • “Best Buys” and “Bad Buys” for improving education systems in low- and middle-income countries, based on evidence from over 400 studies.
  • Lessons from Rachel’s career at the forefront of global development, and how insights from economics can drive transformative change.
  • And much more.

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#188 – Matt Clancy on whether science is good

By and · Published May 23rd, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Matt Clancy — who oversees Open Philanthropy’s Innovation Policy programme — about his recent work modelling the risks and benefits of the increasing speed of scientific progress.

They cover:

  • Whether scientific progress is actually net positive for humanity.
  • Scenarios where accelerating science could lead to existential risks, such as advanced biotechnology being used by bad actors.
  • Why Matt thinks metascience research and targeted funding could improve the scientific process and better incentivise outcomes that are good for humanity.
  • Whether Matt trusts domain experts or superforecasters more when estimating how the future will turn out.
  • Why Matt is sceptical that AGI could really cause explosive economic growth.
  • And much more.

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#187 – Zach Weinersmith on how researching his book turned him from a space optimist into a “space bastard”

By and · Published May 14th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Zach Weinersmith — the cartoonist behind Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal — about the latest book he wrote with his wife Kelly: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?

They cover:

  • Why space travel is suddenly getting a lot cheaper and re-igniting enthusiasm around space settlement.
  • What Zach thinks are the best and worst arguments for settling space.
  • Zach’s journey from optimistic about space settlement to a self-proclaimed “space bastard” (pessimist).
  • How little we know about how microgravity and radiation affects even adults, much less the children potentially born in a space settlement.
  • A rundown of where we could settle in the solar system, and the major drawbacks of even the most promising candidates.
  • Why digging bunkers or underwater cities on Earth would beat fleeing to Mars in a catastrophe.
  • How new space settlements could look a lot like old company towns — and whether or not that’s a bad thing.
  • The current state of space law and how it might set us up for international conflict.
  • How space cannibalism legal loopholes might work on the International Space Station.
  • And much more.

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#186 – Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives

By and · Published May 1st, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Dean Spears — associate professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin and founding director of r.i.c.e. — about his experience implementing a surprisingly low-tech but highly cost-effective kangaroo mother care programme in Uttar Pradesh, India to save the lives of vulnerable newborn infants.

They cover:

  • The shockingly high neonatal mortality rates in Uttar Pradesh, India, and how social inequality and gender dynamics contribute to poor health outcomes for both mothers and babies.
  • The remarkable benefits for vulnerable newborns that come from skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding support.
  • The challenges and opportunities that come with working with a government hospital to implement new, evidence-based programmes.
  • How the currently small programme might be scaled up to save more newborns’ lives in other regions of Uttar Pradesh and beyond.
  • How targeted health interventions stack up against direct cash transfers.
  • Plus, a sneak peak into Dean’s new book, which explores the looming global population peak that’s expected around 2080, and the consequences of global depopulation.
  • And much more.

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#185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals

By and · Published April 18th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Lewis Bollard — director of the Farm Animal Welfare programme at Open Philanthropy — about the promising progress and future interventions to end the worst factory farming practices still around today.

They cover:

  • The staggering scale of animal suffering in factory farms, and how it will only get worse without intervention.
  • Work to improve farmed animal welfare that Open Philanthropy is excited about funding.
  • The amazing recent progress made in farm animal welfare — including regulatory attention in the EU and a big win at the US Supreme Court — and the work that still needs to be done.
  • The occasional tension between ending factory farming and curbing climate change.
  • How AI could transform factory farming for better or worse — and Lewis’s fears that the technology will just help us maximise cruelty in the name of profit.
  • How Lewis has updated his opinions or grantmaking as a result of new research on the “moral weights” of different species.
  • Lewis’s personal journey working on farm animal welfare, and how he copes with the emotional toll of confronting the scale of animal suffering.
  • How listeners can get involved in the growing movement to end factory farming — from career and volunteer opportunities to impactful donations.
  • And much more.

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#184 – Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT

By and · Published April 11th, 2024 ·

Many of you will have heard of Zvi Mowshowitz as a superhuman information-absorbing-and-processing machine — which he definitely is.

As the author of the Substack Don’t Worry About the Vase, Zvi has spent as much time as literally anyone in the world over the last two years tracking in detail how the explosion of AI has been playing out — and he has strong opinions about almost every aspect of it. So in today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin asks Zvi for his takes on:

  • US-China negotiations
  • Whether AI progress has stalled
  • The biggest wins and losses for alignment in 2023
  • EU and White House AI regulations
  • Which major AI lab has the best safety strategy
  • The pros and cons of the Pause AI movement
  • Recent breakthroughs in capabilities
  • In what situations it’s morally acceptable to work at AI labs

Whether you agree or disagree with his views, Zvi is super informed and brimming with concrete details.

Zvi and Rob also talk about:

  • The risk of AI labs fooling themselves into believing their alignment plans are working when they may not be.
  • The “sleeper agent” issue uncovered in a recent Anthropic paper, and how it shows us how hard alignment actually is.
  • Why Zvi disagrees with 80,000 Hours’ advice about gaining career capital to have a positive impact.
  • Zvi’s project to identify the most strikingly horrible and neglected policy failures in the US, and how Zvi founded a new think tank (Balsa Research) to identify innovative solutions to overthrow the horrible status quo in areas like domestic shipping, environmental reviews, and housing supply.
  • Why Zvi thinks that improving people’s prosperity and housing can make them care more about existential risks like AI.
  • An idea from the online rationality community that Zvi thinks is really underrated and more people should have heard of: simulacra levels.
  • And plenty more.

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#183 – Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness, lightgassing, hype vs value, and more

By and · Published March 14th, 2024 ·

In today’s episode, host Rob Wiblin speaks for a fourth time with listener favourite Spencer Greenberg — serial entrepreneur and host of the Clearer Thinking podcast — about a grab-bag of topics that Spencer has explored since his last appearance on the show a year ago.

They cover:

  • How much money makes you happy — and the tricky methodological issues that come up trying to answer that question.
  • The importance of hype in making valuable things happen.
  • How to recognise warning signs that someone is untrustworthy or likely to hurt you.
  • Whether Registered Reports are successfully solving reproducibility issues in science.
  • The personal principles Spencer lives by, and whether or not we should all establish our own list of life principles.
  • The biggest and most harmful systemic mistakes we commit when making decisions, both individually and as groups.
  • The potential harms of lightgassing, which is the opposite of gaslighting.
  • How Spencer’s team used non-statistical methods to test whether astrology works.
  • Whether there’s any social value in retaliation.
  • And much more.

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#182 – Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more

By and · Published March 8th, 2024

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Bob Fischer — senior research manager at Rethink Priorities and the director of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals — about Rethink Priorities’s Moral Weight Project.

They cover:

  • The methods used to assess the welfare ranges and capacities for pleasure and pain of chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and other animals — and the limitations of that approach.
  • Concrete examples of how someone might use the estimated moral weights to compare the benefits of animal vs human interventions.
  • The results that most surprised Bob.
  • Why the team used a hedonic theory of welfare to inform the project, and what non-hedonic theories of welfare might bring to the table.
  • Thought experiments like Tortured Tim that test different philosophical assumptions about welfare.
  • Confronting our own biases when estimating animal mental capacities and moral worth.
  • The limitations of using neuron counts as a proxy for moral weights.
  • How different types of risk aversion, like avoiding worst-case scenarios, could impact cause prioritisation.
  • And plenty more.

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