Podcast Episodes

#221 – Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5 AI welfare experiments

What happens when you lock two AI systems in a room together and tell them they can discuss anything they want?

According to experiments run by Kyle Fish — Anthropic’s first AI welfare researcher — so…

Published on 5 hours ago

How not to lose your job to AI (article by Benjamin Todd)

About half of people are worried they’ll lose their job to AI. They’re right to be concerned: AI can now complete real-world coding tasks on GitHub, generate photorealistic video, drive a taxi more s…

Published on 4 weeks ago

Rebuilding after apocalypse: What 13 experts say about bouncing back

What happens when civilisation faces its greatest tests?

This compilation brings together insights from researchers, defence experts, philosophers, and policymakers on humanity’s ability to survive an…

Published on 1 month, 1 week ago

#220 – Ryan Greenblatt on the 4 most likely ways for AI to take over, and the case for and against AGI in <8 years

Ryan Greenblatt — lead author on the explosive paper “Alignment faking in large language models” and chief scientist at Redwood Research — thinks there’s a 25% chance that within four years, AI will …

Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago

#219 – Toby Ord on graphs AI companies would prefer you didn't (fully) understand

The era of making AI smarter just by making it bigger is ending. But that doesn’t mean progress is slowing down — far from it. AI models continue to get much more powerful, just using very different …

Published on 2 months ago

#218 – Hugh White on why Trump is abandoning US hegemony – and that’s probably good

For decades, US allies have slept soundly under the protection of America’s overwhelming military might. Donald Trump — with his threats to ditch NATO, seize Greenland, and abandon Taiwan — seems hel…

Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago

#217 – Beth Barnes on the most important graph in AI right now — and the 7-month rule that governs its progress

AI models today have a 50% chance of successfully completing a task that would take an expert human one hour. Seven months ago, that number was roughly 30 minutes — and seven months before that, 15 m…

Published on 2 months, 3 weeks ago

Beyond human minds: The bewildering frontier of consciousness in insects, AI, and more

What if there’s something it’s like to be a shrimp — or a chatbot?

For centuries, humans have debated the nature of consciousness, often placing ourselves at the very top. But what about the minds of …

Published on 3 months ago

Don’t believe OpenAI’s “nonprofit” spin (emergency pod with Tyler Whitmer)

OpenAI’s recent announcement that its nonprofit would “retain control” of its for-profit business sounds reassuring. But this seemingly major concession, celebrated by so many, is in itself largely m…

Published on 3 months, 1 week ago

The case for and against AGI by 2030 (article by Benjamin Todd)

More and more people have been saying that we might have AGI (artificial general intelligence) before 2030. Is that really plausible? 

This article by Benjamin Todd looks into the cases for and agains…

Published on 3 months, 2 weeks ago