Episode Details

How I learned about Deep Learning.

As far as I know, I’m the second person ever to get into the field of AI largely because I was worried about the risk of human extinction.1

In late 2012, while recovering from some minor heartbreak with the help of some beer and TV, I decided to finally watch some of those online Coursera courses I’d signed up for. At the time, I was sort of giving up on my goal of being a professional musician and considering applying for grad school in computer science, math, economics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, or physics. I’d picked out about a dozen different random classes, accordingly. But the one I settled on was Geoffrey Hinton's neural networks (i.e. deep learning) course. I had no idea that Hinton was “the Godfather of Deep Learning”, or had just produced a result that would revolutionize the field of AI; I was just curious about the topic.

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I’d actually heard about neural networks a few years earlier in the summer of 2009. I was doing undergraduate research in neuroscience at Baylor College of [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) How I learned about Deep Learning.

(04:15) How I learned about AI.

(06:50) How I learned about AI x-risk.

(08:49) How I learned other researchers werent on it.

(10:29) Superintelligence sparks discussions

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 13th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bjhwJJ22j9ftzM4Zg/diary-of-a-doomer-12-years-arguing-about-ai-risk-part-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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