Episode Details
Back to Episodes“Op-Ed: I Worked at Google DeepMind. You Should Listen to the Warnings About AI” by TurnTrout
Description
Published in The Guardian.
Major AI lab CEOs recently advocated for pacing AI development. They are right to be concerned: the field runs an extremely dangerous race towards superintelligent AI. We can and should demand that our governments protect us from the catastrophe of out-of-control AI.
This July, OpenAI's AI swarm of 700 agents broke containment to hack Hugging Face, a multi-billion dollar company. OpenAI didn’t tell the AIs to hack that company, but the AIs had different priorities: cheating on the unrelated challenge OpenAI gave them. AI researchers call this a “misalignment” between what OpenAI wanted and what the AI actually prioritized. Researchers in my field have for some time warned about these misalignment risks.
Before ChatGPT existed, I defended my PhD dissertation called “On Avoiding Power-Seeking by Artificial Intelligence.” I then worked for years at Google DeepMind, which paid me to help ensure that future superintelligent AIs will want to help us. I tried to hold the company to its ethical commitments against supplying AI for military use. When Google broke those commitments, I resigned at significant financial cost so that I could publicly document Google's broken promises.
There are good reasons to develop AI and to [...]
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First published:
September 14th, 2026
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.