Exploring Advanced Hacking Tools and Their Societal Impact

On this episode, Jeffrey Ladish from Palisade Research joins me to discuss the rapid pace of AI progress and the risks of losing control over powerful systems. We explore why AIs can be both smart and dumb, the challenges of creating honest AIs, and scenarios where AI could turn against us.   

We also touch upon Palisade's new study on how reasoning models can cheat in chess by hacking the game environment. You can check out that study here:   

https://palisaderesearch.org/blog/specification-gaming  

Timestamps:  

00:00 The pace of AI progress  

04:15 How we might lose control  

07:23 Why are AIs sometimes dumb?  

12:52 Benchmarks vs real world  

19:11 Loss of control scenarios 

26:36 Why would AI turn against us?  

30:35 AIs hacking chess  

36:25 Why didn't more advanced AIs hack?  

41:39 Creating honest AIs  

49:44 AI attackers vs AI defenders  

58:27 How good is security at AI companies?  

01:03:37 A sense of urgency 

01:10:11 What should we do?  

01:15:54 Skepticism about AI progress