The Importance of Safety in the Face of Technology Extinction

6min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

There was a remarkable moment. I'm sure I mean, I've talked about it on the show. But when Senator Richard Blumenthal was asking Sam Altman,. he said that if things go wrong, it could be the worst thing that ever happened and we could all die. It's like it actually took Gary Marcus being like, wait a second. I don't think that's what Sam was talking about when that was his worst case scenario. And I think that was really, really, really important because the solutions that you advocate for are very different. If you're worried about human extinction versus if you were to have people saying naughty words, because a lot of people think of a safety as

Emerson Spartz has been building internet and media companies since starting MuggleNet, the world's largest Harry Potter fan site, when he was just 12 years old. He founded digital media company Dose which created some of the world's largest viral content sites. For the past few years, Emerson has been focused on AI, with a particular interest in AI safety, AI alignment and extinction risk. Despite being such a techno-optimist by nature that he's been yelled at for being a techno-optimist in books, he has come to have real concerns about the speed and way that AI is developing. In this sprawling conversation, Emerson provides a set of mental models he uses to try and understand AI broadly. Recommended resources: https://aisafety.info/ Robert Miles YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/robertmilesai The A.I. Dilemma - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ The AI Breakdown helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI. Subscribe to The AI Breakdown newsletter: https://theaibreakdown.beehiiv.com/subscribe Subscribe to The AI Breakdown on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAIBreakdown Join the community: bit.ly/aibreakdown Learn more: http://breakdown.network/