Roon is a member of the technical staff at OpenAI. He’s a highly respected voice on tech Twitter, despite being a pseudonymous cartoon avatar account. In late 2021, he invented the terms “shape rotator” and “wordcel” to refer to roughly visual/spatial/mathematical intelligence vs. verbal intelligence. He is simultaneously a serious thinker, a builder, and a shitposter.
I'm excited to learn more about Roon, his background, his life, and of course, his views about AI and existential risk.
00:00 Introduction
02:43 Roon’s Quest and Philosophies
22:32 AI Creativity
30:42 What’s Your P(Doom)™
54:40 AI Alignment
57:24 Training vs. Production
01:05:37 ASI
01:14:35 Goal-Oriented AI and Instrumental Convergence
01:22:43 Pausing AI
01:25:58 Crux of Disagreement
1:27:55 Dogecoin
01:29:13 Doom Debates’s Mission
Show Notes
Follow Roon: https://x.com/tszzl
For Humanity: An AI Safety Podcast with John Sherman — https://www.youtube.com/@ForHumanityPodcast
Lethal Intelligence Guide, the ultimate animated video introduction to AI x-risk – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CUFbqh16Fg
PauseAI, the volunteer organization I’m part of — https://pauseai.info/
Join the PauseAI Discord — https://discord.gg/2XXWXvErfA — and say hi to me in the #doom-debates-podcast channel!
Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.
Support the mission by subscribing to my Substack at DoomDebates.com and to youtube.com/@DoomDebates. Thanks for watching.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
lironshapira.substack.com
