Today I’m reacting to the recent Scott Aaronson interview on the Win-Win podcast with Liv Boeree and Igor Kurganov.
Prof. Aaronson is the Director of the Quantum Information Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s best known for his research advancing the frontier of complexity theory, especially quantum complexity theory, and making complex insights from his field accessible to a wider readership via his blog.
Scott is one of my biggest intellectual influences. His famous Who Can Name The Bigger Number essay and his long-running blog are among my best memories of coming across high-quality intellectual content online as a teen. His posts and lectures taught me much of what I know about complexity theory.
Scott recently completed a two-year stint at OpenAI focusing on the theoretical foundations of AI safety, so I was interested to hear his insider account.
Unfortunately, what I heard in the interview confirms my worst fears about the meaning of “safety” at today’s AI companies: that they’re laughably clueless at how to achieve any measure of safety, but instead of doing the adult thing and slowing down their capabilities work, they’re pushing forward recklessly.
00:00 Introducing Scott Aaronson
02:17 Scott's Recruitment by OpenAI
04:18 Scott's Work on AI Safety at OpenAI
08:10 Challenges in AI Alignment
12:05 Watermarking AI Outputs
15:23 The State of AI Safety Research
22:13 The Intractability of AI Alignment
34:20 Policy Implications and the Call to Pause AI
38:18 Out-of-Distribution Generalization
45:30 Moral Worth Criterion for Humans
51:49 Quantum Mechanics and Human Uniqueness
01:00:31 Quantum No-Cloning Theorem
01:12:40 Scott Is Almost An Accelerationist?
01:18:04 Geoffrey Hinton's Proposal for Analog AI
01:36:13 The AI Arms Race and the Need for Regulation
01:39:41 Scott Aronson's Thoughts on Sam Altman
01:42:58 Scott Rejects the Orthogonality Thesis
01:46:35 Final Thoughts
01:48:48 Lethal Intelligence Clip
01:51:42 Outro
Show Notes
Scott’s Interview on Win-Win with Liv Boeree and Igor Kurganov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANFnUHcYza0
Scott’s Blog: https://scottaaronson.blog
PauseAI Website: https://pauseai.info
PauseAI Discord: https://discord.gg/2XXWXvErfA
Watch the Lethal Intelligence video and check out LethalIntelligence.ai! It’s an AWESOME new animated intro to AI risk.
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