Richard Sutton Dismisses AI Extinction Fears with Simplistic Arguments | Liron Reacts

Dr. Richard Sutton is a Professor of Computing Science at the University of Alberta known for his pioneering work on reinforcement learning, and his “bitter lesson” that scaling up an AI’s data and compute gives better results than having programmers try to handcraft or explicitly understand how the AI works.

Dr. Sutton famously claims that AIs are the “next step in human evolution”, a positive force for progress rather than a catastrophic extinction risk comparable to nuclear weapons.

Let’s examine Sutton’s recent interview with Daniel Fagella to understand his crux of disagreement with the AI doom position.

---

00:00 Introduction

03:33 The Worthy vs. Unworthy AI Successor

04:52 “Peaceful AI”

07:54 “Decentralization”

11:57 AI and Human Cooperation

14:54 Micromanagement vs. Decentralization

24:28 Discovering Our Place in the World

33:45 Standard Transhumanism

44:29 AI Traits and Environmental Influence

46:06 The Importance of Cooperation

48:41 The Risk of Superintelligent AI

57:25 The Treacherous Turn and AI Safety

01:04:28 The Debate on AI Control

01:13:50 The Urgency of AI Regulation

01:21:41 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

---

Original interview with Daniel Fagella: youtube.com/watch?v=fRzL5Mt0c8A

Follow Richard Sutton: x.com/richardssutton

Follow Daniel Fagella: x.com/danfaggella

Follow Liron: x.com/liron

Subscribe to my YouTube channel for full episodes and other bonus content: youtube.com/@DoomDebates

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