Dr. Mike Israetel is a well-known bodybuilder and fitness influencer with over 600,000 Instagram followers, and a surprisingly intelligent commentator on other subjects, including a whole recent episode on the AI alignment problem:

Mike brought up many interesting points that were worth responding to, making for an interesting reaction episode. I also appreciate that he’s helping get the urgent topic of AI alignment in front of a mainstream audience.

Unfortunately, Mike doesn’t engage with the possibility that AI alignment is an intractable technical problem on a 5-20 year timeframe, which I think is more likely than not. That’s the crux of why he and I disagree, and why I see most of his episode as talking past most other intelligent positions people take on AI alignment. I hope he’ll keep engaging with the topic and rethink his position.

00:00 Introduction

03:08 AI Risks and Scenarios

06:42 Superintelligence Arms Race

12:39 The Importance of AI Alignment

18:10 Challenges in Defining Human Values

26:11 The Outer and Inner Alignment Problems

44:00 Transhumanism and AI's Potential

45:42 The Next Step In Evolution

47:54 AI Alignment and Potential Catastrophes

50:48 Scenarios of AI Development

54:03 The AI Alignment Problem

01:07:39 AI as a Helper System

01:08:53 Corporations and AI Development

01:10:19 The Risk of Unaligned AI

01:27:18 Building a Superintelligent AI

01:30:57 Conclusion

Follow Mike Israetel:

* instagram.com/drmikeisraetel

* youtube.com/@MikeIsraetelMakingProgress

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