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Highlights: #212 – Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway
Mar 12, 2025
Allan Dafoe, Director of Frontier Safety and Governance at Google DeepMind, dives into the unstoppable nature of technology and its historical patterns. He explains how societies embracing new capabilities outpace those that resist. The discussion highlights the balance of offense and defense in technology, the complexities of AI cooperation, and the potential risks of backdoor technology in AI models. Dafoe also reflects on how human agency shapes tech development, emphasizing the need for ethical decision-making in AI's future.
29:21
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Quick takeaways
- Technological advancement is driven by competition, where societies adopting new capabilities tend to outpace and dominate those that resist change.
- Increased cooperation among AIs presents both benefits and risks, as it may empower beneficial initiatives while also facilitating harmful collusion among malicious entities.
Deep dives
Understanding Macro Historical Patterns
History reveals complex macro patterns, suggesting that societal progress is not merely the aggregate of individual efforts but is influenced by broad structural dynamics. These dynamics lead to resistance or amplification of societal changes, as illustrated by examples such as the rapid economic recovery in Germany and Japan after World War II. These insights indicate that macro phenomena, like GDP growth trends, follow predictable patterns, such as Moore's Law in technology, which shows consistent exponential growth in transistor density. Understanding these patterns is essential to navigate future technological advancements and their implications for society.
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