[Linkpost] “Podcast on ‘AI tools for existential security’ — transcript” by Lizka, finm

Apr 24, 2025

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This is a link post.

About two months ago, @finm and I recorded a discussion about my now-published piece on “AI tools for Existential Security”[1] (for the podcast Fin has been running at Forethought). I’d never done something like this before, and liked the result a lot more than I thought I would![2]

I'm sharing a quick transcript here in case anyone appreciates section headers, hyperlinks, etc.. Please note that this is very rough; it's an unpolished, not-double-checked “MVP” edit of an AI-generated transcript, and will definitely have mistakes.[3]

Here's the episode itself. You should also be able to find it on most podcast apps. The discussion loosely follows the structure of the piece it focuses on.

My thinking on some of what we discuss here has changed a bit, but I'd still say most of this (sometimes with somewhat different emphasis, framings, etc.) and I wanted to quickly get [...]

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Outline:

(01:41) Transcript

(01:44) Elevator pitch & how this relates to d/acc and def/acc

(05:24) Which kinds of AI applications seem most exciting?

(08:08) Getting more specific on applications & discussing adoption

(10:49) AI negotiation tools, privacy-preserving information-sharing

(19:10) Cybersecurity

(22:17) Things that might be possible as AI capabilities ramp up

(24:25) Win-win policy advice

(28:26) Why these clusters of applications?

(31:17) What about market effects (and other dynamics that might make it hard to make a counterfactual difference)?