The goal of this podcast is to create a place where people discuss their inside views about existential risk from AI.
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Exploring my curiosity through conversations with leading thinkers and builders. We talk about philosophy, learning, tech, parenting, entrepreneurship, health, and more. Follow Spencer on Twitter (twitter.com/SP1NS1R) and Substack (spencerkier.substack.com)
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A conversation between two people who share something deeply in common and yet remain deeply divided, hosted by Sarah Shourd. First, we interview each guest separately and ask them about the events that formed their beliefs. Then we get them to talk to each other and hash things out.
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Ethan Perez on Selecting Alignment Research Projects (ft. Mikita Balesni & Henry Sleight)
36:45
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Ethan Perez is a Research Scientist at Anthropic, where he leads a team working on developing model organisms of misalignment. Youtube: https://youtu.be/XDtDljh44DMEthan is interviewed by Mikita Balesni (Apollo Research) and Henry Sleight (Astra Fellowship)) about his approach in selecting projects for doing AI Alignment research.A transcript & wr…
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#056 - Dylan O’Sullivan on Lying to Yourself, Timelessness, Discipline, & Writing
1:06:01
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Dylan O’Sullivan is a curator, editor, and writer at O'Shaughnessy Ventures and Essayful. Dylan and I talk about writing, taste, discipline vs. inspiration, timelessness vs ephemerality, boredom and solitude vs. the internet, inciting a digital renaissance, not lying to yourself, and more. — (00:45) Curating & editing vs. writing (05:39) Fear of ne…
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#055 - Steve Schlafman on Lostness, Downshifting, & Becoming
1:10:11
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Steve Schlafman is a venture capitalist turned transition coach. We talk about lostness, transformation, curiosity, mindfulness practices, his new Downshift program, being a husband and father, and more. — (00:59) Lostness, navigating liminal identity space, personal transformations (18:31) Head and heart, mind and body; intellectualizing emotions …
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#054 - Matt Clifford on Talent Investing & AI Uncertainty
55:11
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Matt Clifford is a co-founder of Entrepreneur First and leads their AI efforts, as well as chair of ARIA, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency. We talk about EF, talent investing, ambition, why we don’t have more Thiel Fellowships, his new focus on AI, and AI safety concerns. — (00:59) Talent matters most(03:17) Scarcity of talent x cult…
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Emil Wallner on Sora, Generative AI Startups and AI optimism
1:42:48
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Emil is the co-founder of palette.fm (colorizing B&W pictures with generative AI) and was previously working in deep learning for Google Arts & Culture. We were talking about Sora on a daily basis, so I decided to record our conversation, and then proceeded to confront him about AI risk. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theinsideviewSora: https://o…
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Evan Hubinger on Sleeper Agents, Deception and Responsible Scaling Policies
52:13
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Evan Hubinger leads the Alignment stress-testing at Anthropic and recently published "Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs That Persist Through Safety Training".In this interview we mostly discuss the Sleeper Agents paper, but also how this line of work relates to his work with Alignment Stress-testing, Model Organisms of Misalignment, Deceptive…
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#053 - Joscha Bach on Modeling Reality & Self-Organizing Software
1:19:10
1:19:10
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Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist and AI researcher. We talk about our relationship with & models of reality, creativity and curiosity, animism and self-organizing software, stages of development, and more. — (01:25) The dream world; how we interact with & perceive reality(03:49) Fear(05:16) Self, consciousness, & awareness(08:10) We're a coarse…
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#052 - Gabe (@VividVoid_) on Identity, Art, Authenticity, & Courage
1:06:18
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Gabe (@VividVoid_ on Twitter) is a writer and coach, and former Marine. We talk about inferiority, art, nothingness, spirituality, courage, fear, alignment with The Void, representations of reality, exposure therapy, Quality, and more. — (00:52) You’re not inferior to anyone else (06:14) Art is the byproduct of a spiritual practice (09:28) Authenti…
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[Jan 2023] Jeffrey Ladish on AI Augmented Cyberwarfare and compute monitoring
33:04
33:04
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Jeffrey Ladish is the Executive Director of Palisade Research which aimes so "study the offensive capabilities or AI systems today to better understand the risk of losing control to AI systems forever". He previously helped build out the information security program at Anthropic. Audio is a edit & re-master of the Twitter Space on "AI Governance an…
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#051 - Nathan Baugh on Storytelling, World Building, Fiction, & The Internet
1:06:58
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Nathan Baugh writes fiction and the World Builders newsletter. We talk about writing, non-fiction vs. fiction, storytelling and world building devices, Kurt Vonnegut and other authors, getting the most out of technology and the internet, and more. — (00:47) Why writing (02:46) Loops & closing the curiosity gap (04:05) The combination of short form …
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Holly Elmore is an AI Pause Advocate who has organized two protests in the past few months (against Meta's open sourcing of LLMs and before the UK AI Summit), and is currently running the US front of the Pause AI Movement. Prior to that, Holly previously worked at a think thank and has a PhD in evolutionary biology from Harvard. [Deleted & re-uploa…
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#050 - Billy Oppenheimer on Writing, Research, Boredom, & Putting in The Work
1:25:06
1:25:06
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Billy Oppenheimer writes the Six at 6 newsletter, and has been a writing and research assistant for Ryan Holiday, Robert Greene, and Rick Rubin. We talk about research, naive optimism, working for legendary writers and creatives, boredom, his newsletter, curation and creation, how “the work is the win”, and his first book. —(00:52) Naive optimism &…
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#049 - John Coogan on AI, Ozempic for Risk Taking, Tech Media, & Curiosity
1:07:26
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John Coogan is the co-founder of Soylent and Lucy, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Founders Fund, and a YouTuber and podcaster. We talk about AI, pioneering vs. wire-heading, identifying problems to solve, the need for more risk takers, satisfying curiosity, techno optimism, YouTube and podcasting, and his next venture. — (00:53) “Benevolent murder…
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Podcast Retrospective and Next Steps
1:03:42
1:03:42
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https://youtu.be/Fk2MrpuWinc
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#048 - Sasha Chapin on Awakening, Meditation & Writing
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Sasha Chapin is a writer, coach, and the co-founder of a fragrance line. We talk about his book, awakening, meditation, Deep Okayness, coaching, writing, fragrance, and more. — (00:54) Writing a book on meditation & awakening(04:30) What is awakening, and is there a “destination”?(07:48) There’s a “manager” in our head(11:56) Aliveness & egoism(13:…
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#047 - Ryan Hashemi on All Things YouTube
1:23:33
1:23:33
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Ryan Hashemi is the founder of Hashemi Studios, which helps businesses and creators grow on YouTube, as well as the former Chief Strategy Officer of Jubilee Media, a media company provoking understanding and human connection. Ryan and I talk about the longevity of YouTube, building the “Disney of Empathy”, keys to creating and growing on YouTube, m…
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#046 - Chris Bakke on Memes, Hiring, X, & Startups
1:16:23
1:16:23
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Chris Bakke is a serial entrepreneur, most recently selling his company, Laskie, to Elon Musk and X (Twitter). We talk about satire and memes, X/Twitter, authenticity, hiring and the labor marketplace, how Laskie got acquired, criteria for finding problems to solve, passion and pivoting, and creating value. — (01:04) Satire, shitposting & memes; au…
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#045 - Arjun Khemani on Education, Knowledge Creation, & The Internet
22:43
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Arjun Khemani is a HS drop out and works at Airchat, an audio messaging network founded by Naval Ravikant and Brian Norgard. Arjun and I talk about education, knowledge creation, Airchat, the power of the internet, and more. Given that Arjun is located in India on a completely opposite time zone, we thought we’d use Airchat to make a unique, experi…
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#044 - Jack Raines on Writing, Finances, Satire, & Regrets
1:11:42
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Jack Raines is the writer of the Young Money blog, Editor-in-Chief of Exec Sum, and a Columbia MBA student. We talk about alternative life paths, the importance of travel, how to think about finances, writing, satire, university, prioritizing fun, and his first book that’s in the works. Please enjoy. — (01:42) Alternative life paths and scripts(05:…
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#043 - Michael Mayer on Self-Disgust, Media, Tech, Failure, & Durability
1:20:01
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Michael Mayer is the co-founder and CEO of Bottomless and owner of a popular pseudonymous Twitter account. We talk about Twitter and media, habits and cultivating a sense of disgust, failure, technology and startups, distinguishing what’s important from the noise, and more. — (00:56) Caring too much about social media & audiences; taking a year off…
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#042 - Danny McMahon (@Dodford) on Film, Inspiration, Storytelling, & Creativity
56:38
56:38
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Danny McMahon (@Dodford on YouTube) is a filmmaker and documentarian, known for his portraits of pop culture icons. We talk about filmmaking and art, storytelling and inspiration, simplicity and experimentation, identifying your talent, and psychology. — (00:37) Why documentaries & the ease of remixing (03:11) Profiling inspiring individuals who ov…
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#041 - Rory Sutherland on Perception, Innovation, Creativity, & Change
1:18:42
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Rory Sutherland is an author and the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy. We talk about perception vs. technological improvements, creativity, the battle between efficiency and invention, how we’re neither rational nor irrational, changes in advertising and social norms, evolutionary biology, and more. —(00:37) Perceptual arbitrage(08:23) Making space for rand…
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#040 - Kevin Espiritu on Audience-Content Fit, Paradoxes, & Growth
54:04
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Kevin Espiritu is the Founder and CEO of Epic Gardening. We talk about content creation, developing your passion, the pareto principle, paradoxes, creating cinematic universes, the global food supply chain, and more. — (00:42) Writing is a foundational skill across content(03:05) To get reps, you have to really want it(05:02) Developing a passion v…
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#039 - Wolf Tivy on New Governance, Higher Callings, & Agency
1:08:29
1:08:29
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Wolf Tivy is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Palladium Magazine. We talk about governance and building new institutions, religion and higher callings, virtuosity, agency, and more. — (00:16) How do you build a new governing bodies, polities, or political institutions? (18:46) Wolf’s religious underpinnings (31:03) Higher callings & Darwinian vir…
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#038 - Chris Turner on Homeschooling, Learning, Meaningful Work, & Entrepreneurship
1:10:09
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Chris Turner is the founder and CEO of Moonrise, a co-learning space for homeschoolers and creative kids. We talk about the public education system, homeschooling, taking kids seriously, the internet as curriculum, skills for navigating the future, finding meaningful work, education startups, technology and design in learning, and more. — (00:48) W…
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#037 - Kyle Harrison on Investing in People, Talent Vortexes, Writing, & Tradition vs Progress
1:05:15
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Kyle Harrison is the General Partner at Contrary Capital, as well as a writer. We talk about hype cycles, talent vortexes, investing in people, battles between tradition and progress, building systems, writing, and much more. — (00:46) Acceleration of FOMO and hype cycles in investing(07:04) Being people-centric is contrarian in VC(11:19) Most barr…
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Paul Christiano's views on "doom" (ft. Robert Miles)
4:53
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Youtube: https://youtu.be/JXYcLQItZsk Paul Christiano's post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xWMqsvHapP3nwdSW8/my-views-on-doom
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#036 - Jackson Dahl on Compulsion, Futurism, Art, Curators, & Community
1:22:22
1:22:22
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Jackson Dahl is a venture capitalist and was on the founding team of esports company 100 Thieves. We talk about finding your compulsion, oscillating between interest areas, navigating accelerating technological change, the relationships between creators and audiences, building community online and in-person, and art and creativity. — (00:50) Identi…
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Neel Nanda on mechanistic interpretability, superposition and grokking
2:04:53
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Neel Nanda is a researcher at Google DeepMind working on mechanistic interpretability. He is also known for his YouTube channel where he explains what is going on inside of neural networks to a large audience. In this conversation, we discuss what is mechanistic interpretability, how Neel got into it, his research methodology, his advice for people…
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#035 - Tyler Denk on Creators, Ambition, Uniqueness, & Choosing the More Difficult Path
55:21
55:21
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Tyler Denk is the co-founder and CEO of newsletter platform Beehiiv, and was the second employee at Morning Brew. We talk about newsletters, creators, running a startup, standing out, taking the path less traveled, ambition, authenticity, and uniqueness. — (00:46) Why build a newsletter platform & not another Morning Brew-like newsletter(01:48) VC,…
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#034 - Xavier Helgesen on Holding Companies, The Publishing Industry, & Building Things That Last
1:05:29
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Xavier Helgesen is the co-founder of Enduring Ventures, a long-term holding company. He also co-founded Better World Books and was the founding CEO of Zola Electric. We talk about holding companies, the publishing industry, capital allocation, focus, reinventing ourselves, building things that last, parenting, and more. — (02:43) Why run 20+ busine…
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Joscha Bach on how to stop worrying and love AI
2:54:29
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Joscha Bach (who defines himself as an AI researcher/cognitive scientist) has recently been debating existential risk from AI with Connor Leahy (previous guest of the podcast), and since their conversation was quite short I wanted to continue the debate in more depth. The resulting conversation ended up being quite long (over 3h of recording), with…
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#033 - Emmett Shear on Practice, Agency, Coordination, & Positive Sum Games
53:21
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Emmett Shear is the co-founder and former CEO of Twitch, ex-interim CEO of OpenAI, and a visiting partner at Y Combinator. We talk about agency, meta learning, deliberate practice, coordination problems, parasocial relationships, positive sum games, and more. Please enjoy. — (00:51) When to persist vs. make a change(06:16) Know what you want and ho…
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#032 - Nick on Presence, Fearless Authenticity, & Relationships
1:09:00
1:09:00
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Nick (AKA Critter / @becomingcritter) is a writer and podcaster. We talk about presence, skepticism, religion, fearless authenticity, balancing seriousness and fun, relationships, and podcasting. Please enjoy. — (03:01) Seeking mystery & divinity(08:54) Skepticism, presence, and realizations about conceptions like time(23:36) Impermanent immediacy(…
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#031 - Matt Bateman on Montessori, Pedagogy, Capability, & The Good Life
1:04:49
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Matt Bateman is the Vice President of Pedagogy at Higher Ground Education. We talk about a pedagogy, Montessori, capability and agency in children, experimentation in education, how young education is as a science, the importance of work, and a conception of the good life. — (00:42) Leaving academia(02:35) Why Montessori & seeing a classroom for th…
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#030 - Nicole (@startingfromnix) on Writing, Introspection, Identity & Pursuing Meaning
59:08
59:08
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Nicole (@startingfromnix) is a writer. We talk about writing, introspection, being heart- vs. head-heavy, what’s core to your identity, pursuing meaning over ego, living in the present, depth and endurance, and more. — (00:41) Writes helps you clarify your thoughts(02:49) The taste gap & inching closer to what you want to write(05:47) Focusing on t…
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Erik Jones on Automatically Auditing Large Language Models
22:36
22:36
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Erik is a Phd at Berkeley working with Jacob Steinhardt, interested in making generative machine learning systems more robust, reliable, and aligned, with a focus on large language models.In this interview we talk about his paper "Automatically Auditing Large Language Models via Discrete Optimization" that he presented at ICML. Youtube: https://you…
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#029 - Jake (@0FJAKE) on Sabbaticals, Finding Your Work, Pseudonymity, & Challenging Norms
58:02
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Jake (@0FJAKE) is a podcaster, writer, and the former Chief of Staff for Balaji Srinivasan. We talk about sabbaticals and taking the time to find your work, pseudonymity and authenticity, status, challenging norms, the benefits of audio, and more. — (00:44) Taking sabbaticals(06:29) People should spend more time finding their next thing(16:56) Havi…
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Dylan Patel on the GPU Shortage, Nvidia and the Deep Learning Supply Chain
12:22
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Dylan Patel is Chief Analyst at SemiAnalysis a boutique semiconductor research and consulting firm specializing in the semiconductor supply chain from chemical inputs to fabs to design IP and strategy. The SemiAnalysis substack has ~50,000 subscribers and is the second biggest tech substack in the world. In this interview we discuss the current GPU…
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Tony Wang on Beating Superhuman Go AIs with Advesarial Policies
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Tony is a PhD student at MIT, and author of "Advesarial Policies Beat Superhuman Go AIs", accepted as Oral at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.00241 Youtube: https://youtu.be/Tip1Ztjd-so
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#028 - Dwarkesh Patel on Standing Out, Curiosity, Talent, & The Future
58:13
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Dwarkesh Patel is the creator of the Lunar Society newsletter and podcast. We talk about curiosity, talent, podcasting and research, status games, finding what to work on, standing out from the crowd, and AI & futurism. — (00:42) Starting a podcast out of college while others enter the workforce(04:51) How he overcomes the occasional desire to quit…
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David Bau on Editing Facts in GPT, AI Safety and Interpretability
24:53
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David Bau is an Assistant Professor studying the structure and interpretation of deep networks, and the co-author on "Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT" which introduced Rank-One Model Editing (ROME), a method that allows users to alter the weights of a GPT model, for instance by forcing it to output that the Eiffel Tower is in Rome.…
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#027 - Tom Morgan on The Hero’s Journey, Curiosity, Complexity, & Value
47:59
47:59
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Tom Morgan is a writer and director at Sapient Capital. Tom and I discuss curiosity, Joseph Campbell's Hero’s Journey and the call to adventure, Brett Anderson’s work and the movement of reality towards complexity, the question of what is value, and more. — (00:30) Why he left finance(03:38) Directing your skills & talents towards something useful(…
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Alexander Pan on the MACHIAVELLI benchmark
20:10
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I've talked to Alexander Pan, 1st year at Berkeley working with Jacob Steinhardt about his paper "Measuring Trade-Offs Between Rewards and Ethical Behavior in the MACHIAVELLI Benchmark" accepted as oral at ICML. Youtube: https://youtu.be/MjkSETpoFlYPaper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03279
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Vincent Weisser on Funding AI Alignment Research
18:07
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Vincent is currently spending his time supporting AI alignment efforts, as well as investing across AI, semi, energy, crypto, bio and deeptech. His mission is to improve science, augment human capabilities, have a positive impact, help reduce existential risks and extend healthy human lifespan. Youtube: https://youtu.be/weRoJ8KN2f0 Outline (00:00) …
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#026 - Eric Wollberg on Lucid Dreaming, Consciousness, & Epistemological Metaphysics
35:31
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Eric Wollberg is the co-founder and CEO of Prophetic, a consumer neurotechnology company building Halo, a non-invasive device for inducing and stabilizing lucid dream states. Eric and I talk about why he’s working on this problem, consciousness, the dream state, best applications for this technology, epistemological metaphysics, and more. — (00:57)…
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[JUNE 2022] Aran Komatsuzaki on Scaling, GPT-J and Alignment
1:17:21
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Aran Komatsuzaki is a ML PhD student at GaTech and lead researcher at EleutherAI where he was one of the authors on GPT-J. In June 2022 we recorded an episode on scaling following up on the first Ethan Caballero episode (where we mentioned Aran as an influence on how Ethan started thinking about scaling). Note: For some reason I procrastinated on e…
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Nina Rimsky on AI Deception and Mesa-optimisation
55:43
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Nina is a software engineer at Stripe currently working with Evan Hubinger (Anthropic) on AI Deception and Mesa Optimization. I met her at a party two days ago and I found her explanation of AI Deception really clear so I thought I should have her explain it on camera. Youtube: https://youtu.be/6ngasL054wM Twitter: https://twitter.com/MichaelTrazzi…
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Curtis Huebner on Doom, AI Timelines and Alignment at EleutherAI
1:29:58
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Curtis, also known on the internet as AI_WAIFU, is the head of Alignment at EleutherAI. In this episode we discuss the massive orders of H100s from different actors, why he thinks AGI is 4-5 years away, why he thinks we're 90% "toast", his comment on Eliezer Yudkwosky's Death with Dignity, and what kind of Alignment projects is currently going on a…
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#025 - Ben Wilson on Greatness, Addiction to the Craft, Horatio Nelson, & Podcasting
57:04
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Ben Wilson is the creator and host of How to Take Over The World, a podcast which analyzes the lives of some of the greatest people to ever live. He’s also the founder of PodRamp and the producer of the My First Million Podcast with Shaan Puri and Sam Parr. Ben and I talk about greatness, the art of podcasting, lessons from the people he’s covered,…
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