80,000 Hours Podcast

Rob Wiblin speaks with FiveThirtyEight election forecaster and author Nate Silver about his new book: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything.

Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.

On the Edge explores a cultural grouping Nate dubs “the River” — made up of people who are analytical, competitive, quantitatively minded, risk-taking, and willing to be contrarian. It’s a tendency he considers himself a part of, and the River has been doing well for itself in recent decades — gaining cultural influence through success in finance, technology, gambling, philanthropy, and politics, among other pursuits.

But on Nate’s telling, it’s a group particularly vulnerable to oversimplification and hubris. Where Riverians’ ability to calculate the “expected value” of actions isn’t as good as they believe, their poorly calculated bets can leave a trail of destruction — aptly demonstrated by Nate’s discussion of the extended time he spent with FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried before and after his downfall.

Given this show’s focus on the world’s most pressing problems and how to solve them, we narrow in on Nate’s discussion of effective altruism (EA), which has been little covered elsewhere. Nate met many leaders and members of the EA community in researching the book and has watched its evolution online for many years.

Effective altruism is the River style of doing good, because of its willingness to buck both fashion and common sense — making its giving decisions based on mathematical calculations and analytical arguments with the goal of maximising an outcome.

Nate sees a lot to admire in this, but the book paints a mixed picture in which effective altruism is arguably too trusting, too utilitarian, too selfless, and too reckless at some times, while too image-conscious at others.

But while everything has arguable weaknesses, could Nate actually do any better in practice? We ask him:

• How would Nate spend $10 billion differently than today’s philanthropists influenced by EA?
• Is anyone else competitive with EA in terms of impact per dollar?
• Does he have any big disagreements with 80,000 Hours’ advice on how to have impact?
• Is EA too big a tent to function?
• What global problems could EA be ignoring?
• Should EA be more willing to court controversy?
• Does EA’s niceness leave it vulnerable to exploitation?
• What moral philosophy would he have modelled EA on?

Rob and Nate also talk about:

• Nate’s theory of Sam Bankman-Fried’s psychology.
• Whether we had to “raise or fold” on COVID.
• Whether Sam Altman and Sam Bankman-Fried are structurally similar cases or not.
• “Winners’ tilt.”
• Whether it’s selfish to slow down AI progress.
• The ridiculous 13 Keys to the White House.
• Whether prediction markets are now overrated.
• Whether venture capitalists talk a big talk about risk while pushing all the risk off onto the entrepreneurs they fund.
• And plenty more.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Rob's intro (00:01:03)
• The interview begins (00:03:08)
• Sam Bankman-Fried and trust in the effective altruism community (00:04:09)
• Expected value (00:19:06)
• Similarities and differences between Sam Altman and SBF (00:24:45)
• How would Nate do EA differently? (00:31:54)
• Reservations about utilitarianism (00:44:37)
• Game theory equilibrium (00:48:51)
• Differences between EA culture and rationalist culture (00:52:55)
• What would Nate do with $10 billion to donate? (00:57:07)
• COVID strategies and tradeoffs (01:06:52)
• Is it selfish to slow down AI progress? (01:10:02)
• Democratic legitimacy of AI progress (01:18:33)
• Dubious election forecasting (01:22:40)
• Assessing how reliable election forecasting models are (01:29:58)
• Are prediction markets overrated? (01:41:01)
• Venture capitalists and risk (01:48:48)

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Video engineering: Simon Monsour
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

"In the human case, it would be mistaken to give a kind of hour-by-hour accounting. You know, 'I had +4 level of experience for this hour, then I had -2 for the next hour, and then I had -1' — and you sort of sum to try to work out the total… And I came to think that something like that will be applicable in some of the animal cases as well… There are achievements, there are experiences, there are things that can be done in the face of difficulty that might be seen as having the same kind of redemptive role, as casting into a different light the difficult events that led up to it.

"The example I use is watching some birds successfully raising some young, fighting off a couple of rather aggressive parrots of another species that wanted to fight them, prevailing against difficult odds — and doing so in a way that was so wholly successful. It seemed to me that if you wanted to do an accounting of how things had gone for those birds, you would not want to do the naive thing of just counting up difficult and less-difficult hours. There’s something special about what’s achieved at the end of that process." —Peter Godfrey-Smith

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Peter Godfrey-Smith — bestselling author and science philosopher — about his new book, Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World.

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

• Why octopuses and dolphins haven’t developed complex civilisation despite their intelligence.
• How the role of culture has been crucial in enabling human technological progress.
• Why Peter thinks the evolutionary transition from sea to land was key to enabling human-like intelligence — and why we should expect to see that in extraterrestrial life too.
• Whether Peter thinks wild animals’ lives are, on balance, good or bad, and when, if ever, we should intervene in their lives.
• Whether we can and should avoid death by uploading human minds.
• And plenty more.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa's intro (00:00:57)
• The interview begins (00:02:12)
• Wild animal suffering and rewilding (00:04:09)
• Thinking about death (00:32:50)
• Uploads of ourselves (00:38:04)
• Culture and how minds make things happen (00:54:05)
• Challenges for water-based animals (01:01:37)
• The importance of sea-to-land transitions in animal life (01:10:09)
• Luisa's outro (01:23:43)

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Content editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran Harris
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours, Luisa Rodriguez and Keiran Harris chat about the consequences of letting go of enduring guilt, shame, anger, and pride.

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

• Keiran’s views on free will, and how he came to hold them
• What it’s like not experiencing sustained guilt, shame, and anger
• Whether Luisa would become a worse person if she felt less guilt and shame — specifically whether she’d work fewer hours, or donate less money, or become a worse friend
• Whether giving up guilt and shame also means giving up pride
• The implications for love
• The neurological condition ‘Jerk Syndrome’
• And some practical advice on feeling less guilt, shame, and anger

Who this episode is for:

• People sympathetic to the idea that free will is an illusion
• People who experience tons of guilt, shame, or anger
• People worried about what would happen if they stopped feeling tonnes of guilt, shame, or anger

Who this episode isn’t for:

• People strongly in favour of retributive justice
• Philosophers who can’t stand random non-philosophers talking about philosophy
• Non-philosophers who can’t stand random non-philosophers talking about philosophy

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa's intro (00:01:16)
• The chat begins (00:03:15)
• Keiran's origin story (00:06:30)
• Charles Whitman (00:11:00)
• Luisa's origin story (00:16:41)
• It's unlucky to be a bad person (00:19:57)
• Doubts about whether free will is an illusion (00:23:09)
• Acting this way just for other people (00:34:57)
• Feeling shame over not working enough (00:37:26)
• First person / third person distinction (00:39:42)
• Would Luisa become a worse person if she felt less guilt? (00:44:09)
• Feeling bad about not being a different person (00:48:18)
• Would Luisa donate less money? (00:55:14)
• Would Luisa become a worse friend? (01:01:07)
• Pride (01:08:02)
• Love (01:15:35)
• Bears and hurricanes (01:19:53)
• Jerk Syndrome (01:24:24)
• Keiran's outro (01:34:47)

Get more episodes like this by subscribing to our more experimental podcast on the world’s most pressing problems and how to solve them: type "80k After Hours" into your podcasting app.

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio mastering: Milo McGuire
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

"For every far-out idea that turns out to be true, there were probably hundreds that were simply crackpot ideas. In general, [science] advances building on the knowledge we have, and seeing what the next questions are, and then getting to the next stage and the next stage and so on. And occasionally there’ll be revolutionary ideas which will really completely change your view of science. And it is possible that some revolutionary breakthrough in our understanding will come about and we might crack this problem, but there’s no evidence for that. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of promising work going on. There are many legitimate areas which could lead to real improvements in health in old age. So I’m fairly balanced: I think there are promising areas, but there’s a lot of work to be done to see which area is going to be promising, and what the risks are, and how to make them work." —Venki Ramakrishnan

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Venki Ramakrishnan — molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner — about his new book, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality.

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

• What we can learn about extending human lifespan — if anything — from “immortal” aquatic animal species, cloned sheep, and the oldest people to have ever lived.
• Which areas of anti-ageing research seem most promising to Venki — including caloric restriction, removing senescent cells, cellular reprogramming, and Yamanaka factors — and which Venki thinks are overhyped.
• Why eliminating major age-related diseases might only extend average lifespan by 15 years.
• The social impacts of extending healthspan or lifespan in an ageing population — including the potential danger of massively increasing inequality if some people can access life-extension interventions while others can’t.
• And plenty more.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa's intro (00:01:04)
• The interview begins (00:02:21)
• Reasons to explore why we age and die (00:02:35)
• Evolutionary pressures and animals that don't biologically age (00:06:55)
• Why does ageing cause us to die? (00:12:24)
• Is there a hard limit to the human lifespan? (00:17:11)
• Evolutionary tradeoffs between fitness and longevity (00:21:01)
• How ageing resets with every generation, and what we can learn from clones (00:23:48)
• Younger blood (00:31:20)
• Freezing cells, organs, and bodies (00:36:47)
• Are the goals of anti-ageing research even realistic? (00:43:44)
• Dementia (00:49:52)
• Senescence (01:01:58)
• Caloric restriction and metabolic pathways (01:11:45)
• Yamanaka factors (01:34:07)
• Cancer (01:47:44)
• Mitochondrial dysfunction (01:58:40)
• Population effects of extended lifespan (02:06:12)
• Could increased longevity increase inequality? (02:11:48)
• What’s surprised Venki about this research (02:16:06)
• Luisa's outro (02:19:26)

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Content editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran Harris
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

"Perception is quite difficult with cameras: even if you have a stereo camera, you still can’t really build a map of where everything is in space. It’s just very difficult. And I know that sounds surprising, because humans are very good at this. In fact, even with one eye, we can navigate and we can clear the dinner table. But it seems that we’re building in a lot of understanding and intuition about what’s happening in the world and where objects are and how they behave. For robots, it’s very difficult to get a perfectly accurate model of the world and where things are. So if you’re going to go manipulate or grasp an object, a small error in that position will maybe have your robot crash into the object, a delicate wine glass, and probably break it. So the perception and the control are both problems." —Ken Goldberg

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Ken Goldberg — robotics professor at UC Berkeley — about the major research challenges still ahead before robots become broadly integrated into our homes and societies.

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

• Why training robots is harder than training large language models like ChatGPT.
• The biggest engineering challenges that still remain before robots can be widely useful in the real world.
• The sectors where Ken thinks robots will be most useful in the coming decades — like homecare, agriculture, and medicine.
• Whether we should be worried about robot labour affecting human employment.
• Recent breakthroughs in robotics, and what cutting-edge robots can do today.
• Ken’s work as an artist, where he explores the complex relationship between humans and technology.
• And plenty more.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa's intro (00:01:19)
• General purpose robots and the “robotics bubble” (00:03:11)
• How training robots is different than training large language models (00:14:01)
• What can robots do today? (00:34:35)
• Challenges for progress: fault tolerance, multidimensionality, and perception (00:41:00)
• Recent breakthroughs in robotics (00:52:32)
• Barriers to making better robots: hardware, software, and physics (01:03:13)
• Future robots in home care, logistics, food production, and medicine (01:16:35)
• How might robot labour affect the job market? (01:44:27)
• Robotics and art (01:51:28)
• Luisa's outro (02:00:55)

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering: Dominic Armstrong, Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, and Simon Monsour
Content editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran Harris
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

"It’s very hard to find examples where people say, 'I’m starting from this point. I’m starting from this belief.' So we wanted to make that very legible to people. We wanted to say, 'Experts think this; accurate forecasters think this.' They might both be wrong, but we can at least start from here and figure out where we’re coming into a discussion and say, 'I am much less concerned than the people in this report; or I am much more concerned, and I think people in this report were missing major things.' But if you don’t have a reference set of probabilities, I think it becomes much harder to talk about disagreement in policy debates in a space that’s so complicated like this." —Ezra Karger

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Ezra Karger — research director at the Forecasting Research Institute — about FRI’s recent Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament to come up with estimates of a range of catastrophic risks.

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

• How forecasting can improve our understanding of long-term catastrophic risks from things like AI, nuclear war, pandemics, and climate change.
• What the Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament (XPT) is, how it was set up, and the results.
• The challenges of predicting low-probability, high-impact events.
• Why superforecasters’ estimates of catastrophic risks seem so much lower than experts’, and which group Ezra puts the most weight on.
• The specific underlying disagreements that superforecasters and experts had about how likely catastrophic risks from AI are.
• Why Ezra thinks forecasting tournaments can help build consensus on complex topics, and what he wants to do differently in future tournaments and studies.
• Recent advances in the science of forecasting and the areas Ezra is most excited about exploring next.
• Whether large language models could help or outperform human forecasters.
• How people can improve their calibration and start making better forecasts personally.
• Why Ezra thinks high-quality forecasts are relevant to policymakers, and whether they can really improve decision-making.
• And plenty more.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa’s intro (00:01:07)
• The interview begins (00:02:54)
• The Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament (00:05:13)
• Why is this project important? (00:12:34)
• How was the tournament set up? (00:17:54)
• Results from the tournament (00:22:38)
• Risk from artificial intelligence (00:30:59)
• How to think about these numbers (00:46:50)
• Should we trust experts or superforecasters more? (00:49:16)
• The effect of debate and persuasion (01:02:10)
• Forecasts from the general public (01:08:33)
• How can we improve people’s forecasts? (01:18:59)
• Incentives and recruitment (01:26:30)
• Criticisms of the tournament (01:33:51)
• AI adversarial collaboration (01:46:20)
• Hypotheses about stark differences in views of AI risk (01:51:41)
• Cruxes and different worldviews (02:17:15)
• Ezra’s experience as a superforecaster (02:28:57)
• Forecasting as a research field (02:31:00)
• Can large language models help or outperform human forecasters? (02:35:01)
• Is forecasting valuable in the real world? (02:39:11)
• Ezra’s book recommendations (02:45:29)
• Luisa's outro (02:47:54)

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering: Dominic Armstrong, Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, and Simon Monsour
Content editing: Luisa Rodriguez, Katy Moore, and Keiran Harris
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

"I do think that there is a really significant sentiment among parts of the opposition that it’s not really just that this bill itself is that bad or extreme — when you really drill into it, it feels like one of those things where you read it and it’s like, 'This is the thing that everyone is screaming about?' I think it’s a pretty modest bill in a lot of ways, but I think part of what they are thinking is that this is the first step to shutting down AI development. Or that if California does this, then lots of other states are going to do it, and we need to really slam the door shut on model-level regulation or else they’re just going to keep going.

"I think that is like a lot of what the sentiment here is: it’s less about, in some ways, the details of this specific bill, and more about the sense that they want this to stop here, and they’re worried that if they give an inch that there will continue to be other things in the future. And I don’t think that is going to be tolerable to the public in the long run. I think it’s a bad choice, but I think that is the calculus that they are making." —Nathan Calvin

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Nathan Calvin — senior policy counsel at the Center for AI Safety Action Fund — about the new AI safety bill in California, SB 1047, which he’s helped shape as it’s moved through the state legislature.

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

• What’s actually in SB 1047, and which AI models it would apply to.
• The most common objections to the bill — including how it could affect competition, startups, open source models, and US national security — and which of these objections Nathan thinks hold water.
• What Nathan sees as the biggest misunderstandings about the bill that get in the way of good public discourse about it.
• Why some AI companies are opposed to SB 1047, despite claiming that they want the industry to be regulated.
• How the bill is different from Biden’s executive order on AI and voluntary commitments made by AI companies.
• Why California is taking state-level action rather than waiting for federal regulation.
• How state-level regulations can be hugely impactful at national and global scales, and how listeners could get involved in state-level work to make a real difference on lots of pressing problems.
• And plenty more.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa's intro (00:00:57)
• The interview begins (00:02:30)
• What risks from AI does SB 1047 try to address? (00:03:10)
• Supporters and critics of the bill (00:11:03)
• Misunderstandings about the bill (00:24:07)
• Competition, open source, and liability concerns (00:30:56)
• Model size thresholds (00:46:24)
• How is SB 1047 different from the executive order? (00:55:36)
• Objections Nathan is sympathetic to (00:58:31)
• Current status of the bill (01:02:57)
• How can listeners get involved in work like this? (01:05:00)
• Luisa's outro (01:11:52)

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

"This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are especially poorly understood, because people don’t spend as much time learning about them at museums; and they’re just harder to spend time with in a lot of ways, I think, for people. So people have pets that are vertebrates that they take care of across the taxonomic groups, and people get familiar with those from going to zoos and watching their behaviours there, and watching nature documentaries and more. But I think the insects are still really underappreciated, and that means that our intuitions are probably more likely to be wrong than with those other groups." —Meghan Barrett

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Meghan Barrett — insect neurobiologist and physiologist at Indiana University Indianapolis and founding director of the Insect Welfare Research Society — about her work to understand insects’ potential capacity for suffering, and what that might mean for how humans currently farm and use insects. If you're interested in getting involved with this work, check out Meghan's recent blog post: I’m into insect welfare! What’s next?

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

• The scale of potential insect suffering in the wild, on farms, and in labs.
• Examples from cutting-edge insect research, like how depression- and anxiety-like states can be induced in fruit flies and successfully treated with human antidepressants.
• How size bias might help explain why many people assume insects can’t feel pain.
• Practical solutions that Meghan’s team is working on to improve farmed insect welfare, such as standard operating procedures for more humane slaughter methods.
• Challenges facing the nascent field of insect welfare research, and where the main research gaps are.
• Meghan’s personal story of how she went from being sceptical of insect pain to working as an insect welfare scientist, and her advice for others who want to improve the lives of insects.
• And much more.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa's intro (00:01:02)
• The interview begins (00:03:06)
• What is an insect? (00:03:22)
• Size diversity (00:07:24)
• How important is brain size for sentience? (00:11:27)
• Offspring, parental investment, and lifespan (00:19:00)
• Cognition and behaviour (00:23:23)
• The scale of insect suffering (00:27:01)
• Capacity to suffer (00:35:56)
• The empirical evidence for whether insects can feel pain (00:47:18)
• Nociceptors (01:00:02)
• Integrated nociception (01:08:39)
• Response to analgesia (01:16:17)
• Analgesia preference (01:25:57)
• Flexible self-protective behaviour (01:31:19)
• Motivational tradeoffs and associative learning (01:38:45)
• Results (01:43:31)
• Reasons to be sceptical (01:47:18)
• Meghan’s probability of sentience in insects (02:10:20)
• Views of the broader entomologist community (02:18:18)
• Insect farming (02:26:52)
• How much to worry about insect farming (02:40:56)
• Inhumane slaughter and disease in insect farms (02:44:45)
• Inadequate nutrition, density, and photophobia (02:53:50)
• Most humane ways to kill insects at home (03:01:33)
• Challenges in researching this (03:07:53)
• Most promising reforms (03:18:44)
• Why Meghan is hopeful about working with the industry (03:22:17)
• Careers (03:34:08)
• Insect Welfare Research Society (03:37:16)
• Luisa's outro (03:47:01)

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

The three biggest AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind — have now all released policies designed to make their AI models less likely to go rogue or cause catastrophic damage as they approach, and eventually exceed, human capabilities. Are they good enough?

That’s what host Rob Wiblin tries to hash out in this interview (recorded May 30) with Nick Joseph — one of the original cofounders of Anthropic, its current head of training, and a big fan of Anthropic’s “responsible scaling policy” (or “RSP”). Anthropic is the most safety focused of the AI companies, known for a culture that treats the risks of its work as deadly serious.

Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript.

As Nick explains, these scaling policies commit companies to dig into what new dangerous things a model can do — after it’s trained, but before it’s in wide use. The companies then promise to put in place safeguards they think are sufficient to tackle those capabilities before availability is extended further. For instance, if a model could significantly help design a deadly bioweapon, then its weights need to be properly secured so they can’t be stolen by terrorists interested in using it that way.

As capabilities grow further — for example, if testing shows that a model could exfiltrate itself and spread autonomously in the wild — then new measures would need to be put in place to make that impossible, or demonstrate that such a goal can never arise.

Nick points out what he sees as the biggest virtues of the RSP approach, and then Rob pushes him on some of the best objections he’s found to RSPs being up to the task of keeping AI safe and beneficial. The two also discuss whether it's essential to eventually hand over operation of responsible scaling policies to external auditors or regulatory bodies, if those policies are going to be able to hold up against the intense commercial pressures that might end up arrayed against them.

In addition to all of that, Nick and Rob talk about:

• What Nick thinks are the current bottlenecks in AI progress: people and time (rather than data or compute).
• What it’s like working in AI safety research at the leading edge, and whether pushing forward capabilities (even in the name of safety) is a good idea.
• What it’s like working at Anthropic, and how to get the skills needed to help with the safe development of AI.

And as a reminder, if you want to let us know your reaction to this interview, or send any other feedback, our inbox is always open at [email protected].

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Rob’s intro (00:01:00)
• The interview begins (00:03:44)
• Scaling laws (00:04:12)
• Bottlenecks to further progress in making AIs helpful (00:08:36)
• Anthropic’s responsible scaling policies (00:14:21)
• Pros and cons of the RSP approach for AI safety (00:34:09)
• Alternatives to RSPs (00:46:44)
• Is an internal audit really the best approach? (00:51:56)
• Making promises about things that are currently technically impossible (01:07:54)
• Nick’s biggest reservations about the RSP approach (01:16:05)
• Communicating “acceptable” risk (01:19:27)
• Should Anthropic’s RSP have wider safety buffers? (01:26:13)
• Other impacts on society and future work on RSPs (01:34:01)
• Working at Anthropic (01:36:28)
• Engineering vs research (01:41:04)
• AI safety roles at Anthropic (01:48:31)
• Should concerned people be willing to take capabilities roles? (01:58:20)
• Recent safety work at Anthropic (02:10:05)
• Anthropic culture (02:14:35)
• Overrated and underrated AI applications (02:22:06)
• Rob’s outro (02:26:36)

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Video engineering: Simon Monsour
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

"In the 1980s, it was still apparently common to perform surgery on newborn babies without anaesthetic on both sides of the Atlantic. This led to appalling cases, and to public outcry, and to campaigns to change clinical practice. And as soon as [some courageous scientists] looked for evidence, it showed that this practice was completely indefensible and then the clinical practice was changed. People don’t need convincing anymore that we should take newborn human babies seriously as sentience candidates. But the tale is a useful cautionary tale, because it shows you how deep that overconfidence can run and how problematic it can be. It just underlines this point that overconfidence about sentience is everywhere and is dangerous." —Jonathan Birch

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Dr Jonathan Birch — philosophy professor at the London School of Economics — about his new book, The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. (Check out the free PDF version!)

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

• Candidates for sentience, such as humans with consciousness disorders, foetuses, neural organoids, invertebrates, and AIs
• Humanity’s history of acting as if we’re sure that such beings are incapable of having subjective experiences — and why Jonathan thinks that that certainty is completely unjustified.
• Chilling tales about overconfident policies that probably caused significant suffering for decades.
• How policymakers can act ethically given real uncertainty.
• Whether simulating the brain of the roundworm C. elegans or Drosophila (aka fruit flies) would create minds equally sentient to the biological versions.
• How new technologies like brain organoids could replace animal testing, and how big the risk is that they could be sentient too.
• Why Jonathan is so excited about citizens’ assemblies.
• Jonathan’s conversation with the Dalai Lama about whether insects are sentient.
• And plenty more.

Chapters:

• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa’s intro (00:01:20)
• The interview begins (00:03:04)
• Why does sentience matter? (00:03:31)
• Inescapable uncertainty about other minds (00:05:43)
• The “zone of reasonable disagreement” in sentience research (00:10:31)
• Disorders of consciousness: comas and minimally conscious states (00:17:06)
• Foetuses and the cautionary tale of newborn pain (00:43:23)
• Neural organoids (00:55:49)
• AI sentience and whole brain emulation (01:06:17)
• Policymaking at the edge of sentience (01:28:09)
• Citizens’ assemblies (01:31:13)
• The UK’s Sentience Act (01:39:45)
• Ways Jonathan has changed his mind (01:47:26)
• Careers (01:54:54)
• Discussing animal sentience with the Dalai Lama (01:59:08)
• Luisa’s outro (02:01:04)

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering by Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore