Today I’m reacting to the Bret Weinstein’s recent appearance on the Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett. Bret is an evolutionary biologist known for his outspoken views on social and political issues.

Bret gets off to a promising start, saying that AI risk should be “top of mind” and poses “five existential threats”. But his analysis is shallow and ad-hoc, and ends in him dismissing the idea of trying to use regulation as a tool to save our species from a recognized existential threat.

I believe we can raise the level of AI doom discourse by calling out these kinds of basic flaws in popular media on the subject.

00:00 Introduction

02:02 Existential Threats from AI

03:32 The Paperclip Problem

04:53 Moral Implications of Ending Suffering

06:31 Inner vs. Outer Alignment

08:41 AI as a Tool for Malicious Actors

10:31 Attack vs. Defense in AI

18:12 The Event Horizon of AI

21:42 Is Language More Prime Than Intelligence?

38:38 AI and the Danger of Echo Chambers

46:59 AI Regulation

51:03 Mechanistic Interpretability

56:52 Final Thoughts

Original source: youtube.com/watch?v=_cFu-b5lTMU

Follow Bret Weinstein: x.com/BretWeinstein

Follow Steven Bartlett: x.com/StevenBartlett

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