Technology doesn’t force us to do anything — it merely opens doors. But military and economic competition pushes us through. That’s how Allan Dafoe — director of frontier safety and governance at Google DeepMind — explains one of the deepest patterns in technological history: once a powerful new capability becomes available, societies that adopt it tend to outcompete those that don’t. Those who resist too much can find themselves taken over or rendered irrelevant.

These highlights are from episode #212 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast: Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway, and include:

• Who's Allan Dafoe? (00:00:00)
• Astounding patterns in macrohistory (00:00:23)
• Are humans just along for the ride when it comes to technological progress? (00:03:58)
• Flavours of technological determinism (00:07:11)
• The super-cooperative AGI hypothesis and backdoors (00:12:50)
• Could having more cooperative AIs backfire? (00:19:16)
• The offence-defence balance (00:24:23)

These aren't necessarily the most important or even most entertaining parts of the interview — so if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode!

And if you're finding these highlights episodes valuable, please let us know by emailing [email protected]. 

Highlights put together by Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong