Roon is a member of the technical staff at OpenAI. He’s a highly respected voice on tech Twitter, despite being a pseudonymous cartoon avatar account. In late 2021, he invented the terms “shape rotator” and “wordcel” to refer to roughly visual/spatial/mathematical intelligence vs. verbal intelligence. He is simultaneously a serious thinker, a builder, and a shitposter.

 I'm excited to learn more about Roon, his background, his life, and of course, his views about AI and existential risk.

00:00 Introduction

02:43 Roon’s Quest and Philosophies

22:32 AI Creativity

30:42 What’s Your P(Doom)™

54:40 AI Alignment

57:24 Training vs. Production

01:05:37 ASI

01:14:35 Goal-Oriented AI and Instrumental Convergence

01:22:43 Pausing AI

01:25:58 Crux of Disagreement

1:27:55 Dogecoin

01:29:13 Doom Debates’s Mission

Show Notes

Follow Roon: https://x.com/tszzl

For Humanity: An AI Safety Podcast with John Sherman — https://www.youtube.com/@ForHumanityPodcast

Lethal Intelligence Guide, the ultimate animated video introduction to AI x-risk – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CUFbqh16Fg

PauseAI, the volunteer organization I’m part of — https://pauseai.info/

Join the PauseAI Discord — https://discord.gg/2XXWXvErfA — and say hi to me in the #doom-debates-podcast channel!

Doom Debates’ Mission is to raise mainstream awareness of imminent extinction from AGI and build the social infrastructure for high-quality debate.

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