LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Why I don’t believe Superalignment will work” by Simon Lermen


Listen Later

We skip over [..] where we move from the human-ish range to strong superintelligence[1]. [..] the period where we can harness potentially vast quantities of AI labour to help us with the alignment of the next generation of models

- Will MacAskill in his critique of IABIED

I want to respond to Will MacAskill's claim in his IABIED review that we may be able use AI to solve alignment.[1] Will believes that recent developments in AI made it more likely that takeoff will be relatively slow - "Sudden, sharp, large leaps in intelligence now look unlikely". Because of this, he and many others believe that there will likely be a period of time at some point in the future when we can essentially direct the AIs to align more powerful AIs. But it appears to me that a “slow takeoff” is not sufficient at all and that a [...]

---

Outline:

(01:47) Fast takeoff is possible

(02:49) AIs are unlikely to speed up alignment before capabilities

(04:21) What would the AI alignment researchers actually be doing?

(05:29) Alignment problem might require genius breakthroughs

(06:57) Most labs won't use the time

(07:26) The plan could have negative consequences

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

September 22nd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kyBGcHfzfZziHm5xL/why-i-don-t-believe-superalignment-will-work

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

LessWrong (30+ Karma)By LessWrong


More shows like LessWrong (30+ Karma)

View all
Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,371 Listeners

Conversations with Tyler by Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Conversations with Tyler

2,426 Listeners

The Peter Attia Drive by Peter Attia, MD

The Peter Attia Drive

8,190 Listeners

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas by Sean Carroll | Wondery

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

4,149 Listeners

ManifoldOne by Steve Hsu

ManifoldOne

92 Listeners

Your Undivided Attention by The Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris, Daniel Barcay and Aza Raskin

Your Undivided Attention

1,560 Listeners

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

9,793 Listeners

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) by Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

89 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

489 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,473 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

16,106 Listeners

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis by PHD Ventures

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

531 Listeners

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups by Conviction

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

133 Listeners

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast by swyx + Alessio

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

97 Listeners

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley by BG2Pod

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

509 Listeners