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
The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

112,586 Listeners

Astral Codex Ten Podcast by Jeremiah

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

130 Listeners

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat by New York Times Opinion

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

7,224 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

531 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

16,096 Listeners

AI Article Readings by Readings of great articles in AI voices

AI Article Readings

4 Listeners

Doom Debates by Liron Shapira

Doom Debates

14 Listeners

LessWrong posts by zvi by zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi

2 Listeners