Here is my interview with Dominic Cummings on why Western governments are so dangerously broken, and how to fix them before an even more catastrophic crisis. Dominic was Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister during COVID, and before that, director of Vote Leave (which masterminded the 2016 Brexit referendum). Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:0...
Nov 15, 2023•3 hr 34 min
Paul Christiano is the world’s leading AI safety researcher. My full episode with him is out! We discuss: - Does he regret inventing RLHF, and is alignment necessarily dual-use? - Why he has relatively modest timelines (40% by 2040, 15% by 2030), - What do we want post-AGI world to look like (do we want to keep gods enslaved forever)? - Why he’s leading the push to get to labs develop responsible scaling policies, and what it would take to prevent an AI coup or bioweapon, - His current research ...
Oct 31, 2023•3 hr 7 min
I had a lot of fun chatting with Shane Legg - Founder and Chief AGI Scientist, Google DeepMind! We discuss: * Why he expects AGI around 2028 * How to align superhuman models * What new architectures needed for AGI * Has Deepmind sped up capabilities or safety more? * Why multimodality will be next big landmark * and much more Watch full episode on YouTube , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read full transcript here . Timestamps (0:00:00) - Measuring AGI (0:11:41) - Do we...
Oct 26, 2023•44 min
I had a lot of fun chatting with Grant Sanderson (who runs the excellent 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel) about: - Whether advanced math requires AGI - What careers should mathematically talented students pursue - Why Grant plans on doing a stint as a high school teacher - Tips for self teaching - Does Godel’s incompleteness theorem actually matter - Why are good explanations so hard to find? - And much more Watch on YouTube . Listen on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , or any other podcast platform. Full ...
Oct 12, 2023•2 hr 31 min
I learned so much from Sarah Paine, Professor of History and Strategy at the Naval War College. We discuss: - how continental vs maritime powers think and how this explains Xi & Putin's decisions - how a war with China over Taiwan would shake out and whether it could go nuclear - why the British Empire fell apart, why China went communist, how Hitler and Japan could have coordinated to win WW2, and whether Japanese occupation was good for Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria - plus other lessons from WW2...
Oct 04, 2023•2 hr 25 min
Here is my conversation with Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic. Dario is hilarious and has fascinating takes on what these models are doing, why they scale so well, and what it will take to align them. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Introduction (00:01:00) - Scaling (00:15:46) - Language (00:22:58) - Economic Usefulness (00:38:05) - Bio...
Aug 08, 2023•2 hr 59 min
A few weeks ago, I sat beside Andy Matuschak to record how he reads a textbook. Even though my own job is to learn things, I was shocked with how much more intense, painstaking, and effective his learning process was. So I asked if we could record a conversation about how he learns and a bunch of other topics: * How he identifies and interrogates his confusion (much harder than it seems, and requires an extremely effortful and slow pace) * Why memorization is essential to understanding and decis...
Jul 12, 2023•2 hr 23 min
The second half of my 7 hour conversation with Carl Shulman is out! My favorite part! And the one that had the biggest impact on my worldview. Here, Carl lays out how an AI takeover might happen: * AI can threaten mutually assured destruction from bioweapons, * use cyber attacks to take over physical infrastructure, * build mechanical armies, * spread seed AIs we can never exterminate, * offer tech and other advantages to collaborating countries, etc Plus we talk about a whole bunch of weird and...
Jun 26, 2023•3 hr 7 min
In terms of the depth and range of topics, this episode is the best I’ve done. No part of my worldview is the same after talking with Carl Shulman. He's the most interesting intellectual you've never heard of. We ended up talking for 8 hours, so I'm splitting this episode into 2 parts. This part is about Carl’s model of an intelligence explosion, which integrates everything from: * how fast algorithmic progress & hardware improvements in AI are happening, * what primate evolution suggests about ...
Jun 14, 2023•3 hr 44 min
It was a tremendous honor & pleasure to interview Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb We discuss - similarities between AI progress & Manhattan Project (developing a powerful, unprecedented, & potentially apocalyptic technology within an uncertain arms-race situation) - visiting starving former Soviet scientists during fall of Soviet Union - whether Oppenheimer was a spy, & consulting on the Nolan movie - living through WW2 as a child - odds of nuclear ...
May 23, 2023•3 hr 38 min
For 4 hours, I tried to come up reasons for why AI might not kill us all, and Eliezer Yudkowsky explained why I was wrong. We also discuss his call to halt AI, why LLMs make alignment harder, what it would take to save humanity, his millions of words of sci-fi, and much more. If you want to get to the crux of the conversation, fast forward to 2:35:00 through 3:43:54. Here we go through and debate the main reasons I still think doom is unlikely. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spoti...
Apr 06, 2023•4 hr 3 min
I went over to the OpenAI offices in San Fransisco to ask the Chief Scientist and cofounder of OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever , about: * time to AGI * leaks and spies * what's after generative models * post AGI futures * working with Microsoft and competing with Google * difficulty of aligning superhuman AI Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (00:00) - Time t...
Mar 27, 2023•48 min
It is said that the two greatest problems of history are: how to account for the rise of Rome, and how to account for her fall. If so, then the volcanic ashes spewed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD - which entomb the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in South Italy - hold history’s greatest prize. For beneath those ashes lies the only salvageable library from the classical world. Nat Friedman was the CEO of Github form 2018 to 2021. Before that, he started and sold two companies - Ximian and Xamarin ...
Mar 22, 2023•2 hr 38 min
I flew out to Chicago to interview Brett Harrison , who is the former President of FTX US President and founder of Architect . In his first longform interview since the fall of FTX, he speak in great detail about his entire tenure there and about SBF’s dysfunctional leadership. He talks about how the inner circle of Gary Wang, Nishad Singh, and SBF mismanaged the company, controlled the codebase, got distracted by media, and even threatened him for his letter of resignation. In what was my favor...
Mar 13, 2023•3 hr 38 min
My podcast with the brilliant Marc Andreessen is out! We discuss: * how AI will revolutionize software * whether NFTs are useless, & whether he should be funding flying cars instead * a16z's biggest vulnerabilities * the future of fusion, education, Twitter, venture, managerialism, & big tech Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:17) - Chewing gla...
Feb 01, 2023•1 hr 20 min
Garett Jones is an economist at George Mason University and the author of The Cultural Transplant , Hive Mind , and 10% Less Democracy . This episode was fun and interesting throughout! He explains: * Why national IQ matters * How migrants bring their values to their new countries * Why we should have less democracy * How the Chinese are an unstoppable global force for free markets Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intr...
Jan 24, 2023•1 hr 14 min
One of my best episodes ever. Lars Doucet is the author of Land is a Big Deal , a book about Georgism which has been praised by Vitalik Buterin, Scott Alexander, and Noah Smith. Sam Altman is the lead investor in his new startup, ValueBase . Talking with Lars completely changed how I think about who creates value in the world and who leeches off it. We go deep into the weeds on Georgism: * Why do even the wealthiest places in the world have poverty and homelessness, and why do rents increase as ...
Jan 09, 2023•2 hr 40 min
Holden Karnofsky is the co-CEO of Open Philanthropy and co-founder of GiveWell . He is also the author of one of the most interesting blogs on the internet, Cold Takes . We discuss: * Are we living in the most important century? * Does he regret OpenPhil’s 30 million dollar grant to OpenAI in 2016? * How does he think about AI, progress, digital people, & ethics? Highly recommend! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here...
Jan 03, 2023•2 hr 56 min
This was one of my favorite episodes ever. Bethany McLean was the first reporter to question Enron’s earnings, and she has written some of the best finance books out there. We discuss: * The astounding similarities between Enron & FTX, * How visionaries are just frauds who succeed (and which category describes Elon Musk), * What caused 2008, and whether we are headed for a new crisis, * Why there’s too many venture capitalists and not enough short sellers, * And why history keeps repeating itsel...
Dec 21, 2022•1 hr 26 min
Nadia Asparouhova is currently researching what the new tech elite will look like at nadia.xyz . She is also the author of Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software . We talk about how: * American philanthropy has changed from Rockefeller to Effective Altruism * SBF represented the Davos elite rather than the Silicon Valley elite, * Open source software reveals the limitations of democratic participation, * & much more. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Sp...
Dec 15, 2022•1 hr 22 min
Perhaps the most interesting episode so far. Byrne Hobart writes at thediff.co , analyzing inflections in finance and tech. He explains: * What happened at FTX * How drugs have induced past financial bubbles * How to be long AI while hedging Taiwan invasion * Whether Musk’s Twitter takeover will succeed * Where to find the next Napoleon and LBJ * & ultimately how society can deal with those who seek domination and recognition Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other p...
Dec 01, 2022•2 hr 30 min
Edward Glaeser is the chair of the Harvard department of economics, and the author of the best books and papers about cities (including Survival of the City and Triumph of the City ). He explains why: * Cities are resilient to terrorism, remote work, & pandemics, * Silicon Valley may collapse but the Sunbelt will prosper, * Opioids show UBI is not a solution to AI * & much more! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here ....
Nov 28, 2022•57 min
I had a fascinating discussion about Robert Moses and The Power Broker with Professor Kenneth T. Jackson . He's the pre-eminent historian on NYC and author of Robert Moses and The Modern City: The Transformation of New York . He answers: * Why are we so much worse at building things today? * Would NYC be like Detroit without the master builder? * Does it take a tyrant to stop NIMBY? Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript he...
Nov 08, 2022•2 hr 33 min
It was a pleasure to welcome Brian Potter on the podcast! Brian is the author of the excellent Construction Physics blog, where he discusses why the construction industry has been slow to industrialize and innovate. He explains why: Construction isn’t getting cheaper and faster, “Ugly” modern buildings are simply the result of better architecture, China is so great at building things, Saudi Arabia’s Line is a waste of resources, Environmental review makes new construction expensive and delayed a...
Oct 27, 2022•2 hr 26 min
It was a fantastic pleasure to welcome Bryan Caplan back for a third time on the podcast! His most recent book is Don't Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice . He explains why he thinks: - Feminists are mostly wrong, - We shouldn’t overtax our centi-billionaires, - Decolonization should have emphasized human rights over democracy, - Eastern Europe shows that we could accept millions of refugees. Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the ful...
Oct 20, 2022•2 hr 5 min
It was my great pleasure to speak once again to Tyler Cowen. His most recent book is Talent, How to Find Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Across the World . We discuss: - how sex is more pessimistic than he is, - why he expects society to collapse permanently, - why humility, stimulants, & intelligence are overrated, - how he identifies talent, deceit, & ambition, - & much much much more! Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transc...
Sep 28, 2022•2 hr 35 min
Charles C. Mann is the author of three of my favorite history books: 1491 . 1493 , and The Wizard and the Prophet . We discuss: * why Native American civilizations collapsed and why they failed to make more technological progress * why he disagrees with Will MacAskill about longtermism * why there aren’t any successful slave revolts * how geoengineering can help us solve climate change * why Bitcoin is like the Chinese Silver Trade * and much much more! Timestamps (0:00:00) -Epidemically Alterna...
Sep 14, 2022•2 hr 31 min
Austin Vernon is an engineer working on a new method for carbon capture, and he has one of the most interesting blogs on the internet, where he writes about engineering, software, economics, and investing. We discuss how energy superabundance will change the world, how Starship can be turned into a kinetic weapon, why nuclear is overrated, blockchains, batteries, flying cars, finding alpha, & much more! Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read t...
Sep 08, 2022•2 hr 24 min
Steve Hsu is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at Michigan State University and cofounder of the company Genomic Prediction . We go deep into the weeds on how embryo selection can make babies healthier and smarter. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow Steve on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Timestamps (0:00:14) - Feynman’s advice on picking up women (0:11:46) - Embryo selecti...
Aug 23, 2022•2 hr 21 min
Will MacAskill is one of the founders of the Effective Altruist movement and the author of the upcoming book, What We Owe The Future . We talk about improving the future, risk of extinction & collapse, technological & moral change, problems of academia, who changes history, and much more. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website + Transcript here . Follow Will on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes. Subscribe...
Aug 09, 2022•56 min
