Holden Karnofsky - Transformative AI & Most Important Century

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.

Timestamps

(0:00:00) - Intro

(0:00:58) - The Most Important Century

(0:06:44) - The Weirdness of Our Time

(0:21:20) - The Industrial Revolution 

(0:35:40) - AI Success Scenario

(0:52:36) - Competition, Innovation , & AGI Bottlenecks

(1:00:14) - Lock-in & Weak Points

(1:06:04) - Predicting the Future

(1:20:40) - Choosing Which Problem To Solve

(1:26:56) - $30M OpenAI Investment

(1:30:22) - Future Proof Ethics

(1:37:28) - Integrity vs Utilitarianism

(1:40:46) - Bayesian Mindset & Governance

(1:46:56) - Career Advice