Andres Sepulveda Morales joins me to discuss his journey from three tech layoffs to founding Red Mage Creative and leading the Fort Collins chapter of the Rocky Mountain AI Interest Group (RMAIIG). We explore the current tech job market, AI anxiety in nonprofits, dark patterns in AI systems, and building inclusive tech communities that welcome diverse perspectives. Reach out to Andres on his LinkedIn , or check out the Red Mage Creative website ! For any listeners in Colorado, consider attending...
Aug 04, 2025•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 22
Will Petillo, onboarding team lead at PauseAI , joins me to discuss the grassroots movement advocating for a pause on frontier AI model development. We explore PauseAI's strategy, talk about common misconceptions Will hears, and dig into how diverse perspectives still converge on the need to slow down AI development. Will's Links Personal blog on AI His mindmap of the AI x-risk debate Game demos AI focused YouTube channel (00:00) - Intro (03:36) - What is PauseAI (10:10) - Will Petillo's journey...
Jun 23, 2025•1 hr 48 min•Ep. 21
I am joined by Tristan Williams and Felix de Simone to discuss their work on the potential of constituent communication, specifically in the context of AI legislation. These two worked as part of an AI Safety Camp team to understand whether or not it would be useful for more people to be sharing their experiences, concerns, and opinions with their government representative (hint, it is). Check out the blogpost on their findings, "Talking to Congress: Can constituents contacting their legislator ...
May 19, 2025•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 20
The almost Dr. Igor Krawczuk joins me for what is the equivalent of 4 of my previous episodes. We get into all the classics: eugenics, capitalism, philosophical toads... Need I say more? If you're interested in connecting with Igor, head on over to his website , or check out placeholder for thesis (it isn't published yet). Because the full show notes have a whopping 115 additional links, I'll highlight some that I think are particularly worthwhile here: The best article you'll ever read on Open ...
Jun 03, 2024•2 hr 59 min•Ep. 19
As always, the best things come in 3s: dimensions, musketeers, pyramids, and... 3 installments of my interview with Dr. Peter Park, an AI Existential Safety Post-doctoral Fellow working with Dr. Max Tegmark at MIT. As you may have ascertained from the previous two segments of the interview, Dr. Park cofounded StakeOut.AI along with Harry Luk and one other cofounder whose name has been removed due to requirements of her current position. The non-profit had a simple but important mission: make the...
Mar 25, 2024•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 18
Join me for round 2 with Dr. Peter Park, an AI Existential Safety Postdoctoral Fellow working with Dr. Max Tegmark at MIT. Dr. Park was a cofounder of StakeOut.AI , a non-profit focused on making AI go well for humans , along with Harry Luk and one other individual, whose name has been removed due to requirements of her current position. In addition to the normal links, I wanted to include the links to the petitions that Dr. Park mentions during the podcast. Note that the nonprofit which began t...
Mar 18, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 17
UPDATE: Contrary to what I say in this episode, I won't be removing any episodes that are already published from the podcast RSS feed. After getting some advice and reflecting more on my own personal goals, I have decided to shift the direction of the podcast towards accessible content regarding "AI" instead of the show's original focus. I will still be releasing what I am calling research ride-along content to my Patreon , but the show's feed will consist only of content that I aim to make as a...
Mar 11, 2024•13 min•Ep. 16
Dr. Peter Park is an AI Existential Safety Postdoctoral Fellow working with Dr. Max Tegmark at MIT. In conjunction with Harry Luk and one other cofounder, he founded StakeOut.AI , a non-profit focused on making AI go well for humans . 00:54 - Intro 03:15 - Dr. Park, x-risk, and AGI 08:55 - StakeOut.AI 12:05 - Governance scorecard 19:34 - Hollywood webinar 22:02 - Regulations.gov comments 23:48 - Open letters 26:15 - EU AI Act 35:07 - Effective accelerationism 40:50 - Divide and conquer dynamics...
Mar 04, 2024•54 min•Ep. 15
Take a trip with me through the paper Large Language Models, A Survey , published on February 9th of 2024. All figures and tables mentioned throughout the episode can be found on the Into AI Safety podcast website . 00:36 - Intro and authors 01:50 - My takes and paper structure 04:40 - Getting to LLMs 07:27 - Defining LLMs & emergence 12:12 - Overview of PLMs 15:00 - How LLMs are built 18:52 - Limitations if LLMs 23:06 - Uses of LLMs 25:16 - Evaluations and Benchmarks 28:11 - Challenges and ...
Feb 26, 2024•31 min•Ep. 14
Esben reviews an application that I would soon submit for Open Philanthropy's Career Transitition Funding opportunity. Although I didn't end up receiving the funding, I do think that this episode can be a valuable resource for both others and myself when applying for funding in the future. Head over to Apart Research's website to check out their work, or the Alignment Jam website for information on upcoming hackathons. A doc-capsule of the application at the time of this recording can be found a...
Feb 19, 2024•45 min•Ep. 13
Before I begin with the paper-distillation based minisodes, I figured we would go over best practices for reading research papers. I go through the anatomy of typical papers, and some generally applicable advice. 00:56 - Anatomy of a paper 02:38 - Most common advice 05:24 - Reading sparsity and path 07:30 - Notes and motivation Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper ...
Feb 12, 2024•9 min•Ep. 12
Join our hackathon group for the second episode in the Evals November 2023 Hackathon subseries. In this episode, we solidify our goals for the hackathon after some preliminary experimentation and ideation. Check out Stellaric's website , or follow them on Twitter . 01:53 - Meeting starts 05:05 - Pitch: extension of locked models 23:23 - Pitch: retroactive holdout datasets 34:04 - Preliminary results 37:44 - Next steps 42:55 - Recap Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the ...
Feb 05, 2024•49 min•Ep. 11
I provide my thoughts and recommendations regarding personal professional portfolios. 00:35 - Intro to portfolios 01:42 - Modern portfolios 02:27 - What to include 04:38 - Importance of visual 05:50 - The "About" page 06:25 - Tools 08:12 - Future of "Minisodes" Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. From Portafoglio to Eportfolio: The Evolution of Portfolio in Higher Education GIMP AlternativeTo Jekyll GitHub Page...
Jan 29, 2024•10 min•Ep. 10
Darryl and I discuss his background, how he became interested in machine learning, and a project we are currently working on investigating the penalization of polysemanticity during the training of neural networks. Check out a diagram of the decoder task used for our research! 01:46 - Interview begins 02:14 - Supernovae classification 08:58 - Penalizing polysemanticity 20:58 - Our "toy model" 30:06 - Task description 32:47 - Addressing hurdles 39:20 - Lessons learned Links to all articles/papers...
Jan 22, 2024•45 min•Ep. 9
A summary and reflections on the path I have taken to get this podcast started, including some resources recommendations for others who want to do something similar. Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. LessWrong Spotify for Podcasters Into AI Safety podcast website Effective Altruism Global Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) Craig Riverside...
Jan 15, 2024•11 min•Ep. 8
This episode kicks off our first subseries, which will consist of recordings taken during my team's meetings for the AlignmentJams Evals Hackathon in November of 2023. Our team won first place, so you'll be listening to the process which, at the end of the day, turned out to be pretty good. Check out Apart Research , the group that runs the AlignmentJamz Hackathons . Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. Generali...
Jan 08, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 7
In this minisode I give some tips for staying up-to-date in the everchanging landscape of AI. I would like to point out that I am constantly iterating on these strategies, tools, and sources, so it is likely that I will make an update episode in the future. Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. Tools Feedly arXiv Sanity Lite Zotero AlternativeTo My "Distilled AI" Folder AI Explained YouTube channel AI Safety news...
Jan 01, 2024•13 min•Ep. 6
Alice Rigg, a mechanistic interpretability researcher from Ottawa, Canada, joins me to discuss their path and the applications process for research/mentorship programs. Join the Mech Interp Discord server and attend reading groups at 11:00am on Wednesdays (Mountain Time)! Check out Alice's website . Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. EleutherAI Join the public EleutherAI discord server Distill Effective Altrui...
Dec 18, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 5
We're back after a month-long hiatus with a podcast refactor and advice on the applications process for research/mentorship programs. Check out the About page on the Into AI Safety website for a summary of the logistics updates. Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. MATS ASTRA Fellowship ARENA AI Safety Camp BlueDot Impact Tech with Tim Fast.AI's Practical Deep Learning for Coders Kaggle AlignmentJams LessWrong A...
Dec 11, 2023•18 min•Ep. 4
This episode is a brief overview of the major takeaways I had from attending EAG Boston 2023, and an update on my plans for the podcast moving forward. TL;DL Starting in early December (2023), I will be uploading episodes on a biweekly basis (day TBD). I won't be releasing another episode until then, so that I can build a cache of episodes up. During this month (November 2023), I'll also try to get the podcast up on more platforms, set up comments on more platforms, and create an anonymous feedb...
Dec 04, 2023•10 min•Ep. 3
In this episode I discuss my initial research proposal for the 2024 Winter AI Safety Camp with one of the individuals who helps facilitate the program, Remmelt Ellen. The proposal is titled The Effect of Machine Learning on Bioengineered Pandemic Risk. A doc-capsule of the proposal at the time of this recording can be found at this link . Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. MegaSyn: Integrating Generative Molec...
Nov 27, 2023•57 min•Ep. 2
Welcome to the Into AI Safety podcast! In this episode I provide reasoning for why I am starting this podcast, what I am trying to accomplish with it, and a little bit of background on how I got here. Please email all inquiries and suggestions to intoaisafety@gmail.com.
Nov 13, 2023•10 min•Ep. 1
