Future of Life Institute Podcast
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit working to reduce global catastrophic and existential risk from powerful technologies. In particular, FLI focuses on risks from artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, nuclear weapons and climate change. The Institute's work is made up of three main strands: grantmaking for risk reduction, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, US government and European Union institutions. FLI has become one of the world's leading voices on the governance of AI having created one of the earliest and most influential sets of governance principles: the Asilomar AI Principles.
Episodes
Tyler Johnston is Executive Director of the Midas Project. He joins the podcast to discuss AI transparency and accountability. We explore applying animal rights watchdog tactics to AI companies, the OpenAI Files investigation, and OpenAI's subpoenas against nonprofit critics. Tyler discusses why transparency is crucial when technical safety solutions remain elusive and how public pressure can effectively challenge much lar...
William MacAskill is a senior research fellow at Forethought. He joins the podcast to discuss his Better Futures essay series. We explore moral error risks, AI character design, space governance, and persistent path dependence. The conversation also covers risk-averse AI systems, moral trade between value systems, and improving model specifications for ethical reasoning.
LINKS:
- Better Futures Research Series: https://w...
Karl Koch is founder of the AI Whistleblower Initiative. He joins the podcast to discuss transparency and protections for AI insiders who spot safety risks. We explore current company policies, legal gaps, how to evaluate disclosure decisions, and whistleblowing as a backstop when oversight fails. The conversation covers practical guidance for potential whistleblowers and challenges of maintaining transparency as AI develo...
Maya Ackerman is an AI researcher, co-founder and CEO of WaveAI, and author of the book "Creative Machines: AI, Art & Us." She joins the podcast to discuss creativity in humans and machines. We explore defining creativity as novel and valuable output, why evolution qualifies as creative, and how AI alignment can reduce machine creativity. The conversation covers humble creative machines versus all-knowing oracles, hall...
Parmy Olson is a technology columnist at Bloomberg and the author of Supremacy, which won the 2024 Financial Times Business Book of the Year. She joins the podcast to discuss the transformation of AI companies from research labs to product businesses. We explore how funding pressures have changed company missions, the role of personalities versus innovation, the challenges faced by safety teams, and power consolidation in ...
Adam Gleave is co-founder and CEO of FAR.AI. In this cross-post from The Cognitive Revolution Podcast, he joins to discuss post-AGI scenarios and AI safety challenges. The conversation explores his three-tier framework for AI capabilities, gradual disempowerment concerns, defense-in-depth security, and research on training less deceptive models. Topics include timelines, interpretability limitations, scalable oversight tec...
Beatrice works at the Foresight Institute running their Existential Hope program. She joins the podcast to discuss the AI pathways project, which explores two alternative scenarios to the default race toward AGI. We examine tool AI, which prioritizes human oversight and democratic control, and d/acc, which emphasizes decentralized, defensive development. The conversation covers trade-offs between safety and speed, how thes...
Nate Soares is president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He joins the podcast to discuss his new book "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies," co-authored with Eliezer Yudkowsky. We explore why current AI systems are "grown not crafted," making them unpredictable and difficult to control. The conversation covers threshold effects in intelligence, why computer security analogies suggest AI alignment is currentl...
Luke Drago is the co-founder of Workshop Labs and co-author of the essay series "The Intelligence Curse". The essay series explores what happens if AI becomes the dominant factor of production thereby reducing incentives to invest in people. We explore pyramid replacement in firms, economic warning signs to monitor, automation barriers like tacit knowledge, privacy risks in AI training, and tensions between centralized AI ...
Basil Halperin is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Virginia. He joins the podcast to discuss what economic indicators reveal about AI timelines. We explore why interest rates might rise if markets expect transformative AI, the gap between strong AI benchmarks and limited economic effects, and bottlenecks to AI-driven growth. We also cover market efficiency, automated AI research, and how financial m...
Esben Kran joins the podcast to discuss why securing AGI requires more than traditional cybersecurity, exploring new attack surfaces, adaptive malware, and the societal shifts needed for resilient defenses. We cover protocols for safe agent communication, oversight without surveillance, and distributed safety models across companies and governments.
Learn more about Esben's work at: https://blog.kran.ai
00:00 – Intro an...
Benjamin Todd joins the podcast to discuss how reasoning models changed AI, why agents may be next, where progress could stall, and what a self-improvement feedback loop in AI might mean for the economy and society. We explore concrete timelines (through 2030), compute and power bottlenecks, and the odds of an industrial explosion. We end by discussing how people can personally prepare for AGI: networks, skills, saving/inv...
On this episode, Calum Chace joins me to discuss the transformative impact of AI on employment, comparing the current wave of cognitive automation to historical technological revolutions. We talk about "universal generous income", fully-automated luxury capitalism, and redefining education with AI tutors. We end by examining verification of artificial agents and the ethics of attributing consciousness to machines.
Learn m...
On this episode, Tom Davidson joins me to discuss the emerging threat of AI-enabled coups, where advanced artificial intelligence could empower covert actors to seize power. We explore scenarios including secret loyalties within companies, rapid military automation, and how AI-driven democratic backsliding could differ significantly from historical precedents. Tom also outlines key mitigation strategies, risk indicators, a...
Anders Sandberg joins me to discuss superintelligence and its profound implications for human psychology, markets, and governance. We talk about physical bottlenecks, tensions between the technosphere and the biosphere, and the long-term cultural and physical forces shaping civilization. We conclude with Sandberg explaining the difficulties of designing reliable AI systems amidst rapid change and coordination risks.
Learn...
On this episode, Daniel Kokotajlo joins me to discuss why artificial intelligence may surpass the transformative power of the Industrial Revolution, and just how much AI could accelerate AI research. We explore the implications of automated coding, the critical need for transparency in AI development, the prospect of AI-to-AI communication, and whether AI is an inherently risky technology. We end by discussing iterative fo...
On this episode, Daniel Susskind joins me to discuss disagreements between AI researchers and economists, how we can best measure AI’s economic impact, how human values can influence economic outcomes, what meaningful work will remain for humans in the future, the role of commercial incentives in AI development, and the future of education.
You can learn more about Daniel's work here: https://www.danielsusskind.com
Times...
Ed Newton-Rex joins me to discuss the issue of AI models trained on copyrighted data, and how we might develop fairer approaches that respect human creators. We talk about AI-generated music, Ed’s decision to resign from Stability AI, the industry’s attitude towards rights, authenticity in AI-generated art, and what the future holds for creators, society, and living standards in an increasingly AI-driven world.
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On this episode, Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse joins me to discuss what benchmarks actually measure, AI’s development trajectory in comparison to other technologies, tasks that AI systems can and cannot handle, capability profiles of present and future AIs, the notion of alignment by default, and the leading AI companies’ vague AGI plans. We also discuss the human psychology of AI, including the feelings of living in the "fast ...
On this episode, Michael Nielsen joins me to discuss how humanity's growing understanding of nature poses dual-use challenges, whether existing institutions and governance frameworks can adapt to handle advanced AI safely, and how we might recognize signs of dangerous AI. We explore the distinction between AI as agents and tools, how power is latent in the world, implications of widespread powerful hardware, and finally to...
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