Topic
8 facts from 1 episode, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2024
Alan Chan's 2024 paper on visibility into AI agents recommended activity logging, real-time monitoring and agent identifiers.
“In a 2024 paper on visibility into AI agents, he recommended activity logging, real-time monitoring, and agent identifiers.”
2025
Alan Chan co-authored an early-2025 paper with the Cooperative AI Foundation on multi-agent risks from advanced AI.
“You co-authored a paper with folks from the Cooperative AI Foundation on multi-agent risks from advanced AI. That was in early 2025.”
2026
Alan Chan was asked to lead the recursive self-improvement paper about six months before the interview, building on earlier drafts by others.
“I guess I was sort of drafted to, you know, lead this lead this project 6 months ago, but there are sort of earlier drafts that other people had written sort of before that as as well.”
2026
Alan Chan said a smaller author group might have finished the recursive self-improvement paper a few months sooner, because many co-authors add coordination overhead.
“it's plausible to me that the paper could have been finished at least a few months earlier if we had, you know, if if the authors had had had been smaller to to some extent, right?”
2026
Alan Chan argued that OpenAI's commitment to pause after a major loss-of-control event amounts to a form of pacing the frontier, even without a cap on the rate of progress.
“even though OpenAI hasn't committed to a cap on its rate of progress, it is still, in some sense, pacing the frontier”
Undated
Alan Chan says tamper-evident logs are a solved cybersecurity problem: make them read-only, hash them, sign the hashes and store them securely.
“Yeah, so on logging, yeah, we totally know from standard cybersecurity how to make logs tamper evident. So, yeah, make them read only, like you hash them, sign the hashes, store everything in a secure location”
Undated
Alan Chan said the 'returns to research effort' parameter is often used to model an intelligence explosion, and more company data would help estimate it.
“this parameter known as the returns to research effort, which is often used to model an intelligence explosion.”
Undated
Alan Chan said there is a legal antitrust exemption for the business of insurance, which is one reason an industry insurance mutual is a popular AI-safety idea.
“Yeah, yeah, there is actually a legal exemption for antitrust for for the business of of insurance.”
Episodes