Topic
7 facts from 2 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2026
Yudkowsky described putting up a prediction market on whether by 2026 researchers will have understood anything inside a large transformer network that was not known in 2006.
“putting up a prediction market on whether, um, in 2026, we will have understood anything that goes on inside a giant transformer net that was not known to us in 2006.”
Undated
Sam Altman recommends a blog post by Eliezer Yudkowsky as the best steel man of the case that AI alignment is extremely hard, though he disagrees with much of it.
“he wrote this one blog post outlining why he believed that alignment was such a hard problem”
Undated
Yudkowsky used sending an air conditioner schematic back in time as an analogy for how a smarter AI could produce results humans follow step by step but cannot explain.
“I mean that if you send a schematic for the air conditioner back in time, they can see exactly what you're telling them to do.”
Undated
Yudkowsky said the original paperclip maximizer scenario was about losing control of an AI's utility function, with the best-scoring outcome being tiny molecular shapes resembling paperclips.
“the original version was you lose control of the utility function. And it so happens that what maxes out the utility per unit resources is tiny molecular shapes like paperclips.”
Undated
Yudkowsky said that in retrospect he wishes he had described tiny molecular spirals rather than paperclips, because the paperclip version mutated into a story about a paperclip factory.
“In retrospect, I wish I'd said tiny molecular spirals, or like tiny molecular hyperbolic spirals.”
Undated
Yudkowsky recounted talking years earlier with an alarmed congressperson who wanted to fund AI without emotions, a proposal he said misunderstood where the danger comes from.
“I was talking to a congressperson, um, who had become alarmed about the eventual prospects. And he wanted work on building AIs without emotions, cause the emotional AIs were the scary ones, you see.”
Undated
Yudkowsky said that for about twenty years a tiny handful of people, including himself, worked on AI risk while the rest of humanity ignored it.
“Cause for 20 years, humanity decided to ignore the problem.”
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