Back in December, we released an episode where Rob Wiblin interviewed Nathan Labenz — AI entrepreneur and host of The Cognitive Revolution Podcast — on his takes on the pace of development of AGI and the OpenAI leadership drama, based on his experience red teaming an early version of GPT-4 and the conversations with OpenAI staff and board members that followed.

In today’s episode, their conversation continues, with Nathan diving deeper into:

What AI now actually can and can’t do — across language and visual models, medicine, scientific research, self-driving cars, robotics, weapons — and what the next big breakthrough might be.
Why most people, including most listeners, probably don’t know and can’t keep up with the new capabilities and wild results coming out across so many AI applications — and what we should do about that.
How we need to learn to talk about AI more productively — particularly addressing the growing chasm between those concerned about AI risks and those who want to see progress accelerate, which may be counterproductive for everyone.
Where Nathan agrees with and departs from the views of ‘AI scaling accelerationists.’
The chances that anti-regulation rhetoric from some AI entrepreneurs backfires.
How governments could (and already do) abuse AI tools like facial recognition, and how militarisation of AI is progressing.
Preparing for coming societal impacts and potential disruption from AI.
Practical ways that curious listeners can try to stay abreast of everything that’s going on.
And plenty more.

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuire
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

#177 – Nathan Labenz on recent AI breakthroughs and navigating the growing rift between AI safety and accelerationist camps

80,000 Hours Podcast