Dr. @Steven Byrnes is one of the few people who both understands why alignment is hard, and is taking a serious technical shot at solving it. He's the author of these recently popular posts:

Foom & Doom 1: "Brain in a box in a basement"
Foom & Doom 2: Technical alignment is hard

After his UC Berkeley physics PhD & Harvard postdoc, he became an AGI safety researcher at Astera. He's now deep in the neuroscience of reverse-engineering how human brains actually work, knowledge that could plausibly help us solve the technical AI alignment problem.

He has a whopping 90% P(Doom), but argues that LLMs will plateau before becoming truly dangerous, and the real threat will come from next-generation “brain-like AGI” based on actor-critic reinforcement learning.

We cover Steve's "two subsystems" model of the brain, why current AI safety approaches miss the mark, Steve's disagreements with "social evolution" [...]

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Outline:

(01:18) Video

(01:24) Podcast

(01:44) Transcript

(01:47) Cold Open

(02:13) Introducing Steven Byrnes

(09:10) Path to Neuroscience and AGI Safety

(18:53) Research Direction and Brain-like AGI

(23:47) The Two Brain Subsystems

(45:28) Language Acquisition and Learning

(50:19) LLM Limitations

(01:10:10) Brain-like AGI

(01:16:04) Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning

(01:41:10) Alignment Solutions and Reward Functions

(01:48:31) Actor-Critic Model and Brain Architecture

(02:00:33) Current AI vs Future Paradigms

(02:06:39) LLM Limitations and Capabilities

(02:13:24) Inner vs Outer Alignment

(02:19:28) AI Policy and Pause AI Discussion

(02:25:49) Lightning Round

(02:32:19) Closing Thoughts

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First published:
August 5th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zecxwyATrN8ZbinoC/interview-with-steven-byrnes-on-brain-like-agi-foom-and-doom

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Interview with Steven Byrnes on Brain-like AGI, Foom & Doom, and Solving Technical Alignment” by Liron, Steven Byrnes

LessWrong (30+ Karma)