How Worried Should We Be About AI? — with Alex Stamos

Scott Galloway (0:01)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:42)

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Alex Stamos (0:47)

Approved.

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SPEAKER_2 (0:51)

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Alex Stamos (0:53)

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SPEAKER_4 (0:57)

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Scott Galloway (1:43)

Episode 413 413 is the area code serving Western Massachusetts. In 2013, the Wolf of Wall Street hit theater, setting a new record for the use of the F word 503 times, which was broken last Friday during move-in day at UVA, where someone's father was trying to assemble a loft from IKEA. Those fucking Swedes are the ones that are coming for us.

SPEAKER_4 (2:07)

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Scott Galloway (2:18)

Welcome to the 413th episode of The Prof G Pod. What's happening? In today's episode, we speak with Alex Stamos, cybersecurity expert, former chief security officer of Meta and Yahoo, and the current chief product officer at the AI security startup Corridor. I can't think of anyone better to speak to in this moment. We discussed what's been a pretty busy week in the world of AI. Specifically, a top Anthropic researcher posted about his resignation warning about existential threats to humanity. I think he said it's about a 10 percent likelihood of extinction, meaning an expected death of about 80 million people. Gee, he sounds like fun, doesn't he? Doesn't he sound like, gosh, what a great kid, what a great kid.

And now, Dario Amode, his boss, Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, I think he has a car company or something, are all agreeing on some version of a slowdown. So ridiculous. Elon Musk just wants everyone to slow down. Like he gives a shit about humanity. Hey, let me cut off your HIV medication. Anyways, little dark, little dark. Anyways, Alex helps break down why cyber security has become the most urgent piece in the AI safety debate, what actually happened when OpenAI's models broke out of a test and hacked another company and how worried the rest of us should be. So with that, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Alex Stamos.

Alex, where does this podcast find you?

Alex Stamos (3:53)

I am at our office in downtown San Francisco.

Scott Galloway (3:56)

There you go.

So I can't even imagine how in demand you might be. I would love, rather than me giving the context here, I would love you to actually set the table around what's happened in last week in the world of what I'll call AI existential panic, and then provide insight into what you think is real, overhyped, or if we're focused on the wrong thing here.

Alex Stamos (4:17)

Sure. So you want to mostly talk about the existential stuff, not all the security stuff over the summer?

Scott Galloway (4:22)

Well, why don't we build a timeline? Because my sense is this all kind of kicked off earlier in the summer to sort of set the table for us. So talk about the hugging face breakout, or jailbreak, or what you want to call it. Give us your assessment of what happened there and what the media or experts may have gotten right or wrong.

Alex Stamos (4:36)

Yes. This summer has been incredibly impactful for anybody who cares about AI safety. It started with hugging face, announcing that they had been attacked by what they believed to be advanced AI models. At first, they did not know who it was. Then they announced that OpenAI had admitted it was them. There was a coordinated discussion by OpenAI and Hugging Face and Analysis by the two of them, to come out and say that this had been OpenAI, an unreleased model, first they said singular model, that had broken out and done this.