The Case for Cautious AI Optimism, from the Consistently Candid podcast

**Erik Torenberg** (0:00)
Hey everyone, Erik here.
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**Nathan Labenz** (0:35)
Hello, and welcome to The Cognitive Revolution, where we interview visionary researchers, entrepreneurs, and builders working on the frontier of artificial intelligence. Each week, we'll explore their revolutionary ideas, and together we'll build a picture of how AI technology will transform work, life, and society in the coming years. I'm Nathan Labenz, joined by my co-host, Erik Torenberg. Hello, and welcome back to the Cognitive Revolution.
Today, I'm pleased to share a cross post of my recent appearance on Consistently Candid, the brilliantly named AI Safety and Philosophy podcast hosted by Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse. While the Cognitive Revolution approaches AI from the perspective of AI engineers, researchers, and enthusiasts, Sarah is relatively new to thinking about AI and doesn't have all that much technical experience or knowledge to draw on. Thus, this was a chance to zoom out and discuss the AI big picture in plain spoken and hopefully more accessible terms.
In the first half, I talk a bit about my background in terms of AI development at Waymark, describe the upside I see in AI doctors and other products that promise to radically democratize access to expertise, and give some practical advice for better understanding AI as a newcomer to the field. Some of this will be familiar territory for regular listeners, and if so, definitely feel free to skip ahead to the second half. In the second half, we talk about the nascent red teaming and public experiment that I recently launched with a couple of friends, and also go deep on the many reasons that I am not a hardcore AI doomer. This section, I expect, will feel fresh to even the most loyal Cognitive Revolution listeners, because while I tend to assume that you're already sold on the upsides of AI and feel compelled to remind myself and all of you of the profound unknowns, Sarah's listeners are already quite concerned about AI risks, and so for them, I wanted to explain why I don't see the catastrophic outcomes as anything close to inevitable. With that in mind, we discussed the progress being made on technical AI safety, which has far exceeded my expectations over the last couple of years, the fact that virtually all of today's leading AI decision makers have engaged deeply with the AI risk literature, the above expectations responses we've seen from key national governments, the growing public awareness and desire to proactively address AI challenges, and some of the key questions that I'm tracking to help me update my AI world view over time. If you're coming from a non-technical background and looking to better understand AI risk, I definitely recommend checking out Sarah's work on Consistently Candid. In particular, her recent episode called Noah Topper Helps Me Understand Eliezer Yudkowsky is a very accessible introduction to a bunch of subtle and sometimes unintuitive concepts. At a minimum, even if you don't agree, you would come away from that episode with a much more concrete sense of what the AI Doomers are so worried about.
As always, we appreciate it when listeners share the show with friends. This episode could be a good on-ramp for somebody who's just beginning to make sense of what's going on in AI, or for someone who's bordering on fatalism and disengagement, a good reminder, I hope, that the future is still uncertain and that positive outcomes are absolutely worth fighting for.
For feedback, you can contact us via our website, cognitiverevolution.ai, or you can DM me on your favorite social network. Finally, for now, I've continued to get a healthy response to my call for AI engineers and AI advisors. If I haven't responded yet to you, know that I'm just gathering everything and fully intend to follow up. Meanwhile, if you have a job that you'd like to advertise, please feel free to reach out to me about that as well. I've got maybe 20 resumes after just two or three casual mentions, and I would love to help make some matches beyond the projects that I'm directly involved with. With that, I hope you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation on the upside of AI and my reasons for cautious optimism, despite the unprecedented risks, with Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse from her podcast, Consistently Candid.