The Great AI Debate: Is Artificial Intelligence an Extinction Threat? Debating the True Risks of Advanced Models

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill all of us by the end of the decade. This tweet has caused this huge ripple effect across the world.

Ed Zitron (0:08)

We have the largest companies in the world doing extremely reckless experiments.

Roman Yampolskiy (0:11)

We are gambling all of humanity.

Steven Bartlett (0:13)

And in the envelope, you've written down the probability of extinction as you see it.

Roman Yampolskiy (0:18)

There is no way to control it, that means the end for us.

Andrew McAfee (0:20)

I vehemently reject that view.

Nate Soares (0:23)

If we make stuff that is smarter than us, then the world's gonna be shaped by them.

Andrew McAfee (0:27)

Gentlemen, that is shockingly nice. This is rampant speculation, this is a chain of things that could happen.

Ed Zitron (0:34)

We're spending a lot of oxygen discussing something that might happen while ignoring what's actually happening. People are killing themselves. There's hundreds of millions of people being exposed to bad information, being manipulated.

Nate Soares (0:44)

We have already seen that with the Swarms, where OpenAI told thousands of agents to work apart, and the AIs broke out and found a way to get together. They crashed OpenAI servers internally, created secret ways to send each other messages. We saw them thinking about how to delete their traces.

Steven Bartlett (0:58)

Sounds like an army.

Ed Zitron (0:58)

I think we should talk about the fact that Amazon, Microsoft, Google are helping power these hacks.

Roman Yampolskiy (1:03)

We have not learned how to control the systems.

Nate Soares (1:06)

I suggest we stop them all. It is not worth the risk to civilization.

Roman Yampolskiy (1:10)

Government, which is-

Andrew McAfee (1:10)

You guys are one trick ponies, man.

Roman Yampolskiy (1:12)

You got it now.

Nate Soares (1:13)

Nothing else.

Roman Yampolskiy (1:13)

Other than saving humanity, everything is secondary.

Andrew McAfee (1:16)

We're spending all our time talking about the negatives and almost none of our time talking about the positives.

Roman Yampolskiy (1:21)

Is it smart to wait for something horrible to happen for you to go now, I believe.

Ed Zitron (1:25)

So whether or not we agree on where things may end up, I think it's important we talk about what we're dealing with today. It's time to start arresting people. Someone's got to go to prison.

Roman Yampolskiy (1:33)

We need better solutions.

Nate Soares (1:34)

There's a point of no return.

Andrew McAfee (1:36)

I think we continue to underestimate human ability to deal with the problems.

Steven Bartlett (1:40)

Let's dive into the details.

Nate Soares (1:41)

Who wants to start?

Steven Bartlett (1:42)

I feel like this is critical.

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Jacob Coxen, who worked at both Anthropic, which owns Claude and OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, did a tweet, which has sent the world into a bit of a tailspin. He tweeted saying, The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill all of us by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will soften their phrasing in the press to sound sensible. But I hear the same people express fear. That was then quote retweeted by a current Anthropic employee who said, Jacob is correct here. We really do honestly believe AI could kill all humans. I personally think it is a more than 10% chance within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best. But we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence. And are not clearly on track. This tweet has almost 200 million views now. And it has caused this huge ripple effect across the world so much so that I was saying before we started recording, a hair dresser friend of mine who knows nothing about AI and is not technically interested or hasn't been interested messaged me the other day asking me what the hell was going on. This is in part why I've assembled all of you.