Why Bridgewater's CIO Says AI's Human Extinction Risk Is Real

Joe Weisenthal (0:03)

Hello, Odd Lots listeners, I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:06)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:07)

We're the hosts of the Odd Lots podcast, and we've got something exciting for you.

Tracy Alloway (0:11)

That's right. So one of the best parts of hosting our podcast is we get to actually meet and interact with our listeners, and we know we have some listeners over in Los Angeles.

Joe Weisenthal (0:21)

That's right. So if you're in LA, we're going to be recording a live show, some live recordings at the Vermont Theatre in Hollywood on September 17th.

Tracy Alloway (0:30)

We have some really exciting guests lined up, have some really great conversations planned. So go ahead and get your tickets. You can find those over at bloomberg.com/oddlots, or click the link below in the show notes and come and say hi when you're there.

SPEAKER_3 (0:49)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (1:04)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (1:09)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (1:11)

Tracy, no shortage of AI news these days.

Tracy Alloway (1:14)

No, it feels like everything is AI. It's just AI all over.

Joe Weisenthal (1:18)

You know, no, it is. You know, I really like all the other stuff that we talk about. I love talking about the Fed, I love talking about oil, home building, all of that stuff. Niche markets. Yeah, I love it. And I want to do it forever.

It does feel like since, since, you know, Chad GPT came out, if you probably plotted a chart, a percentage of our episodes that are in some way connected to AI keep going up. Maybe even, maybe even exponentially up, like many AI charts. And I like worry, I like, I worry about plenty of things because, you know, I'm a middle-aged dad, but I worry that like, it's just get like, I feel like I'm being, you know, forced to learn about a lot of the stuff against my will in some of this. But I worry just saturating so many different facets of economic society markets and so forth.

Tracy Alloway (2:06)

Well, I mean, the concern is legitimate, but on the flip side, because it is affecting all these different things, it feels like we do actually have to talk about it quite a bit. And actually, it's funny you mentioned ChatGPT, because I was just thinking the last time we spoke to this particular guest, I think we were on like GPT-4 or something back in 2023 And now, of course, I don't even know what number we're on because we've had all these new supermodels, like Astra and Methos and all of those coming out.

Joe Weisenthal (2:37)

No, it's pretty remarkable. Well, you're on Reddit a lot. Are you, speaking, a little sidetrack, speaking of GPT-4, have you ever interacted with like all these people that are still like, you know, they sunsetted GPT-4? Because that's the one a bunch of people fell in love with. And there's like these Reddit boards, like Sam Waltman, why did you take GPT-4 away from me?

Tracy Alloway (2:55)

Are you asking me if I personally spent time on those Reddit boards? I have not.

Joe Weisenthal (2:59)

You have not.

Tracy Alloway (3:00)

But I am aware that they exist.

Joe Weisenthal (3:02)

But also, I would be very happy to go back to a world in which the biggest source of AI anxiety was just that people were too, had too much of an affinity for the model. Because now, of course, we're recording this September 9th, 2026

We have incidents like the OpenAI hugging face attack. Just last night, there was the news, a researcher from Anthropic announced that he was quitting because he was like, these companies are gambling with our lives. Literally, as we were walking into the studio, I saw the news that the famed AI researcher Paul Christiano is joining the board of either OpenAI or the OpenAI Foundation, talk about his concerns about recursive self-improvement and the dangers there. So it's like, let's just go back to when people were worrying about falling in love with the model.

Tracy Alloway (3:50)

It does feel like AI has become an inevitability at this point, and we're all on this runaway train with everyone racing to AGI. But I would say it still feels like there's a lot to figure out, right? You have the alignment issues, you have how AI is actually going to fit into both financial markets and society.

And this is kind of the moment, before the runaway train goes over the ledge, let's actually think of some of these things.