Emergency Pod: An AI Safety Tipping Point? Amodei Calls for an AI Slowdown
With co-host Adam Goodwin
About this episode
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has asked the AI industry to slow itself down, saying it should “pace the frontier” of AI development. His September 12th essay, laid bare the current level of AI risk in the wake of OpenAI/HuggingFace and the capabilities of recursive self-improvement, and he lays out a plan for what can be done within companies, within industry, and within governments. Gregory Allen and Adam Goodwin cover the essay’s proposals, and why Amodei argues pacing makes sense now when the 2023 pause letter did not. They then cover reactions and how Sam Altman says OpenAI will take up part independent evaluators, and Demis Hassabis calls the direction correct. President Trump calls the prospect of AI catastrophe “a hoax,” and China’s foreign ministry calls the proposal “fear mongering,” while Congress continues to debate AI regulation, without much prospect of passing anything until after the midterms.
In this episode
- 00:00Setting the stage for understanding Dario’s post
- 15:37Pacing the frontier as an idea, and what to do with the extra time?
- 23:00Focus on operational excellence, alignment, interpretability, testing and evaluation; METR as the current standard
- 34:16What Dario is asking for from government
- 38:16What would (or wouldn’t) international cooperation look like?
- 43:06Keeping China at bay assuming they will not sign on to slow development, and the official Chinese response
- 50:43Reactions to Amodei’s post from industry
- 55:17President Trump and Obama’s reactions to Amodei’s post; David Sacks opposes Amodei’s suggestions
- 1:10:28Congressional reactions; calls to regulate not likely to be heeded this session