{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"80,000 Hours Podcast","title":"#133 – Max Tegmark on how a 'put-up-or-shut-up' resolution led him to work on AI and algorithmic news selection","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":10671,"description":"On January 1, 2015, physicist Max Tegmark gave up something most of us love to do: complain about things without ever trying to fix them. \r\n\r\nThat “put up or shut up” New Year’s resolution led to the first Puerto Rico conference and Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence — milestones for researchers taking the safe development of highly-capable AI systems seriously. \r\n\r\nLinks to learn more, summary and full transcript. \r\n\r\nMax's primary work has been cosmology research at MIT, but his energetic and freewheeling nature has led him into so many other projects that you would be forgiven for forgetting it. In the 2010s he wrote two best-selling books, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, and Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, and in 2014 founded a non-profit, the Future of Life Institute, which works to reduce all sorts of threats to humanity's future including nuclear war, synthetic biology, and AI. \r\n\r\nMax has complained about many other things over the years, from killer robots to the impact of social media algorithms on the news we consume. True to his 'put up or shut up' resolution, he and his team went on to produce a video on so-called ‘Slaughterbots’ which attracted millions of views, and develop a website called 'Improve The News' to help readers separate facts from spin. \r\n\r\nBut given the stunning recent advances in capabilities — from OpenAI’s DALL-E to DeepMind’s Gato — AI itself remains top of his mind. \r\n\r\nYou can now give an AI system like GPT-3 the text: \"I'm going to go to this mountain with the faces on it. What is the capital of the state to the east of the state that that's in?\" And it gives the correct answer (Saint Paul, Minnesota) — something most AI researchers would have said was impossible without fundamental breakthroughs just seven years ago. \r\n\r\nSo back at MIT, he now leads a research group dedicated to what he calls “intelligible intelligence.” At the moment, AI systems are...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/VO1STE7hN95RRg9QdLo4soV2VhhbR9PF5ZZlRhDYcwE/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzQxNDAyLzE2ODM1/NDQ1NDAtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}