Samuel Hammond on why AI Progress is Accelerating - and how Governments Should Respond

Show Notes

Samuel Hammond joins the podcast to discuss whether AI progress is slowing down or speeding up, AI agents and reasoning, why superintelligence is an ideological goal, open source AI, how technical change leads to regime change, the economics of advanced AI, and much more.   

Our conversation often references this essay by Samuel: https://www.secondbest.ca/p/ninety-five-theses-on-ai   

Timestamps: 

00:00 Is AI plateauing or accelerating?  

06:55 How do we get AI agents?  

16:12 Do agency and reasoning emerge?  

23:57 Compute thresholds in regulation

28:59 Superintelligence as an ideological goal 

37:09 General progress vs superintelligence 

44:22 Meta and open source AI  

49:09 Technological change and regime change 

01:03:06 How will governments react to AI?  

01:07:50 Will the US nationalize AGI corporations?  

01:17:05 Economics of an intelligence explosion  

01:31:38 AI cognition vs human cognition  

01:48:03 AI and future religions 

01:56:40 Is consciousness functional?  

02:05:30 AI and children

What is Future of Life Institute Podcast?

The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit working to reduce global catastrophic and existential risk from powerful technologies. In particular, FLI focuses on risks from artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, nuclear weapons and climate change. The Institute's work is made up of three main strands: grantmaking for risk reduction, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, US government and European Union institutions. FLI has become one of the world's leading voices on the governance of AI having created one of the earliest and most influential sets of governance principles: the Asilomar AI Principles.