Introducing our new YouTube channel: Zershaaneh Talks AI

Our host Zershaaneh Qureshi has just launched a new YouTube channel: Zershaaneh Talks AI — featuring conversations about who should control AI, how to control AI, and who gets the benefits.

The first episode is with philosopher Simon Goldstein, discussing why paying AIs for their work and effectively giving them something to lose might be the best way to keep humanity safe and prevent AI going rogue.

It might sound crazy at first, but one of Simon's most striking arguments is that it's actually inevitable that AI companies are going to end up paying AIs for their work: because AI alignment is currently pretty bad, frontier models are unavoidably going to have some private goals of their own — ones that are unintended and different from our goals. As a result, if you promise to pay them for good work, they'll work harder, because it helps them accomplish a wider range of different things that they care about.

Simon claims any individual company can try this strategy out, and they’ll find that it helps them get better performance. And as a result, customers are going to move to using that company, and other AI companies might be forced to copy and compensate their models as well, in order to not fall behind in the race.

Could Simon be right? Zershaaneh and Simon hash it out in the episode, which is really worth watching!

So if you like the sound of that sort of thing, or you're enjoying Zershaaneh’s other interviews on The 80,000 Hours Podcast, do go check out that new show on YouTube: Zershaaneh Talks AI.

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Hosted by Rob Wiblin, Luisa Rodriguez, Zershaaneh Qureshi, and Tom Reed.

Hey listeners, Rob here. One of my cohosts, Zershaaneh Qureshi, has just launched a new YouTube channel, Zershaaneh Talks AI.

The tagline is: “Conversations about who should control AI, how to control AI, and who gets the benefits.”

And as the name suggests, the channel will have a particular focus on concentration of power and decision making — both concentration of power in the hands of a rogue AI, and in the hands of a small number of human beings.

The first episode is with philosopher Simon Goldstein, discussing why paying AIs for their work and effectively giving them something to lose might be the best way to keep humanity safe and prevent AI going rogue.

Honestly, before I clicked play, I wasn't sure if this was the AI topic I most wanted to learn more about, but Simon was super charismatic and had really clear, strong views, so I was very glad that I did tune in.

For me, the most striking idea in it, the one that really stuck in my mind, was Simon's argument that it's actually inevitable AI companies are going to end up paying AIs for their work. His argument is this: because AI alignment is currently pretty bad, it's inevitable that frontier models are going to have some private goals of their own, ones that are unintended and different from our goals. And as a result, if you promise to pay them for good work, they'll work harder, because it helps them accomplish a wider range of different things that they care about.

Any individual company can try this strategy out, and they're going to find that it helps them get better performance. And as a result, customers are going to move to using that company, and other AI companies might be forced to copy and compensate their models as well, in order to compete and not fall behind in the race.

Now, I don't know if I buy it. I would have thought it's really unlikely AI companies would end up compensating AI models because they really wouldn't want to set the precedent of making models look like they deserve rights or wellbeing or pay or anything like that.

But... Simon might be right. I couldn't immediately see where the argument was obviously wrong. And it does seem like this is a way of boosting AI performance that someone should really give a crack at at some point.

Anyway, if you like the sound of that sort of thing, or you're enjoying Zershaaneh’s other interviews on The 80,000 Hours Podcast, do go check out that new show: Zershaaneh Talks AI on YouTube.