A Debate On Existential Risk of AI, Technical Possibilities & Limitations and the Influence of Political Authority

Ep. 61 with Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Patel is a podcaster.

The Dwarkesh Podcast (YouTube | Spotify | Apple) interviews intellectuals, scientists, historians, economists, and founders about their big idea.

The themes of Dwarkesh are similar to this podcast: frontier technologies, how to accelerate progress and the implications for humanity.

Recently, Dwarkesh has had prominent guests talking AI such as Marc Andreessen, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Carl Shulman, Ilya Sutskever and Dario Amodei.

In this episode, Dwarkesh & I debate whether AI poses a high or low risk to human existence (neither of us denies that the risk is 0).

I stand more on the low to negligible-risk side and Dwarkesh sees a greater risk. This ends up in a friendly, rational and learning debate.

Dwarkesh is a rising star in the podcasting world, and his channel is highly recommended content for listeners who enjoy this podcast.

Dwarkesh recently hosted a debate between George Hotz and Eliezer Yudkowsky.

I dare say I find Dwarkesh a much better debater than Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky seems confusing to me (I sense macro-BS) - maybe he’s a better writer?

If you know Yudkowsky’s key written pieces that might convince me I should take AI risk more seriously, please let me know.

I didn’t find Hotz’s argumentative strategy very good either (“it’s about the timing”) and I can understand anyone not convinced by him.

What did you think?