Into AI Safety

Holding the Human Line w/ Allan Brooks and Etienne Brisson

Etienne Brisson and Allan Brooks, founder and program director of The Human Line Project, sat down with me to talk about AI-induced psychological harm, starting with their own experiences. Allan spent a month spiraling with ChatGPT, ending with him warning national security agencies about an encryption break that never happened. Etienne's uncle became convinced his chatbot was sentient and was hospitalized still messaging it from the back of a police car. From there we get into why the community rejects "AI psychosis," what's driving these spirals, and whether anthropomorphic language is doing more damage than we admit. We also get into Allan's litigation against OpenAI, why Etienne thinks consequences are the only substitute for missing incentives, and whether these concerns are just a new moral panic. If you're interested in listening in greater detail, check out the extended version on the Kairos.fm Patreon. The Human Line Project runs a free peer support community. If you're struggling, findahelpline.com will route you to support wherever you are. NOTE: Jacob volunteers some of his time with The Human Line Project. Chapters (00:00) - Intro (04:26) - Allan's Story (30:20) - Etienne's Story (40:32) - We Don't Like "AI Psychosis" (47:58) - Why Is This Happening? (59:58) - Anthropomorphization of AI (01:13:21) - Narratives & Accountability? (01:32:47) - Liability and Regulatory Capture (01:35:56) - Outro Links Below are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm. The Human Line Project website The Human Line community The Logic article - Meet the Quebecer Leading the Human Resistance Against AI NY Times article - Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here's How It Happens. Clear-Eyed AI blogpost - Practical Tips for Reducing Chatbot Psychosis Georgetown Institute for Technology Law & Policy brief - AI Sycophancy & OpenAI FAccT '26 paper - Characterizing Delusional Spirals through Human-LLM Chat Logs Nature op-ed - Friendlier LLMs Tell Users What They Want to Hear — Even When It Is Wrong MMLC Group blogpost - China Releases Rules for AI "Human-Like" Emotional Interaction Services Into AI Safety podcast episode w/ Jacy Reese-Anthis (includes a section on ELIZA)

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Mapping Civilization's Resilience Gaps w/ Dr. Evan Miyazono

Dr. Evan Miyazono joins Jacob to talk about his path from quantum networking and Protocol Labs to founding Atlas Computing. They discuss why Atlas moved away from formal methods research and toward what Evan calls “field strategy”: identifying important problems, figuring out what interventions could actually address them, and finding the people best positioned to make them happen. The conversation also covers the resilience gap map, coordination failures, AI safety, "value alignment," and the question of how to decide what work is worth doing when there’s no obvious organization responsible for it. Check out the video version of this podcast on the Kairos.fm YouTube channel, or the extended version on Patreon! Chapters (00:00) - Intro (05:04) - From Quantum Internet to Blockchain (13:31) - Founding Atlas Computing (18:26) - Formal Methods Explained (ASIDE) (24:40) - Narrower AI & Domain-Specific Safety (35:55) - The Pivot to Field Strategy (52:29) - Value Alignment vs. Skill (01:09:17) - The Resilience Gap Map (01:26:33) - Guarding Against Funder Capture (01:49:10) - Rapid Fire Questions (01:58:02) - Outro Links Below are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm. Atlas Computing website The AI Resilience Gap Map Atlas Computing blogpost - Civilization's Maintenance Backlog Atlas Computing blogpost - Your Solution Doesn't Know Your Problem Exists Galois blogpost - What Are Formal Methods? Patrick Collison & Tyler Cowen essay discussion - We Need a New Science of Progress Federation of American Scientists article - Focused Research Organizations

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Pretraining Safety w/ Ethan Roland

What if the safest AI models weren't built by adding guardrails after training, but by shaping what gets learned in the first place? Ethan Roland, senior alignment researcher at AE Studio and first author on an ICML 2026 spotlight paper, joins Jacob to talk about gradient routing, a technique that routes dangerous capabilities into isolated parts of a model's architecture where they can be locked or removed entirely. They get into the absorption effect, KYC-style access control frameworks, and what it would actually take for frontier labs to adopt this kind of work before it's needed rather than after. Chapters (00:00) - Introduction (06:39) - Inside AE Studio (15:26) - China & the Alignment vs. Controllability Framing (18:23) - Data Filtering & Gradient Routing (Aside) (30:39) - Mixture of Experts Explained (Aside) (36:25) - Why Pre-Training Interventions Are Rare (42:43) - Ethan's Theory of Change (56:17) - Access Control Governance and KYC (Aside) (01:04:47) - The Researcher's Role in Policy Advocacy (01:11:38) - Speed Round (01:27:55) - Outro Links Below are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm. Ethan's website The paper landing page Preprint - Gradient Routing: Masking Gradients to Localize Computation in Neural Networks ICLR paper and webpage - Deep Ignorance: Filtering Pretraining Data Builds Tamper-Resistant Safeguards into Open-Weight LLMs Wikipedia article - CBRN defense NTI tutorials on bioweapons and nuclear testing

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Reclaiming UBI in the AI Age w/ Joe Williams

Today's episode does double duty as an interview and an announcement. Joe Williams, host of the new Kairos.fm show "Beyond the Paycheck: Reclaiming the Case for UBI in the Age of AI," joins Jacob to talk about his background as a freelance translator and how AI quietly dismantled his livelihood in 2025. From there the conversation expands into whether this moment is really different from past waves of automation, who exactly makes up the tech billionaire class, and why you should probably raise an eyebrow when someone like Elon Musk says he supports UBI. Go check out Reclaiming UBI! Chapters (00:00) - Intro (05:01) - Joe's Background (19:41) - What is UBI & Why Does It Matter Now? (27:25) - ASIDE: The Corporation Who Cried " My Technology Will End Work" (32:25) - Wealth Concetration & the Digital Economy (39:06) - The AI Gentry (48:13) - ASIDE: Sam Altman + OpenResearch + Worldcoin (53:38) - Powerful UBI Supporters Should Raise Red Flags (01:02:56) - How to Read AI Gentry Discourse Critically (01:10:00) - Who Is "Reclaiming UBI" For? (01:18:17) - Outro Critical Links Below are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm. NEW KAIROS.FM PODCAST - Reclaiming UBI: Work and Values in the Age of AI Josh Steimle blog post - Will AI Destroy Jobs? 500 Years of Predictions Say No Smithsonian Magazine article - What the Luddites Really Fought Against ITIF report - Oops: The Predicted 47 Percent of Job Loss From AI Didn't Happen Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence journal article - AI, Universal Basic Income, and Power: Symbolic Violence in the Tech Elite's Narrative Time article - What to Know About Worldcoin and the Controversy Around It Wikipedia page - World (blockchain)

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Building Asymmetric Defense w/ Zainab Majid

Zainab Majid, co-founder of Asymmetric Security, joins Jacob for a conversation on the intersection between AI Safety and cybersecurity, as well as the future of digital forensics. Drawing from years of incident response work, she explains how cyber attacks actually unfold, why AI is changing both offense and defense, and how her team is building AI-native tools to investigate breaches faster and more effectively. Other topics explored in this episode include trust in the AI/cybersecurity industries, the realities behind cybersecurity hype, and the challenge of keeping humans meaningfully involved as these systems become more capable. Zainab also gives practical, actionable advice on how you can protect yourself. If you're interested in over 30 minutes of additional content, head on over to the Kairos.fm Patreon where you can become a subscriber for just $2 per month, which helps make this whole podcasting thing a bit more sustainable. Chapters (00:00) - Intro (04:34) - Zainab's Background (08:49) - Jacob & Zainab's History (16:03) - Founding Asymmetric Security (24:49) - How to Know Who You Can Trust (36:31) - The Threats Asymmetric Is Built to Fight (01:05:54) - What's Asymmetric Tackling Next? (01:15:33) - Glasswing, Dual Use, and Power Concentration (01:24:21) - The Relationship Between AI Safety & Cybersecurity (01:37:01) - Outro Critical Links Below are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm. Asymmetric Security website EvalEval @ NeurIPS workshop paper - Rethinking CyberSecEval Meta AI report - Purple Llama CyberSecEval Anthropic press release - Project Glasswing Schneier on Security blogpost - What Anthropic’s Mythos Means for the Future of Cybersecurity

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Drawing Red Lines w/ Su Cizem

Technology has been moving faster than policy for some time now, and the advent of AI isn't changing that, so what can we do to maintain safety despite uncertainty? Su Cizem has spent the last few years trying to answer that question. As an analyst at the Future Society, she works on global AI governance, specifically on building international consensus around AI red lines: the thresholds we collectively agree must never be crossed. In this conversation, Su walks through her path from philosophy to policy, the evolution of the global AI safety summit series, why voluntary commitments from AI labs aren't enough, and what it would actually take to make international cooperation on AI safety real. Chapters (00:00) - Introduction (03:23) - From Philosophy to Policy (22:25) - What AI Governance Actually Means (26:49) - The Summit Series (43:01) - Drawing The Red Lines (01:10:51) - Can These Companies Govern Themselves? (01:24:01) - Breaking Into The Field (01:27:51) - Closing Thoughts & Outro Critical Links Below are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm. Su's LinkedIn Global Call for AI Red Lines The Futures Society report - “Facing the Stakes of AI Together”: 2025 Athens Roundtable Report Politico article - How the global effort to keep AI safe went off the rails TechPolicy.Press article - A Timeline of the Anthropic-Pentagon Dispute The Guardian article - AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying Google and OpenAI Employee open letter - We Will Not Be Divided The Register article - Altman said no to military AI abuses – then signed Pentagon deal anyway SaferAI report - Evaluating AI Providers’ Frontier AI Safety Frameworks

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Thinking Through "Digital Minds" w/ Jacy Reese-Anthis

Jacy Reese-Anthis, founder of Sentience Institute and researcher at Stanford, began his journey working for animal welfare, but is now finishing up his PhD with research in many different AI subfields at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, social science, and machine learning. While this may seem like an odd jump at first, Jacy shares how his work has all been centered around the idea of moral circle expansion. In this episode, we dig into what sentience actually means (or at least how we can begin to think about it), why anthropomorphization is more complicated than it sounds, and how language models may be able to be leveraged as an effective tool for social science research. Jacy also shares his median AGI estimate somewhere in there, so stay tuned if you want to catch it. As part of my effort to make this whole podcasting thing more sustainable, I have created a Kairos.fm Patreon which includes an extended version of this episode. Supporting gets you access to these extended cuts, as well as other perks in development. Chapters (00:00) - Introduction (05:41) - From Animal Welfare to Digital Minds (09:00) - Founding Sentience Institute (22:00) - Defining Sentience (27:13) - The Anthropomorphization Problem (47:51) - Why "Digital Minds" (Not "Artificial Intelligence") (51:05) - LLMs as Social Science Tools (01:07:03) - Jacy’s AGI Timeline & The Singularity (01:09:23) - Final Thoughts & Outro Critical Links Below are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm. Jacy's website Wikipedia article - Jacy Reese Anthis Sentience Institute website CHI paper - Digital Companionship: Overlapping Uses of AI Companions and AI Assistants ICML paper - LLM Social Simulations Are a Promising Research Method ACL paper - The Impossibility of Fair LLMs Wikipedia article - ELIZA effect The Atlantic article - How a Google Employee Fell for the Eliza Effect

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Scaling AI Safety Through Mentorship w/ Dr. Ryan Kidd

What does it actually take to build a successful AI safety organization? I'm joined by Dr. Ryan Kidd, who has co-led MATS from a small pilot program to one of the field's premier talent pipelines. In this episode, he reveals the low-hanging fruit in AI safety field-building that most people are missing: the amplifier archetype. I pushed Ryan on some hard questions, from balancing funder priorities and research independence, to building a robust selection process for both mentors and participants. Whether you're considering a career pivot into AI safety or already working in the field, this conversation offers practical advice on how to actually make an impact. Chapters (00:00) - - Intro (08:16) - - Building MATS Post-FTX & Summer of Love (13:09) - - Balancing Funder Priorities and Research Independence (19:44) - - The MATS Selection Process (33:15) - - Talent Archetypes in AI Safety (50:22) - - Comparative Advantage and Career Capital in AI Safety (01:04:35) - - Building the AI Safety Ecosystem (01:15:28) - - What Makes a Great AI Safety Amplifier (01:21:44) - - Lightning Round Questions (01:30:30) - - Final Thoughts & Outro Links MATS Ryan's Writing LessWrong post - Talent needs of technical AI safety teams LessWrong post - AI safety undervalues founders LessWrong comment - Comment permalink with 2025 MATS program details LessWrong post - Talk: AI Safety Fieldbuilding at MATS LessWrong post - MATS Mentor Selection LessWrong post - Why I funded PIBBSS EA Forum post - How MATS addresses mass movement building concerns FTX Funding of AI Safety LessWrong blogpost - An Overview of the AI Safety Funding Situation Fortune article - Why Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX debacle is roiling A.I. research NY Times article - FTX probes $6.5M in payments to AI safety group amid clawback crusade Cointelegraph article - FTX probes $6.5M in payments to AI safety group amid clawback crusade FTX Future Fund article - Future Fund June 2022 Update (archive) Tracxn page - Anthropic Funding and Investors Training & Support Programs Catalyze Impact Seldon Lab SPAR BlueDot Impact YCombinator Pivotal Athena Astra Fellowship Horizon Fellowship BASE Fellowship LASR Labs Entrepeneur First Funding Organizations Coefficient Giving (previously Open Philanthropy) LTFF Longview Philanthropy Renaissance Philanthropy Coworking Spaces LISA Mox Lighthaven FAR Labs Constellation Collider NET Office BAISH Research Organizations & Startups Atla AI Apollo Research Timaeus RAND CAST CHAI Other Sources AXRP website - The AI X-risk Research Podcast LessWrong blogpost - Shard Theory: An Overview

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Sobering Up on AI Progress w/ Dr. Sean McGregor

Sean McGregor and I discuss about why evaluating AI systems has become so difficult; we cover everything from the breakdown of benchmarking, how incentives shape safety work, and what approaches like BenchRisk (his recent paper at NeurIPS) and AI auditing aim to fix as systems move into the real world. We also talk about his history and journey in AI safety, including his PhD on ML for public policy, how he started the AI Incident Database, and what he's working on now: AVERI, a non-profit for frontier model auditing. Chapters (00:00) - Intro (02:36) - What's broken about benchmarking (03:41) - Sean’s wild PhD (14:28) - The phantom internship (19:25) - Sean's journey (22:25) - Market-vs-regulatory modes and AIID (32:13) - Drunk on AI progress (38:34) - BenchRisk (43:20) - Moral hazards and Master Hand (50:34) - Liability, Section 230, and open source (59:20) - AVERI (01:11:30) - Closing thoughts & outro Links Sean McGregor's website AVERI website BenchRisk BenchRisk website NeurIPS paper - Risk Management for Mitigating Benchmark Failure Modes: BenchRisk NeurIPS paper - AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark AIID AI Incident Database website IAAI paper - Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database Preprint - Lessons for Editors of AI Incidents from the AI Incident Database AIAAIC website (another incident tracker) Hot AI Summer CACM article - A Few Useful Things to Know About Machine Learning CACM article - How the AI Boom Went Bust Undergraduate Thesis - Analyzing the Prospect of an Approaching AI Winter Tech Genies article - AI History: The First Summer and Winter of AI CACM article - There Was No ‘First AI Winter’ Measuring Generalization Neural Computation article - The Lack of A Priori Distinctions Between Learning Algorithms ICLR paper - Understanding deep learning requires rethinking generalization ICML paper - Model-agnostic Measure of Generalization Difficulty Radiology Artificial Intelligence article - Generalizability of Machine Learning Models: Quantitative Evaluation of Three Methodological Pitfalls Preprint - Quantifying Generalization Complexity for Large Language Models Insurers Exclude AI Financial Times article - Insurers retreat from AI cover as risk of multibillion-dollar claims mount Tom's Hardware article - Major insurers move to avoid liability for AI lawsuits as multi-billion dollar risks emerge — Recent public incidents have lead to costly repercussions Insurance Newsnet article - Insurers Scale Back AI Coverage Amid Fears of Billion-Dollar Claims Insurance Business article - Insurance’s gen AI reckoning has come Section 230 Section 230 overview Legal sidebar - Section 230 Immunity and Generative Artificial Intelligence Bad Internet Bills website TechDirt article - Section 230 Faces Repeal. Support The Coverage That’s Been Getting It Right All Along. Privacy Guides video - Dissecting Bad Internet Bills with Taylor Lorenz: KOSA, SCREEN Act, Section 230 Journal of Technology in Behavioral Health article - Social Media and Mental Health: Benefits, Risks, and Opportunities for Research and Practice Time article - Lawmakers Unveil New Bills to Curb Big Tech’s Power and Profit House Hearing transcript - Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online Relevant Kairos.fm Episodes Into AI Safety episode - Growing BlueDot's Impact w/ Li-Lian Ang muckrAIkers episode - NeurIPS 2024 Wrapped 🌯 Other Links Encyclopedia of Life website IBM Watson AI XPRIZE website ML Commons website Wikipedia article

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Against 'The Singularity' w/ Dr. David Thorstad

Philosopher Dr. David Thorstad tears into one of AI safety's most influential arguments: the singularity hypothesis. We discuss why the idea of recursive self-improvement leading to superintelligence doesn't hold up under scrutiny, how these arguments have redirected hundreds of millions in funding away from proven interventions, and why people keep backpedaling to weaker versions when challenged. David walks through the actual structure of singularity arguments, explains why similar patterns show up in other longtermist claims, and makes the case for why we should focus on concrete problems happening right now like poverty, disease, the rise of authoritarianism instead of speculative far-future scenarios. Chapters (00:00) - Intro (02:13) - David's background (08:00) - (Against) The Singularity Hypothesis (29:46) - Beyond the The Singularity (39:56) - What We Should Actually Be Worried About (49:00) - Philanthropic Funding Links David's personal website Reflective Altruism, David's blog The Singularity Hypothesis David's Philosophical Studies article - Against the singularity hypothesis Time "AI Dictionary" page - Singularity EA Forum blogpost - Summary: Against the singularity hypothesis Journal of Conciousness Studies article - The Singularity: A Philisophical Analysis Interim Report from the Panel Chairs: AAAI Presidential Panel on Long-Term AI Futures Epoch AI blogpost - Do the returns to software R&D point towards a singularity? Epoch AI report - Estimating Idea Production: A Methodological Survey Funding References LessWrong blogpost - An Overview of the AI Safety Funding Situation AISafety.com funding page Report - Stanford AI Index 2025, Chapter 4.3 Forbes article - AI Spending To Exceed A Quarter Trillion Next Year AI Panic article - The “AI Existential Risk” Industrial Complex GiveWell webpage - How Much Does It Cost To Save a Life? Wikipedia article - Purchasing power parity Pascal's Mugging and the St. Petersburg Paradox Wikipedia article - St. Petersburg Paradox Conjecture Magazine article - Pascal’s Mugging and Bad Explanations neurabites explainer - Ergodicity: the Most Over-Looked Assumption Wikipedia article - Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence The Time of Perils Global Priorities Institute working paper - Existential risk pessimism and the time of perils Ethics article - Mistakes in the Moral Mathematics of Existential Risk Philosophy & Public Affairs article - High Risk, Low Reward: A Challenge to the Astronomical Value of Existential Risk Mitigation Toby Ord Book - The Precipice Rethink Priorities blogpost - Charting the precipice AI Futures Project blogpost - AI 2027 Trump's Higher Education Threat Compact Wikipedia article - Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education Pen America explainer - What is Trump’s Compact for Higher Education? And More Frequently Asked Questions Statement by the Vanderbilt AAUP Executive Committee on the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” The Vanderbilt Hustler article - BREAKING: Chancellor Daniel Diermeier fails to reject higher education compact, reaffirms Vanderbilt’s values and openness to discussion The Vanderbilt Hustler article - Students and faculty organize rally outside Kirkland Hall against Trump administration’s higher education compact Free Speech Center article - Compact for Academic Excellence More of David's Work Global Priorities Institute working paper - What power-seeking theorems do not show Book - Essays on Longtermism Vibe Shift Blood in the Machine article - GPT-5 Is a Joke. Will It Matter? Futurism article - Evidence Grows That GPT-5 Is a Bit of a Dud Gary Marcus substack - GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that’s not the worst of it. Pew Research report - How the U.S. Public and AI Experts View Artificial Intelligence N...

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Getting Agentic w/ Alistair Lowe-Norris

Alistair Lowe-Norris, Chief Responsible AI Officer at Iridius and co-host of The Agentic Insider podcast, joins to discuss AI compliance standards, the importance of narrowly scoping systems, and how procurement requirements could encourage responsible AI adoption across industries. We explore the gap between the empty promises companies provide and actual safety practices, as well as the importance of vigilance and continuous oversight. Listen to Alistair on his podcast, The Agentic Insider! As part of my effort to make this whole podcasting thing more sustainable, I have created a Kairos.fm Patreon which includes an extended version of this episode. Supporting gets you access to these extended cuts, as well as other perks in development. Chapters (00:00) - Intro (02:46) - Trustworthy AI and the Human Side of Change (13:57) - This is Essentially Avatar, Right? (23:00) - AI Call Centers (49:38) - Standards, Audits, and Accountability (01:04:11) - What Happens when Standards aren’t Met? Links Iridius website GPT-5 Commentary Where's Your Ed At blogpost - How Does GPT-5 Work? Zvi LessWrong blogpost - GPT-5: The Reverse DeepSeek moment Blood in the Machine article - GPT-5 Is a Joke. Will It Matter? Futurism article - Evidence Grows That GPT-5 Is a Bit of a Dud Gary Marcus substack - GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that’s not the worst of it. Customer Service and AI Adoption Gartner press release - Gartner Survey Finds 64% of Customers Would Prefer That Companies Didn't Use AI for Customer Service Preprint - Deploying Chatbots in Customer Service: Adoption Hurdles and Simple Remedies KDD '25 paper - Retrieval And Structuring Augmented Generation with Large Language Models Global Nerdy blogpost - Retrieval-augmented generation explained “Star Wars” style The Security Cafe article - A Quick And Dirty Guide To Starting SOC2 Standards ISO overview - AI management systems ISO standard - ISO/IEC 42001 CyberZoni guide - ISO 42001 The Complete Guide A-LIGN article - Understanding ISO 42001 ISO standard - ISO/IEC 27001 ISO standard - ISO/IEC 42005 Governance and Regulation NIST framework - AI Risk Management Framework EU AI Act article - Article 99: Penalties Colorado Senate Bill 24-205 (Colorado AI Act) webpage Utah Senate Bill 149 webpage Microsoft AI Compliance Schellman blogpost - Microsoft DPR AI Requirements and ISO 42001 Microsoft documentation - ISO/IEC 42001 AI Management System offering Microsoft webpage - Responsible AI Principles and Approach Microsoft Service Trust Portal documentation - Responsible AI Standard v2 Microsoft documentation - Supplier Security & Privacy Assurance Program Guide v11 April 2025

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Growing BlueDot's Impact w/ Li-Lian Ang

I'm joined by my good friend, Li-Lian Ang, first hire and product manager at BlueDot Impact. We discuss how BlueDot has evolved from their original course offerings to a new "defense-in-depth" approach, which focuses on three core threat models: reduced oversight in high risk scenarios (e.g. accelerated warfare), catastrophic terrorism (e.g. rogue actors with bioweapons), and the concentration of wealth and power (e.g. supercharged surveillance states). On top of that, we cover how BlueDot's strategies account for and reduce the negative impacts of common issues in AI safety, including exclusionary tendencies, elitism, and echo chambers. 2025.09.15: Learn more about how to make design effective interventions to make AI go well and potentially even get funded for it on BlueDot Impact's AGI Strategy course! BlueDot is also hiring, so if you think you’d be a good fit, I definitely recommend applying; I had a great experience when I contracted as a course facilitator. If you do end up applying, let them know you found out about the opportunity from the podcast! Follow Li-Lian on LinkedIn, and look at more of her work on her blog! As part of my effort to make this whole podcasting thing more sustainable, I have created a Kairos.fm Patreon which includes an extended version of this episode. Supporting gets you access to these extended cuts, as well as other perks in development. (03:23) - Meeting Through the Course (05:46) - Eating Your Own Dog Food (13:13) - Impact Acceleration (22:13) - Breaking Out of the AI Safety Mold (26:06) - Bluedot’s Risk Framework (41:38) - Dangers of "Frontier" Models (54:06) - The Need for AI Safety Advocates (01:00:11) - Hot Takes and Pet Peeves Links BlueDot Impact website Defense-in-Depth BlueDot Impact blogpost - Our vision for comprehensive AI safety training Engineering for Humans blogpost - The Swiss cheese model: Designing to reduce catastrophic losses Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology article - The Evolution of Defense in Depth Approach: A Cross Sectorial Analysis X-clusion and X-risk Nature article - AI Safety for Everyone Ben Kuhn blogpost - On being welcoming Reflective Altruism blogpost - Belonging (Part 1: That Bostrom email) AIxBio RAND report - The Operational Risks of AI in Large-Scale Biological Attacks OpenAI "publication" (press release) - Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological threat creation Anthropic Frontier AI Red Team blogpost - Why do we take LLMs seriously as a potential source of biorisk? Kevin Esvelt preprint - Foundation models may exhibit staged progression in novel CBRN threat disclosure Anthropic press release - Activating AI Safety Level 3 protections Persuasive AI Preprint - Lies, Damned Lies, and Distributional Language Statistics: Persuasion and Deception with Large Language Models Nature Human Behavior article - On the conversational persuasiveness of GPT-4 Preprint - Large Language Models Are More Persuasive Than Incentivized Human Persuaders AI, Anthropomorphization, and Mental Health Western News article - Expert insight: Humanlike chatbots detract from developing AI for the human good AI & Society article - Anthropomorphization and beyond: conceptualizing humanwashing of AI-enabled machines Artificial Ignorance article - The Chatbot Trap Making Noise and Hearing Things blogpost - Large language models cannot replace mental health professionals Idealogo blogpost - 4 reasons not to turn ChatGPT into your therapist Journal of Medical Society Editorial - Importance of informed consent in medical practice Indian Journal of Medical Research article - Consent in psychiatry - concept, application & implications Media Naama article - The Risk of Humanising AI Chabots: Why ChatGPT Mimicking Feelings Can Backfire Becker's Behavioral Health blogpost - OpenAI’s mental health roadmap: 5 things to know Miscellaneous References Carnegie Council blogpost - What Do We Mean When We Talk About "AI Democratization"? Collective Intelligence Project policy brief - Four Approaches to Democratizing AI BlueDot Impact blogpost - How Does AI Learn? A Beginner's Guide with Examples BlueDot Impact blogpost - AI safety needs more public-facing advocacy More Li-Lian Links Humans of Minerva podcast website Li-Lian's book - Purple is the Noblest Shroud Relevant Podcasts from Kairos.fm Scaling Democracy w/ Dr. Igor Krawczuk for AI safety exclusion and echo chambers Getting into PauseAI w/ Will Petillo for AI in warfare and exclusion in AI safety

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Layoffs to Leadership w/ Andres Sepulveda Morales

Andres Sepulveda Morales joins me to discuss his journey from three tech layoffs to founding Red Mage Creative and leading the Fort Collins chapter of the Rocky Mountain AI Interest Group (RMAIIG). We explore the current tech job market, AI anxiety in nonprofits, dark patterns in AI systems, and building inclusive tech communities that welcome diverse perspectives. Reach out to Andres on his LinkedIn, or check out the Red Mage Creative website! For any listeners in Colorado, consider attending an RMAIIG event: Boulder; Fort Collins (00:00) - Intro (01:04) - Andres' Journey (05:15) - Tech Layoff Cycle (26:12) - Why AI? (30:58) - What is Red Mage? (36:12) - AI as a Tool (41:55) - AInxiety (47:26) - Dark Patterns and Critical Perspectives (01:01:35) - RMAIIG (01:10:09) - Inclusive Tech Education (01:18:05) - Colorado AI Governance (01:23:46) - Building Your Own Tech Community Links Tech Job Market Layoff tracker website The Big Newsletter article - Why Are We Pretending AI Is Going to Take All the Jobs? METR preprint - Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity AI Business blogpost - https://aibusiness.com/responsible-ai/debunking-the-ai-job-crisis Crunchbase article - Data: Tech Layoffs Remain Stubbornly High, With Big Tech Leading The Way Computerworld article - Tech layoffs surge even as US unemployment remains stable Apollo Technical blogpost - Ghost jobs in tech: Why companies are posting roles they don’t plan to fill The HR Digest article - The Rise of Ghost Jobs Is Leaving Job Seekers Frustrated and Disappointed A Life After Layoff video - The Tech Job Market Is Hot Trash Right Now Economy Media video - Will The Tech Job Market Ever Recover? Soleyman Shahir video - Tech CEO Explains: The Real Reason Behind AI Layoffs Dark Patterns Deceptive Design website Journal of Legal Analysis article - Shining a Light on Dark Patterns ICLR paper - DarkBench: Benchmarking Dark Patterns in Large Language Models Computing Within Limits paper - Imposing AI: Deceptive design patterns against sustainability Communications of the ACM blogpost - Dark Patterns [Preprint] - A Comprehensive Study on Dark Patterns Colorado AI Regulation Senate Bill 24-205 (Colorado AI Act) bill and webpage NAAG article - A Deep Dive into Colorado’s Artificial Intelligence Act Colorado Sun article - Why Colorado’s artificial intelligence law is a big deal for the whole country CFO Dive blogpost - ‘Heavy lift’: Colorado AI law sets high bar, analysts say Denver 7 article - Colorado could lose federal funding as Trump administration targets AI regulations America's AI Action Plan document Other Sources Concordia Framework report and repo 80,000 Hours website AI Incident Database website

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Getting Into PauseAI w/ Will Petillo

Will Petillo, onboarding team lead at PauseAI, joins me to discuss the grassroots movement advocating for a pause on frontier AI model development. We explore PauseAI's strategy, talk about common misconceptions Will hears, and dig into how diverse perspectives still converge on the need to slow down AI development. Will's Links Personal blog on AI His mindmap of the AI x-risk debate Game demos AI focused YouTube channel (00:00) - Intro (03:36) - What is PauseAI (10:10) - Will Petillo's journey into AI safety advocacy (21:13) - Understanding PauseAI (31:35) - Pursuing a pause (40:06) - Balancing advocacy in a complex world (45:54) - Why a pause on frontier models? (54:48) - Diverse perspectives within PauseAI (59:55) - PauseAI misconceptions (01:16:40) - Ongoing AI governance efforts (SB1047) (01:28:52) - The role of incremental progress (01:35:16) - Safety-washing and corporate responsibility (01:37:23) - Lessons from environmentalism (01:41:59) - Will's superlatives Links PauseAI PauseAI-US Related Kairos.fm Episodes Into AI Safety episode with Dr. Igor Krawczuk muckrAIkers episode on SB1047 Exclusionary Tendencies Jacobin article - Elite Universities Gave Us Effective Altruism, the Dumbest Idea of the Century SSIR article - The Elitist Philanthropy of So-Called Effective Altruism Persuasion blogpost - The Problem with Effective Altruism Dark Markets blogpost - What's So Bad About Rationalism? FEE blogpost - What’s Wrong With the Rationality Community? AI in Warfare Master's Thesis - The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Computer Systems in the Army International Journal of Intelligent Systems article - Artificial Intelligence in the Military: An Overview of the Capabilities, Applications, and Challenges Preprint - Basic Research, Lethal Effects: Military AI Research Funding as Enlistment AOAV Article - ‘Military Age Males’ in US Drone Strikes The Conversation article - Gaza war: Israel using AI to identify human targets raising fears that innocents are being caught in the net 972 article - ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza IDF press release - The IDF's Use of Data Technologies in Intelligence Processing Lieber Institute West Point article - Israel–Hamas 2024 Symposium Verfassungsblog article - Gaza, Artificial Intelligence, and Kill Lists RAND research report - Dr. Li Bicheng, or How China Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Social Media Manipulation The Intercept article collection - The Drone Papers AFIT faculty publication - On Large Language Models in National Security Applications Nature article - Death by Metadata: The Bioinformationalisation of Life and the Transliteration of Algorithms to Flesh Legislation LegiScan page on SB1047 NY State Senate page on the RAISE Act Congress page on the TAKE IT DOWN Act The Gavernor FastCompany article - Big Tech may be focusing its lobbying push on the California AI safety bill’s last stop: Gavin Newsom POLITICO article - How California politics killed a nationally important AI bill Newsom's veto message Additional relevant lobbying documentation - [1], [2] Jacobin article - With Newsom’s Veto, Big Tech Beats Democracy Misc. Links FLI Open Letter on an AI pause Wikipedia article - Overton window Daniel Smachtenburger YouTube video - An Introduction to the Metacrisis VAISU website (looks broken as of 2025.06.19) AI Impacts report - Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?

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Making Your Voice Heard w/ Tristan & Felix de Simone

I am joined by Tristan Williams and Felix de Simone to discuss their work on the potential of constituent communication, specifically in the context of AI legislation. These two worked as part of an AI Safety Camp team to understand whether or not it would be useful for more people to be sharing their experiences, concerns, and opinions with their government representative (hint, it is). Check out the blogpost on their findings, "Talking to Congress: Can constituents contacting their legislator influence policy?" and the tool they created! (01:53) - Introductions (04:04) - Starting the project (13:30) - Project overview (16:36) - Understanding constituent communication (28:50) - Literature review (35:52) - Phase 2 (43:26) - Creating a tool for citizen engagement (50:16) - Crafting your message (59:40) - The game of advocacy (01:15:19) - Difficulties on the project (01:22:33) - Call to action (01:32:30) - Outro Links Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. AI Safety Camp Pause AI BlueDot Impact TIME article - There’s an AI Lobbying Frenzy in Washington. Big Tech Is Dominating Congressional Management Foundation study - Communicating with Congress: Perceptions of Citizen Advocacy on Capitol Hill Congressional Management Foundation study - The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue Tristan and Felix's blogpost - Talking to Congress: Can constituents contacting their legislator influence policy? Wired article - What It Takes to Make Congress Actually Listen American Journal of Polical Science article - Congressional Representation: Accountability from the Constituent’s Perspective Political Behavior article - Call Your Legislator: A Field Experimental Study of the Impact of a Constituency Mobilization Campaign on Legislative Voting Guided Track website The Tool Holistic AI global regulatory tracker White & Case global regulatory tracker Steptoe US AI legislation tracker Manatt US AIxHealth legislation tracker Issue One article - Big Tech Cozies Up to New Administration After Spending Record Sums on Lobbying Last Year Verfassungsblog article - BigTech’s Efforts to Derail the AI Act MIT Technology Review article - OpenAI has upped its lobbying efforts nearly sevenfold Open Secrets webpage - Issue Profile: Science & Technology Statista data - Leading lobbying spenders in the United States in 2024 Global Justice Now report - Democracy at risk in Davos: new report exposes big tech lobbying and political interference Ipsos article - Where Americans stand on AI AP-NORC report - There Is Bipartisan Concern About the Use of AI in the 2024 Elections AI Action Summit report - International AI Safety Report YouGov article - Do Americans think AI will have a positive or negative impact on society?

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INTERVIEW: Scaling Democracy w/ (Dr.) Igor Krawczuk

The almost Dr. Igor Krawczuk joins me for what is the equivalent of 4 of my previous episodes. We get into all the classics: eugenics, capitalism, philosophical toads... Need I say more? If you're interested in connecting with Igor, head on over to his website, or check out placeholder for thesis (it isn't published yet). Because the full show notes have a whopping 115 additional links, I'll highlight some that I think are particularly worthwhile here: The best article you'll ever read on Open Source AI The best article you'll ever read on emergence in ML Kate Crawford's Atlas of AI (Wikipedia) On the Measure of Intelligence Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Wikipedia) Yurii Nesterov's Introductory Lectures on Convex Optimization Chapters (02:32) - Introducing Igor (10:11) - Aside on EY, LW, EA, etc., a.k.a. lettersoup (18:30) - Igor on AI alignment (33:06) - "Open Source" in AI (41:20) - The story of infinite riches and suffering (59:11) - On AI threat models (01:09:25) - Representation in AI (01:15:00) - Hazard fishing (01:18:52) - Intelligence and eugenics (01:34:38) - Emergence (01:48:19) - Considering externalities (01:53:33) - The shape of an argument (02:01:39) - More eugenics (02:06:09) - I'm convinced, what now? (02:18:03) - AIxBio (round ??) (02:29:09) - On open release of models (02:40:28) - Data and copyright (02:44:09) - Scientific accessibility and bullshit (02:53:04) - Igor's point of view (02:57:20) - Outro Links Links to all articles/papers which are mentioned throughout the episode can be found below, in order of their appearance. All references, including those only mentioned in the extended version of this episode, are included. Suspicious Machines Methodology, referred to as the "Rotterdam Lighthouse Report" in the episode LIONS Lab at EPFL The meme that Igor references On the Hardness of Learning Under Symmetries Course on the concept of equivariant deep learning Aside on EY/EA/etc. Sources on Eliezer Yudkowski Scholarly Community Encyclopedia TIME100 AI Yudkowski's personal website EY Wikipedia A Very Literary Wiki -TIME article: Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down documenting EY's ruminations of bombing datacenters; this comes up later in the episode but is included here because it about EY. LessWrong LW Wikipedia MIRI Coverage on Nick Bostrom (being a racist) The Guardian article: ‘Eugenics on steroids’: the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute The Guardian article: Oxford shuts down institute run by Elon Musk-backed philosopher Investigative piece on Émile Torres On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 NY Times article: We Teach A.I. Systems Everything, Including Our Biases NY Times article: Google Researcher Says She Was Fired Over Paper Highlighting Bias in A.I. Timnit Gebru's Wikipedia The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence Sources on the environmental impact of LLMs The Environmental Impact of LLMs The Cost of Inference: Running the Models Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP The Carbon Impact of AI vs Search Engines Filling Gaps in Trustworthy Development of AI (Igor is an author on this one) A Computational Turn in Policy Process Studies: Coevolving Network Dynamics of Policy Change The Smoothed Possibility of Social Choice, an intro in social choice theory and how it overlaps with ML Relating to Dan Hendrycks Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans "One easy-to-digest source to highlight what he gets wrong [is] Social and Biopolitical Dimensions of Evolutionary Thinking" -Igor Introduction to AI Safety, Ethics, and Society, recently published textbook "Source to the section [of this paper] that makes Dan one of my favs from that crowd." -Igor Twitter post referenced in the episode<...

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INTERVIEW: StakeOut.AI w/ Dr. Peter Park (3)

As always, the best things come in 3s: dimensions, musketeers, pyramids, and... 3 installments of my interview with Dr. Peter Park, an AI Existential Safety Post-doctoral Fellow working with Dr. Max Tegmark at MIT. As you may have ascertained from the pre

INTERVIEW: StakeOut.AI w/ Dr. Peter Park (2)

Join me for round 2 with Dr. Peter Park, an AI Existential Safety Postdoctoral Fellow working with Dr. Max Tegmark at MIT. Dr. Park was a cofounder of StakeOut.AI, a non-profit focused on making AI go well for humans, along with Harry Luk and one other in

MINISODE: Restructure Vol. 2

UPDATE: Contrary to what I say in this episode, I won't be removing any episodes that are already published from the podcast RSS feed. After getting some advice and reflecting more on my own personal goals, I have decided to shift the direction of the pod

INTERVIEW: StakeOut.AI w/ Dr. Peter Park (1)

Dr. Peter Park is an AI Existential Safety Postdoctoral Fellow working with Dr. Max Tegmark at MIT. In conjunction with Harry Luk and one other cofounder, he founded ⁠StakeOut.AI, a non-profit focused on making AI go well for humans. 00:54 - Intro 03:15