Can Humanity Pass the AI Alignment Test Before It’s Too Late?
If nobody knows what's on the other side of the AI singularity, why are the optimists so sure it's great? Robert Wright's answer: they're running on faith.
Transcript, bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/ai
Robert Wright talked about neural networks with Geoffrey Hinton in 1983, two years before Sam Altman was born. He's the author of The Moral Animal, Nonzero, and The God Test.
We cover: why the Tower of Babel is really an AI story, why no nation can slow AI down alone, how a model learns what a word means when nobody ever tells it, why I think AGI is impossible, why Wright thinks a swarm of talking models could out-think any single one, and the grimmest reading of the Fermi paradox, which even Lee Smolin's cosmology can't talk him out of.
We face the kind of test a God would give.
00:00 The test a god would give
00:54 Babel: the first AI cautionary tale
04:06 Every salvation story has a test
05:46 Are we building idols?
08:06 Why AI optimists need faith
14:10 Hinton in 1983: no doomer yet
19:38 Why no country can hit pause
25:01 Meaning nobody taught the machine
32:08 Can Claude have a happy thought?
37:44 Judging The God Test by its cover
40:06 My case that AGI is impossible
47:04 Did the aliens fail the test?
51:10 What passing the test looks like
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“We face the kind of test that God would give.” — Robert Wright
CHAPTERS
00:00 The man who interviewed Hinton in 1983
05:04 The God test and its two meanings
08:36 Religious faith in technological progress
14:10 Hinton then versus Hinton now
19:38 Why slowing AI down requires international cooperation
26:02 How LLMs reverse-engineer the meaning of words
32:08 Brian's Einstein test: can Claude have a happy thought?
40:06 AGI is impossible. Here is why Brian thinks that.
47:04 The Fermi paradox as a moral filter
51:10 What passing the God test actually looks like
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