The case for a conditional AI safety treaty, with Otto Barten
How can a binding international treaty be agreed and put into practice, when many parties are strongly tempted to break the rules of the agreement, for commercial or military advantage, and when cheating may be hard to detect? That’s the dilemma we’ll examine in this episode, concerning possible treaties to govern the development and deployment of advanced AI.Our guest is Otto Barten, Director of the Existential Risk Observatory, which is based in the Netherlands but operates internationally. In November last year, Time magazine published an article by Otto, advocating what his organisation calls a Conditional AI Safety Treaty. In March this year, these ideas were expanded into a 34-page preprint which we’ll be discussing today, “International Agreements on AI Safety: Review and Recommendations for a Conditional AI Safety Treaty”.Before co-founding the Existential Risk Observatory in 2021, Otto had roles as a sustainable energy engineer, data scientist, and entrepreneur. He has a BSc in Theoretical Physics from the University of Groningen and an MSc in Sustainable Energy Technology from Delft University of Technology.Selected follow-ups:Existential Risk ObservatoryThere Is a Solution to AI’s Existential Risk Problem - TimeInternational Agreements on AI Safety: Review and Recommendations for a Conditional AI Safety Treaty - Otto Barten and colleaguesThe Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity - book by Toby OrdGrand futures and existential risk - Lecture by Anders Sandberg in London attended by OttoPauseAIStopAIResponsible Scaling Policies - METRMeta warns of 'worse' experience for European users - BBC NewsAccidental Nuclear War: a Timeline of Close Calls - FLIThe Vulnerable World Hypothesis - Nick BostromSemiconductor Manufacturing Optics - ZeissCalifornia Institute for Machine ConsciousnessTipping point for large-scale social change? Just 25 percent - Penn TodayMusic: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain DeclarationPromoguy Talk PillsAgency in Amsterdam dives into topics like Tech, AI, digital marketing, and more drama...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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38:12
Humanity's final four years? with James Norris
In this episode, we return to the subject of existential risks, but with a focus on what actions can be taken to eliminate or reduce these risks.Our guest is James Norris, who describes himself on his website as an existential safety advocate. The website lists four primary organizations which he leads: the International AI Governance Alliance, Upgradable, the Center for Existential Safety, and Survival Sanctuaries.Previously, one of James' many successful initiatives was Effective Altruism Global, the international conference series for effective altruists. He also spent some time as the organizer of a kind of sibling organization to London Futurists, namely Bay Area Futurists. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a triple major in psychology, sociology, and philosophy, as well as with minors in too many subjects to mention.Selected follow-ups:James Norris websiteUpgrade your life & legacy - UpgradableThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey)Beneficial AI 2017 - Asilomar conference"...superintelligence in a few thousand days" - Sam Altman blogpostAmara's Law - DevIQThe Probability of Nuclear War (JFK estimate)AI Designs Chemical Weapons - The BatchThe Vulnerable World Hypothesis - Nick BostromWe Need To Build Trustworthy AI Systems To Monitor Other AI: Yoshua BengioInstrumental convergence - WikipediaNeanderthal extinction - WikipediaMatrioshka brain - WikipediaWill there be a 'WW3' before 2050? - Manifold prediction marketExistential Safety Action PledgeAn Urgent Call for Global AI Governance - IAIGA petitionBuild your survival sanctuaryOther people mentioned include:Eliezer Yudkowsky, Roman Yampolskiy, Yan LeCun, Andrew NgMusic: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain DeclarationPromoguy Talk PillsAgency in Amsterdam dives into topics like Tech, AI, digital marketing, and more drama...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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49:36
Human extinction: thinking the unthinkable, with Sean ÓhÉigeartaigh
Our subject in this episode may seem grim – it’s the potential extinction of the human species, either from a natural disaster, like a supervolcano or an asteroid, or from our own human activities, such as nuclear weapons, greenhouse gas emissions, engineered biopathogens, misaligned artificial intelligence, or high energy physics experiments causing a cataclysmic rupture in space and time.These scenarios aren’t pleasant to contemplate, but there’s a school of thought that urges us to take them seriously – to think about the unthinkable, in the phrase coined in 1962 by pioneering futurist Herman Kahn. Over the last couple of decades, few people have been thinking about the unthinkable more carefully and systematically than our guest today, Sean ÓhÉigeartaigh. Sean is the author of a recent summary article from Cambridge University Press that we’ll be discussing, “Extinction of the human species: What could cause it and how likely is it to occur?”Sean is presently based in Cambridge where he is a Programme Director at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Previously he was founding Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and before that, he managed research activities at the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford.Selected follow-ups:Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh - Leverhulme Centre ProfileExtinction of the human species - by Sean ÓhÉigeartaighHerman Kahn - WikipediaMoral.me - by ConsciumClassifying global catastrophic risks - by Shahar Avin et alDefence in Depth Against Human Extinction - by Anders Sandberg et alThe Precipice - book by Toby OrdMeasuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks - by METRCold Takes - blog by Holden KarnofskyWhat Comes After the Paris AI Summit? - Article by SeanARC-AGI - by François CholletHenry Shevlin - Leverhulme Centre profileEleos (includes Rosie Campbell and Robert Long)NeurIPS talk by David ChalmersPromoguy Talk PillsAgency in Amsterdam dives into topics like Tech, AI, digital marketing, and more drama...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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43:05
The best of times and the worst of times, updated, with Ramez Naam
Our guest in this episode, Ramez Naam, is described on his website as “climate tech investor, clean energy advocate, and award-winning author”. But that hardly starts to convey the range of deep knowledge that Ramez brings to a wide variety of fields. It was his 2013 book, “The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet”, that first alerted David to the breadth of scope of his insight about future possibilities – both good possibilities and bad possibilities. He still vividly remembers its opening words, quoting Charles Dickens from “The Tale of Two Cities”:Quote: “‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times’ – the opening line of Charles Dickens’s 1859 masterpiece applies equally well to our present era. We live in unprecedented wealth and comfort, with capabilities undreamt of in previous ages. We live in a world facing unprecedented global risks—risks to our continued prosperity, to our survival, and to the health of our planet itself. We might think of our current situation as ‘A Tale of Two Earths’.” End quote.12 years after the publication of “The Infinite Resource”, it seems that the Earth has become even better, but also even worse. Where does this leave the power of ideas? Or do we need more than ideas, as ominous storm clouds continue to gather on the horizon?Selected follow-ups:Ramez Naam - personal websiteThe Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite PlanetThe Nexus Trilogy (Nexus Crux Apex)Jesse Jenkins (Princeton)Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet - book by Mark Lynas1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo - WikipediaWe cool Earth, with reflective clouds - Make SunsetsDirect Air Capture (DAC) - WikipediaFrontier: An advance market commitment to accelerate carbon removalToward a Responsible Solar Geoengineering Research Program - by David KeithSouth Korea scales down plans for nuclear powerMicrosoft chooses infamous nuclear site for AI powerMachines of Loving Grace: How AI Could Transform the World for the Better - Essay by Dario AmodeiMusic: Spike ProtePromoguy Talk PillsAgency in Amsterdam dives into topics like Tech, AI, digital marketing, and more drama...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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45:45
PAI at Paris: the global AI ecosystem evolves, with Rebecca Finlay
In this episode, our guest is Rebecca Finlay, the CEO at Partnership on AI (PAI). Rebecca previously joined us in Episode 62, back in October 2023, in what was the run-up to the Global AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park in the UK. Times have moved on, and earlier this month, Rebecca and the Partnership on AI participated in the latest global summit in that same series, held this time in Paris. This summit, breaking with the previous naming, was called the Global AI Action Summit. We’ll be hearing from Rebecca how things have evolved since we last spoke – and what the future may hold.Prior to joining Partnership on AI, Rebecca founded the AI & Society program at global research organization CIFAR, one of the first international, multistakeholder initiatives on the impact of AI in society. Rebecca’s insights have been featured in books and media including The Financial Times, The Guardian, Politico, and Nature Machine Intelligence. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and sits on advisory bodies in Canada, France, and the U.S.Selected follow-ups:Partnership on AIRebecca FinlayOur previous episode featuring RebeccaCIFAR (The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research)"It is more than time that we move from science fiction" - remarks by Anne BouverotInternational AI Safety Report 2025 - report from expert panel chaired by Yoshua BengioThe Inaugural Conference of the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEAI)A.I. Pioneer Yoshua Bengio Proposes a Safe Alternative Amid Agentic A.I. HypeUS and UK refuse to sign Paris summit declaration on ‘inclusive’ AICurrent AICollaborative event on AI accountabilityCERN for AIAI Summit Day 1: Harnessing AI for the Future of WorkThe Economic SingularityPromoguy Talk PillsAgency in Amsterdam dives into topics like Tech, AI, digital marketing, and more drama...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Anticipating and managing exponential impact - hosts David Wood and Calum ChaceCalum Chace is a sought-after keynote speaker and best-selling writer on artificial intelligence. He focuses on the medium- and long-term impact of AI on all of us, our societies and our economies. He advises companies and governments on AI policy.His non-fiction books on AI are Surviving AI, about superintelligence, and The Economic Singularity, about the future of jobs. Both are now in their third editions.He also wrote Pandora's Brain and Pandora’s Oracle, a pair of techno-thrillers about the first superintelligence. He is a regular contributor to magazines, newspapers, and radio.In the last decade, Calum has given over 150 talks in 20 countries on six continents. Videos of his talks, and lots of other materials are available at https://calumchace.com/.He is co-founder of a think tank focused on the future of jobs, called the Economic Singularity Foundation. The Foundation has published Stories from 2045, a collection of short stories written by its members.Before becoming a full-time writer and speaker, Calum had a 30-year career in journalism and in business, as a marketer, a strategy consultant and a CEO. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University, which confirmed his suspicion that science fiction is actually philosophy in fancy dress.David Wood is Chair of London Futurists, and is the author or lead editor of twelve books about the future, including The Singularity Principles, Vital Foresight, The Abolition of Aging, Smartphones and Beyond, and Sustainable Superabundance.He is also principal of the independent futurist consultancy and publisher Delta Wisdom, executive director of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation, Foresight Advisor at SingularityNET, and a board director at the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies). He regularly gives keynote talks around the world on how to prepare for radical disruption. See https://deltawisdom.com/.As a pioneer of the mobile computing and smartphone industry, he co-founded Symbian in 1998. By 2012, software written by his teams had been included as the operating system on 500 million smartphones.From 2010 to 2013, he was Technology Planning Lead (CTO) of Accenture Mobility, where he also co-led Accenture’s Mobility Health business initiative.Has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge, where he also undertook doctoral research in the Philosophy of Science, and a DSc from the University of Westminster.
Ireland