YouSaid · the spoken record

Leopold Aschenbrenner

lines on the record: 332
first: 2024-06-04
most recent: 2024-06-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I mean, look, I actually think why is it a small world? I mean, I think one of the things is some amount of some sort of agency. And I think in a funny way, this is a thing I sort of took away from the sort of Germany experience, where it was, I mean, look, it was crushing. I really didn't like it. And it was like, it was such an unusual move to kind of skip grades and such an unusual move to come to the United States. And a lot of these things I did were kind of unusual moves. There's some amount where like”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they had a couple hundred views or something. Yeah. It's a small world. I mean, this is the crazy thing about the AI world, right? It's kind of like it's the same few people at the congressive parties and they're the ones running the models that DeepMind and Open AI and Anthropic. I mean, I think some other friends of ours have mentioned this who are now later in their career and very successful that they actually met all the people who are also kind of very successful in Silicon Valley now. When they're in their, you know, before their 20s or early 20s, the.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I generally just love this stuff. I was curious and I thought it was really interesting. I love learning about it. And I love kind of like made sense to me. And it was very natural. I think I'm, you know, I'm not, I think one of my faults is I'm not that good at eating glass or whatever. I think there's some people who are very good at it. I think the sort of like the sort of moments of pre-productivity come when I, you know, I'm just really excited and engaged and love it. And, you know, I take the right courses, you know, that's what you got in college.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's one award for the highest GPA, which I won, but the valedictorian is like among the people which have the highest GPA and then like selected by faculty. Okay, so it's”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About the validity, you know, yeah. So I think the sort of the most important insights are the ones where you have to do a lot of work to get them. But then there's sort of this crisp intuition.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, you know, I had been so went from Germany completely on the periphery to kind of like, you know, in the US elite institution and sort of got some vibe of like sort of, you know. Meritocratic elite, you know, US society. And then sort of, yeah, basically this sort of like there is a sort of directory then to being like, look, find the true American spirit. I got to come out here. But the other reason I didn't become economist was because, or at least econ academia, was to think sort of econ academia has become a bit decadent. And maybe it's just ideas getting harder to find and maybe it's sort of things, you know, and the sort of beautiful simple things have been discovered. But what are econ papers these days? It's like 200 pages of empirical analyses on what happened when Wisconsin bought a hundred thousand more textbooks on like educational outcomes. And I'm really happy that work happened. I think it's important work. But I think it's not in covering these sort of fundamental insights and mechanisms in society. Or, you know, it's like even the theory work is kind of like, here's a really complicated model. And the model spits out, if the Fed does X, then Y happens. And you have no idea what that happened because it's like a gazillion parameters and they're all calibrated in some way and it's some computer simulation. You have no idea.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really? I didn't realize that. Well, yeah, and it was good because he kind of introduced me to the Twitter weirdos or just like, you know, and I think the takeaway from that was kind of, you know, got to move out west one more time.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why did I ultimately not pursue econ academia was a number of reasons. One of them was Tyler Cowan, he kind of took me aside and he was kind of like, look, I think you're one of the top young economists I've ever met. But also you should probably not go to grad school.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought of a lot of the sort of core ideas of economics. I thought were just beautiful. And in some sense, I feel like I was a little duped, you know, where it's like, actual econ academia is kind of decadent now. I think that, for example, the paper I wrote, I think the takeaway, it's a long paper, it's 100 pages of math or whatever. I think the core takeaway I can kind of give the core intuition for in like, you know, 30 seconds and it makes sense. And it's like you don't actually need the math. I think that's the sort of the best pieces of economics are like that where you do the work, but you do the work to kind of uncover insights that weren't obvious to you before. Once you've done the work, it's like some sort of like mechanism falls out of it that like makes a lot of crisp intuitive sense that like explains some facts about the world that you can then use in arguments. And I think, you know, I think a lot of Econ 101 like this is it's great. A lot of econ in the 50s and the 60s was like this. Chad Jones papers are often like this. I really like Chad Jones.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, in some sense, I'm still doing economics, right? What is straight lines on a graph? I'm looking at the log plots and figuring out what the trends are and thinking about the feedback loops and equilibrium arms control dynamics. And I think it is a sort of a way of thinking that I find very useful You know, like what you know, Dario and Ilya seeing scaling early in some sense, that is a sort of very economic way of thinking, also this sort of physics, like empirical physics, you know, a lot of them are physicists. I think the economists usually can't code well enough, and that's their issue. But I think it's that sort of way of thinking. I mean, the other thing is, you know, I thought there were sort of”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Writing. You're writing. I don't know. I just, you know, I get interested in things. In some sense, it's sort of like, it feels very natural to me. It's like I get excited about a thing. I read about it. I immerse myself. I think I can, you know, I can learn information very quickly and understand it. I mean, I think to the paper, I mean, I think one actual, at least for the way I work, I feel like sort of moments of peak productivity matter much more than sort of average productivity. I think there's some jobs like COO or something. Average productivity really matters. But I think there's sort of I often feel like I have periods of like, you know, there's some, there's a couple months where there's sort of nephrovescence. And I'm like, you know, and the other times I'm sort of computing stuff in the background. And at some point, like writing the series, this is also kind of similar. It's just like you write it and it's like it's really flowing. That's sort of what ends up mattering.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, my majors were math and statistics and economics, but Columbia has a sort of pretty heavy core curriculum and liberal arts and education. And honestly, like, you know, I shouldn't have done all the majors. I should have just, I mean, the best courses were sort of the courses where it's like, there's some amazing professor and it's some history class. I mean, that's honestly the thing I would recommend people spend their time on in college.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, for example, I really appreciated the sort of like liberal arts education and the core curriculum and reading sort of core works of political philosophy and literature.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was normal at the time. It's like now I understand why my mother's working, you know, I think, you know, I worked, I worked on my parents for a while. Eventually, I persuaded them. No, but yeah, felt very normal at the time. And it was great. It was also great because I actually really like college. And in some sense, it sort of came at the right time for me where, you know, I.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, anyway, so I don't know. I skipped a few grades. And I think at the time, it seemed very normal to me to kind of like go to college at 15 and come to America. I think One of my sisters is now turning 15. And so then I look at her and I'm like, now I understand how my mother”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, there's also kind of like elite universities for undergraduate, which is kind of crazy. So, you know, the sort of like basically like the meritocracy was kind of crushed in Germany at some point. Also, I mean, there's a sort of incredible sense of, you know, complacency across the board. I mean, one of the things that always puzzles me is like, you know, even just going to a U.S. college was this kind of like radical act. And like, you know, it doesn't seem radical to anyone here because it's like, ah, this is obviously the thing you do and you can go to Columbia, you go to Columbia, but it's, you know, it is very unusual and it's wild to me because it's like, you know, this is where stuff is happening. You can get so much of a better education and America is where. Where all the stuff is, and people don't do it. And so, um,”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No peers that are. Yeah, look, I mean, it wasn't, yeah, it was, you know, there's, I mean, there's also just a sense in which sort of like there's this particular sort of German cultural sense. I think in the US, you know, there's all these like amazing high schools and like sort of an appreciation of excellence. And in Germany, there's really this sort of like Paul Poppy syndrome almost, right? Where it's, you know, you're the curious kid in class and you want to learn more instead of the teacher being like, ah, that's great. They kind of resent you for it and they're like trying to crush you.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really wanted out of Germany. I went to kind of a German public school. It was not a good environment for me. And it was.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a sort of crazy world. You're talking about, I feel like you talk about like, oh, maybe they'll nationalize this soon. It's like, you know, almost nobody really feels it, sees what's happening. And I think this is the thing that I find stressful about all this stuff. It's like, look, maybe I'm wrong. If I'm right, we're in this crazy situation where there's like, you know, like a few hundred guys that are like paying attention. And it's daunting.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Open the eyes right there, you know, anthropics there. I mean, again, this is kind of like, you know, it's like you guys have this enormous power over how it's going to go for the next couple years. And that power is depreciating.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, here's what I think about RSP type stuff for sort of safety regulation that's happening now. I think they're important for helping us figure out what world we're in and like flashing the warning signs when we're coast, right? The story we've been telling is sort of like what I think the modal version of this decade is, but it's like, I think there's lots of ways it could be wrong. We should talk about the data a lot more. I think there's like, again, I think there's a world where the stuff stagnates, right? There's a world where we don't have AGI. And so the RSP thing is like preserving the optionality. Let's see how this stuff goes. But we need to be prepared. If the red lights start flashing, if we're getting the automated eye researcher, then it's like, and it's crunch time, and then it's time to go.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And basically you are relying much more on kind of like a sane chain of command than you are on sort of some like, you know, deliberative regulatory scheme. I wish you were able to do the deliberative regulatory scheme. And this is the thing about the private companies too. I don't think they all claim they're going to do safety. Think it's really rough when you're in the commercial race and there are startups, and startups are startups. I think they're not fit to handle WMDs.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think, I mean, I think the sort of alignment angle during the intelligence explosion is going to, you know, it's not a process of like years of bureaucracy and then you can kind of write some standards. I think it looks much more like basically a war and like you have a fog of war. It's like, look, it's like, is it safe to do the next OOM? And it's like, ah, you know, like, you know, we're like three ooms into the intelligence explosion. We don't really understand what's going on anymore. Like a bunch of our generalization scaling curves are kind of looking not great. You know, some of our automated AI researchers that are doing alignment are saying it's fine, but we don't quite trust them in this test, you know, that like the eyes started doing naughty things. But then we like hammered it out and then it was fine. And like, ah, should we should we go ahead? Should we take another six months? Also, by the way, China just stole the weights or we, you know, they're about.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I mean, I think there's going to be a lot of unfortunate things that happen. I'm just like, I'm just hoping we make it through. I mean, to the point of it's like, I really don't think the pitch will only be the sort of like, you know, the race. I think the race will be sort of a backdrop to it. I think the sort of general like look, it's important that democracies shape this technology. We can't just like leak this stuff to North Korea. It's going to be important. I think also for the just safety, including alignment, including the sort of like creation of new WMDs, I'm not currently sold. There's another path, right? So it's like if you just have the breakneck grace both internationally because you're just instantly leaking all this stuff, including the weights and just the commercial race, Demos and Dario and Sam, you know, just kind of like they all want to be first. It's incredibly rough for safety. And then you say, okay, safety regulation. But, you know, it's sort of like, you know, the safety regulation that people talk about, it's like, oh, well, NIST, and they take years and they figure out what the extra consensus is. And then they, is that what's going to happen to the project as well?”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the thing that really changed the game was like the super, you know, the H-bombs and ICBMs. And then I think that's really when it took it to a whole new level.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think my view is, again, this is related to the view on AI and maybe some of our disagreement is like that was inevitable. Like, of course, like, you know, there's this world war. And then obviously there was the, you know, Cold War right after, of course, like, you know, the military angle of this would be pursued with ferocious intensity. And I don't really think there's a world in which that doesn't happen where it's like, ah, we're all not going to build nukes. And also just like nukes went really well. I think that could have gone terribly, right? You know, like again, I mean, this sort of, I think this is like not physically possible with nukes, this sort of pocket nukes for everybody, but I think sort of like WMDs that are sort of proliferated and democratized and like all the countries have it. The US leading on nukes and then sort of like building this new world order that was kind of US-led or at least sort of like a few great powers and a nonproliferation regime for nukes, a partnership and a deal that's like, look, no military sort of application of nuclear technology, but we're going to help you with the civilian technology. We're going to enforce safety norms on the rest of the world that worked.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's go play that leading role. It'll be a sort of a partnership, basically. But the other thing is, again, we talked about World War II and American unpreparedness of the beginning of World War II. It's complete shambles, right? And so there was a sort of like very company, I think America has a very deep bench of just like incredibly competent managerial talent. I think that there's a lot of really dedicated people. And I think basically a sort of operational warp speed, public-private partnership, something like that is sort of what I imagine it would look like.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About, you know, oh, deep mind or whatever. It's about these really important things. I don't know. Again, we're talking about the Manhattan Project, right? This stuff was really contentious initially. But at some point, it was clear that this stuff was coming. It was clear that there was sort of a real sort of like exigency on the military national security front. You know, I think a lot of people will come around. On the weather, it will be competent. I agree. I mean, this is, again, where it's like a lot of the stuff is more predictive in the sense. I think this is reasonably likely and I think not enough people are thinking about it. A lot of people think about AI lab politics or whatever, but like nobody has a plan for the project.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think, again, I think the project will look closer to Operation Warp Speed. And it's not even, I mean, I think you'll have all the companies involved in the government project. I'm not that sold that merging is that difficult. You have one, can you select one code base and you run pre-training on GPUs with one code base, and then you do the sort of second RL step on the other code base with TPUs. I think it's fine. I mean, to the topic of like, will people sign up for it? They wouldn't sign up for it today. I think this would be kind of crazy to people. But also, you know, I mean, this is part of the secrets thing. People gather at parties or whatever, you know, you know this. You know, I don't think anyone has really gotten up in front of these people and been like, look, you know, the thing you're building is the most important thing for like the national security of the United States for like whether, you know, like, you know, the free world will have another century ahead of it. Like this is the thing you're doing is really important for your country, for democracy. And, you know, don't talk about the secrets. And it's not just.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty similar, right? Same different code bases and like lots of different infrastructure and different teams. And it was like, you know, it wasn't like, it wasn't the smoothest of all processes, but DeepMind is doing, I think, very well.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the trillion dollar cluster is going to be planned before the AGI. I think it's sort of like you get the AGI on the 10 gigawatt cluster, like maybe you have like one more year where you're kind of doing some final unhobbling to fully unlock it. Then you have the intelligence explosion. And meanwhile, the trillion dollar cluster is almost finished. And then you like, and then you do your superintelligence on your trillion dollar cluster, or you run it on your trillion dollar cluster. And by the way, you have not just your trillion dollar cluster, but like, you know, hundreds of millions of GPUs on inference clusters everywhere.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good. They're pretty good. I mean, I think it's possible it's private. It's possible. But it's going to be like, by the way, at this point we have.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Microsoft can do the like hundreds of billions. I think the trillion dollar cluster is closer to a national effort.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the issue is the sort of like bottling up and the sort of intensely short period of time, like this enormous sort of like unfolding of technological progress of an industrial explosion. I mean, I think we do worry about the 100 million job manure. And it's like rise of China. Why are we worried about the rise of China? Because it's like 100 billion people and they're able to do a lot of industry and do a lot of technology. But it's just like the rise of China at times like 100 because it's not just 1 billion people. It's like a billion super intelligent, crazy things. And in like, you know, a very short period.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will be at stake will not just be kind of cool products, but what will be at stake is whether liberal democracy survives, like whether the CCP survives, like what the world order for the next century will be. And when that is at stake, forces will be activated that are sort of way beyond what we're talking about now. And in the sort of like crazy race at the end, like the sort of national security implications will be the most important. Worldwar two. It's like, yeah, nuclear energy had it stay. But in the initial kind of period when this technology was first discovered, you had to stabilize the situation, you had to get nukes, you had to do it right. And then the civilian applications had their day.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, I'm kind of like, I don't see the alternative. The alternative is you overturn a 500 year civilizational achievement of Langfleeten. You basically instantly leak the stuff to the CCP. And either you barely scrape out ahead, but you're in this fever struggle. You're proliferating crazy WMDs. It's just enormously dangerous situation, enormously dangerous on alignment because you're in this kind of like crazy race at the end and you don't have the ability to take six months to get alignment right. The alternative is alternative is like you aren't actually bundling your efforts to kind of like win the race against the authoritarian powers. I don't like it. I wish the thing we use the ASI for is to cure the diseases and do all the good in the world. But it is my prediction that sort of like by the in the end game.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, look, that's a whole nother issue. How does economic distribution work or whatever? I don't know, that'll be rough.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why was Boeing privatized after? Government has the biggest guns, and the way we regulate it is institutions, constitutions, legal restraints.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After you get the SI and then we're building the robot army as building fusion reactors or whatever. Only the government will get to build robo armies.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anybody else? Why is it when is there some random startup? It'll be the same, it'll be the same companies that would be doing it anyway. But in this world, they're just contracting with the government or like their DPA for all their compute goes to the government.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, look, I think, first of all, I think the metas of the world open sourcing their eyes that are two years behind or whatever. Super valuable role. They're going to, you know, and so there's going to be some question of either the offense defense balance is fine. And so even if they open source two-year-old AIs, it's fine, or it's like there's some restrictions on the most extreme dual use capabilities. Like, you know, you don't let private companies sell kind of crazy weapons. And that's great. And that will help with the diffusion. And after the government project, there's going to be this initial tense period. Hopefully that stabilized. And then look, yeah, like Boeing, they're going to go out and they're going to like do all the flourishing civilian applications and like nuclear energy. The civilian applications will have their day. I think part of my argument here is that.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's like multiple companies going for it Or something I mean, I expect the AIs to be broadly deployed. I mean, first of all, even if”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think you know, I basically think your world is much more spectrum than you're acknowledging here. And I think basically the world in which it's private labs is extremely heavy government involvement. And really what we're debating is like, you know, what form of government project, but it is going to look much more like the national security state than anything it does look like, like a startup as it is right now. And I think that, yeah.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The United States National Security State is going to be intimately involved with this. And this will, you know, the labs, whether, you know, and I think, again, the governor, a lot of what I think is the government project looks like, it is basically a joint venture between the cloud providers, between some of the labs and the government. And so I think there is no world in which the government isn't intimately involved in this crazy period. At the very least, basically, the intelligence agencies need to be running security for these labs. So they're already kind of like, they're controlling everything. They're controlling access to everything. Then they're going to be like, probably, again, if we're in this really volatile international situation, like a lot of the initial applications, it'll suck. It's not what I want to use ASI for will be, like trying to somehow stabilize this crazy situation. Somehow we need to prevent proliferation of some crazy new WMDs and the undermining of mutually assured destruction to kind of like, you know, North Korea and Russia and China.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, if you're at the point where this thing has vastly superhuman hacking capabilities, if you're at the point where this thing can develop bioweapons, like crazy bioweapons, ones that are like targeted, you know, can kill everybody but the Han Chinese or would wipe out entire countries. Were you talking about building robo armies? You're talking about kind of like drone swarms that are again the mosquito-sized drones that could take it out.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think the other thing is what happens after. I mean, the other thing, you know, because we're talking about whether the government project is good or not. And it's like, I have very mixed feelings about this as well. Again, I think my primary argument is like.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But ASI is going to be a really precarious situation as well. And like given how precarious nukes are, we've done pretty well”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're constitutions, there are legal restraints, there are courts, there are checks and balances. Crazy bet is the bet which you're like private company CU”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Into the weeds on them about why that's a more likely world And in the other world When you nationalize I mean, I don't expect us to nationalize tomorrow. If anything, I expect it to be kind of with COVID where it's like kind of too late. Like, ideally, you nationalize it early enough to actually lock stuff down. It'll probably be kind of chaotic and you're going to be trying to do this crash program to lock stuff down and it'll be kind of late. It'll be kind of clear what's happening. We're not going to nationalize when it's not clear what's happening.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why does the military work? It's like generals Not allowed to follow unlawful orders. They're not allowed to follow unconstitutional orders. You have the same thing for the AIs.”
2024-06-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source