Robert Wright

Um, Labor and the Greens have announced, um, their candidates in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.

Um, I speak to veteran science writer Robert Wright, um, on his views about X risk from AI going mainstream.

And we end with a, a really remarkable clip of Hillary Clinton.

She has some, I mean, surprising views about October the 7th.

Um, by the way, for many in Silicon Valley, ten percent, so the ten percent chance of all of humanity being killed is at the low end, as I say, for many in Silicon Valley.

So Marcus Williams works at monitoring AIs at OpenAI.

Um, he tweeted this: "Unless there is AI regulation or a coordinated slowdown between labs, human extinction in the next few years seems very likely." Um, someone then asks him how likely, and he says, "Seventy percent in the next three years if there isn't regulation or slowdown, although I think regulation slowdown is very possible." Um, to discuss what could prove to be a key tipping point in AI policy and discourse, um, I caught up with veteran science writer Robert Wright.

Wright has written a number of excellent books, including The Moral Animal, which I read as a teenager, um, and Why Buddhism Is True.

What do we have to do to make sure that we're not put into the bind that Dario describes putting us into?" I think another thing that we should keep in mind too is that this is again just trying to give you a sense of what the Chinese narrative point of view is.

Robert Wright would call this an exercise in cognitive empathy.

They are very sensitive to unfairness and what they see as hypocrisy on our side.

So for example, you will often hear in Western discourse, "You can't give chips to Chinese companies because China has civil-military fusion.

You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcast.

Hello, Ian and Eli.

Hi, Bob.

Well, that's, I guess, all a person can hope for these days.

Let me introduce us.

I'm Robert Wright, publisher of the Non-Zero Newsletter.

This is a Non-Zero podcast.

You two are Ian Lustick and Eli Clifton, co-authors of a new book called Israel's Lobby.

I'm depressed as a fresher freshman because the job market, what am I supposed to do? And my son, who graduated from Berkeley earlier this year, I remember I was at convocation at the football stadium.

And former Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration, Robert Wright, gave a keynote.

And he mentioned AI twice.

And the thousands of graduating students booed both times.

You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcast.

Hello, Paul Bloom.

Hello, Robert Wright.

How are you doing?

You know, I'm kind of freaking out, but let me introduce this first before I explain why.

I'm Robert Wright, publisher of the Non-Zero Newsletter.

This is Non-Zero Podcast.

I might mention, since we're about to talk about how AI is freaking me out, I'm also the author of The God Test, a book on AI, whose excerpts can be found at thegodtest.net.

You used, as an illustrative example, one of my favorite stories from history, which is Darwin's marriage and how he went through that.

And I've got a little description that I took out of the first book I ever learned about it in, which was The Moral Animal by Robert Wright from 1993.

So in the decade of Darwin's marriage, the 1830s, the number of British couples filing for divorce averaged four per year.

That's not