Matthew Yglesias | An A.I. safety guide for normal people

How seriously should we take the risks of superintelligent A.I.? ⁠Matthew Yglesias⁠⁠ joins David Deming for an A.I. safety guide for normal people who are just paying attention. Matt is a journalist and founder of the widely read newsletter ⁠Slow Boring⁠, which he started in 2020 after leaving the news site ⁠Vox⁠, which he co-founded with Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell in 2014. He is one of the masters of what some people call “⁠explanatory journalism⁠,” meaning going beyond just the facts and trying to help readers really understand the context around an issue. Matt has been writing about A.I. and related issues for a long time, but as he acknowledges in his column, A.I. safety has finally gotten the public’s attention, and the politics and policy of A.I. might move fast from here onward. In this conversation, David asked Matt why A.I. safety is suddenly getting so much attention, how seriously we should be taking the risks of superintelligent A.I., and what it might realistically look like along the way to go from friendly chatbots on a computer screen to serious safety issues and even human extinction. They also talk about the politics of A.I. safety, on how to realistically slow things down with China also racing for the lead and whether Matt thinks a frontier A.I. lab could be nationalized in the next few years. Read Matt's column, "A simple plan to save the world from rogue A.I.": ⁠https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-simple-plan-to-save-the-world-from ⁠ For show notes and full episodes, subscribe to The Context Window with David Deming: ⁠https://thecontextwindowpodcast.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thecontextwindowpodcast.substack.com