Cold Takes Audio: Recent Episodes
coldtakes
Amateur read-throughs of blog posts on Cold-Takes.com, for those who prefer listening to reading. Available on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts by searching Cold Takes Audio.
Major AI companies can increase or reduce global catastrophic risks.
https://www.cold-takes.com/what-ai-companies-can-do-today-to-help-with-the-most-important-century/
People are far better at their jobs than at anything else. Here are the best ways to help the most important century go well.
https://www.cold-takes.com/jobs-that-can-help-with-the-most-important-century/
For people who want to help improve our prospects for navigating transformative AI, and have an audience (even a small one).
https://www.cold-takes.com/spreading-messages-to-help-with-the-most-important-century/
Hypothetical stories where the world tries, but fails, to avert a global disaster.
https://www.cold-takes.com/how-we-could-stumble-into-ai-catastrophe
An overview of key potential factors (not just alignment risk) for whether things go well or poorly with transformative AI.
https://www.cold-takes.com/transformative-ai-issues-not-just-misalignment-an-overview/
Push AI forward too fast, and catastrophe could occur. Too slow, and someone else less cautious could do it. Is there a safe course?
https://www.cold-takes.com/racing-through-a-minefield-the-ai-deployment-problem/
A few ways we might get very powerful AI systems to be safe.
https://www.cold-takes.com/high-level-hopes-for-ai-alignment/
Four analogies for why "We don't see any misbehavior by this AI" isn't enough.
https://www.cold-takes.com/ai-safety-seems-hard-to-measure/
Today's AI development methods risk training AIs to be deceptive, manipulative and ambitious. This might not be easy to fix as it comes up.
https://www.cold-takes.com/why-would-ai-aim-to-defeat-humanity/
We scored mid-20th-century sci-fi writers on nonfiction predictions. They weren't great, but weren't terrible either. Maybe doing futurism works fine.
https://www.cold-takes.com/the-track-record-of-futurists-seems-fine/
With great power comes, er, unclear responsibility and zero accountability.
https://www.cold-takes.com/nonprofit-boards-are-weird-2/
How big a deal could AI misalignment be? About as big as it gets.
https://www.cold-takes.com/ai-could-defeat-all-of-us-combined/
Investigating important topics with laziness, impatience, hubris and self-preservation.
https://www.cold-takes.com/useful-vices-for-wicked-problems/
What kind of governance system should you set up, if you're starting from scratch and can do it however you want?
https://www.cold-takes.com/ideal-governance-for-companies-countries-and-more/
Preventing extinction would be good - but "saving 8 billion lives" good or "saving a trillion trillion trillion lives" good?
https://www.cold-takes.com/debating-myself-on-whether-extra-lives-lived-are-as-good-as-deaths-prevented/
A day in the life of trying to complete a self-assigned project with no clear spec or goal.
https://www.cold-takes.com/the-wicked-problem-experience/
First in a series of dialogues on utilitarianism and "future-proof ethics."
https://www.cold-takes.com/defending-one-dimensional-ethics/
Ethics based on common sense seems to have a horrible historical track record. Can we do better?
https://www.cold-takes.com/future-proof-ethics/
Lots of theories for why older science and art seem to have an easier time getting critical acclaim.
https://www.cold-takes.com/reader-reactions-and-update-on-wheres-todays-beethoven/
Want more innovation? Think about population, not recapturing "golden age" culture.
https://www.cold-takes.com/why-it-matters-if-ideas-get-harder-to-find/
Why is no composer today as acclaimed as Beethoven, no author as acclaimed as Shakespeare? A data-driven look at a few possible explanations.
https://www.cold-takes.com/wheres-todays-beethoven/
An attempt to help visualize utopia, without running into pitfalls I covered previously.
https://www.cold-takes.com/visualizing-utopia/
The activity that has been most formative for the way I think: suspending my trust in others and digging to the bottom of some claim.
https://www.cold-takes.com/minimal-trust-investigations/
Homicide rates have fallen over the past 1000+ years, but wars and genocides may have gotten bigger. How does it net out?
https://www.cold-takes.com/has-violence-declined-when-we-include-the-world-wars-and-other-major-atrocities/
Five clashing pictures of how to help the world, and the questions about history they raise.
https://www.cold-takes.com/rowing-steering-anchoring-equity-mutiny/
The rate of violent deaths is one of the key measures of long-run quality of life, and strong claims are made on both sides.
https://www.cold-takes.com/unraveling-the-evidence-about-violence-among-very-early-humans/
Part of the "Has Life Gotten Better?" series.
https://www.cold-takes.com/was-life-better-in-hunter-gatherer-times/
"Hunter-gatherers"/"foragers" are sometimes said to have strong gender equality. But as far as I can tell, they don't. Part of the "Has Life Gotten Better?" series.
https://www.cold-takes.com/pre-agriculture-gender-relations-seem-bad/
Why I think life has gotten better over the last couple hundred years.
https://www.cold-takes.com/has-life-gotten-better-the-post-industrial-era/
Trends in quality of life over all of human history (not just the last few hundred years).
https://www.cold-takes.com/has-life-gotten-better/
Listing the big events for empowerment and well-being, leaving out all the wars that didn't clearly affect these things.
https://www.cold-takes.com/summary-of-history-empowerment-and-well-being-lens/
Why would we program AI that wants to harm us? Because we might not know how to do otherwise.
https://www.cold-takes.com/why-ai-alignment-could-be-hard-with-modern-deep-learning/
Given all our uncertainties about the most important century, I'm issuing a "call to vigilance" instead of "call to action": look out for opportunities to help the most important century go as well as possible.
https://www.cold-takes.com/call-to-vigilance/
We, the people living in this century, have the chance to have a huge impact on huge numbers of people to come - if we can make sense of the situation enough to find helpful actions.
https://www.cold-takes.com/making-the-best-of-the-most-important-century/
What the best available forecasting methods say about when we can expect transformative AI - and why there's no "expert field" for this topic.
https://www.cold-takes.com/where-ai-forecasting-stands-today/
My preferred method of forecasting transformative AI, with pros and cons.
https://www.cold-takes.com/forecasting-transformative-ai-the-biological-anchors-method-in-a-nutshell/
AI progress may not trend in the ways we intuitively expect.
https://www.cold-takes.com/are-we-trending-toward-transformative-ai-how-would-we-know/
This is the second of 4 posts summarizing hundreds of pages of technical reports focused almost entirely on forecasting one number: the year by which transformative AI will be developed.
https://www.cold-takes.com/forecasting-transformative-ai-whats-the-burden-of-proof/
PASTA: Process for Automating Scientific and Technological Advancement
https://www.cold-takes.com/transformative-ai-timelines-part-1-of-4-what-kind-of-ai/
https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/
The long view of economic history says we're in the midst of a huge, unsustainable acceleration. What happens next?
Final section of the "Digital People Would Be An Even Bigger Deal" readthrough.
https://www.cold-takes.com/how-digital-people-could-change-the-world/
Audio for the first part of "Digital People Would Be An Even Bigger Deal."
https://www.cold-takes.com/how-digital-people-could-change-the-world/
If people could be insta-copied, economic growth would explode.
https://www.cold-takes.com/the-duplicator/
If you think humans will eventually spread out across the galaxy (even if it takes 100,000 years), then you think we are among the earliest living beings, with remarkable opportunities to shape the future.
https://www.cold-takes.com/all-possible-views-about-humanitys-future-are-wild/