The Most Likely AI Doom Scenario — with Jim Babcock, LessWrong Team
What’s the most likely (“mainline”) AI doom scenario? How does the existence of LLMs update the original Yudkowskian version? I invited my friend Jim Babcock to help me answer these questions.
Jim is a member of the LessWrong engineering team and its parent organization, Lightcone Infrastructure. I’ve been a longtime fan of his thoughtful takes.
This turned out to be a VERY insightful and informative discussion, useful for clarifying my own predictions, and accessible to the show’s audience.
00:00 Introducing Jim Babcock
01:29 The Evolution of LessWrong Doom Scenarios
02:22 LessWrong’s Mission
05:49 The Rationalist Community and AI
09:37 What’s Your P(Doom)™
18:26 What Are Yudkowskians Surprised About?
26:48 Moral Philosophy vs. Goal Alignment
36:56 Sandboxing and AI Containment
42:51 Holding Yudkowskians Accountable
58:29 Understanding Next Word Prediction
01:00:02 Pre-Training vs Post-Training
01:08:06 The Rocket Alignment Problem Analogy
01:30:09 FOOM vs. Gradual Disempowerment
01:45:19 Recapping the Mainline Doom Scenario
01:52:08 Liron’s Outro
Show Notes
Jim's LessWrong — https://www.lesswrong.com/users/jimra...
Jim's Twitter — https://x.com/jimrandomh
The Rocket Alignment Problem by Eliezer Yudkowsky — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Gg9a4...
Optimality is the Tiger and Agents Are Its Teeth — https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kpPnR...
Doom Debates episode about the research paper discovering AI's utility function — https://lironshapira.substack.com/p/c...
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