In December 1938, a frustrated nuclear physicist named Leo Szilard wrote a letter to the British Admiralty telling them that he had given up on his greatest invention — the nuclear chain reaction. "The idea of a nuclear chain reaction won’t work. There’s no need to keep this patent secret, and...

We’ve recorded quite a few podcasts recently about the problems AI does and may create, now and in the future. We’ve talked about AI safety, alignment, bias and fairness. These are important topics, and we’ll continue to discuss them, but I also think it’s important not to lose sight of the...

AI safety researchers are increasingly focused on understanding what AI systems want. That may sound like an odd thing to care about: after all, aren’t we just programming AIs to want certain things by providing them with a loss function, or a number to optimize? Well, not necessarily. It turns...