38.7 - Anthony Aguirre on the Future of Life Institute | AXRP - the AI X-risk Research Podcast

38.7 - Anthony Aguirre on the Future of Life Institute | AXRP - the AI X-risk Research Podcast 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 YouTube link 

 The Future of Life Institute is one of the oldest and most prominant organizations in the AI existential safety space, working on such topics as the AI pause open letter and how the EU AI Act can be improved. Metaculus is one of the premier forecasting sites on the internet. Behind both of them lie one man: Anthony Aguirre, who I talk with in this episode.

 Topics we discuss:

 
 Anthony, FLI, and Metaculus 

 The Alignment Workshop 

 FLI’s current activity 

 AI policy 

 Work FLI funds 

 

 Daniel Filan (00:09):
Hello, everyone. This is one of a series of short interviews that I’ve been conducting at the Bay Area Alignment Workshop , which is run by FAR.AI . Links to what we’re discussing, as usual, are in the description. A transcript is, as usual, available at axrp.net . And, as usual, if you want to support the podcast, you can do so at patreon.com/axrpodcast . Well, let’s continue to the interview.

 (00:29):
All right, well, I am currently speaking with Anthony Aguirre.

 Anthony Aguirre (00:32):
Nice to be here.

 Anthony, FLI, and Metaculus 

 Daniel Filan (00:33):
For those who aren’t as familiar with you and what you do, can you say a little bit about yourself?

 Anthony Aguirre (00:39):
I’m a theoretical physicist by original training. I still hold a professorship at UC Santa Cruz, and I’ve studied a whole range of theoretical physics things in the early universe and gravity and foundations of quantum mechanics and all sorts of fun stuff. But about 10 years ago or so, I, as well as another colleague, Max Tegmark , and a few others, started to think about the long-term future, and in particular, transformative technologies and the role that they would be playing, and decided to start up a non-profit thinking about transformative technologies and what could be done to steer them in maybe a more favorable direction. At that point, AI was just starting to work a little bit and things like AGI were clearly decades away, if not centuries in some people’s opinion. So this was a more theoretical and pleasantly abstract set of things to think about.

 (01:36):
But nonetheless, we felt like it was coming and started a bunch of activities and that was the birth of the Future of Life Institute . And I’m now, 10 years later, executive director of the Future of Life Institute pretty much full-time. And so I’ve got sort of a split between Future of Life Institute, my academic appointment and my students there, and a couple of other hats that I wear, including Metaculus .

 Daniel Filan (01:58):
How does Metaculus fit into all of that? I imagine once you’re both a professor and helping run FLI, I’m surprised you had the time to start this other thing.

 Anthony Aguirre (02:07):
Well, I started Metaculus at the same time as FLI, so I didn’t know what I was getting into at that point.

 Daniel Fi

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