#8: Scott Aaronson - Quantum computing, AI watermarking, Superalignment, complexity, and rationalism

Scott Aaronson is the Schlumberger Chair of Computer Science and Director of the Quantum Information Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, he got his bachelor’s in CS from Cornell, his PhD in complexity theory at UC Berkeley, held postdocs at Princeton and Waterloo, and taught at MIT. Currently, he’s on leave to work on OpenAI’s Superalignment team. Scott’s blog, Shtetl-Optimized: https://www.scottaaronson.blog Scott’s website: https://www.scottaaronson.com PODCAST LINKS: Video Transcript: https://www.theojaffee.com/p/8-scott-aaronson Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1IJRtB8FP4Cnq8lWuuCdvW?si=eba62a72e6234efb Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theo-jaffee-podcast/id1699912677 RSS: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/989123/s/75569/private/129f6344-c459-4581-a9da-dc331677c2f6.rss Playlist of all episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVN8-zhbMh9YnOGVRT9m0xzqTNGD_sujj My Twitter: https://x.com/theojaffee My Substack: https://www.theojaffee.com CHAPTERS: Intro (0:00) Background (0:59) What Quantum Computers Can Do (16:07) P=NP (21:57) Complexity Theory (28:07) David Deutsch (33:49) AI Watermarking and CAPTCHAs (44:15) Alignment By Default (56:41) Cryptography in AI (1:02:12) OpenAI Superalignment (1:10:29) Twitter (1:20:27) Rationalism (1:24:50)