The World Can Be Better

In this episode, I talk to Andy Masley, writer of The Weird Turn Pro on Substack. Andy has become known online as the "AI water guy" for his pushback on the popular narrative that AI is draining our water. He recently found a major mistake in the bestselling book Empire of AI, where a claim that a Chilean data center used a thousand times as much water as the surrounding community turned out to be a unit conversion error.In this episode we talk about how he found the mistake, the strange experience of being called both a Luddite and a Big AI shill, why he thinks the AI environment narrative has gone off track, and his actual views on AI, including why he takes the case for concern seriously. We also get into effective altruism, his path from teaching high school physics to full-time writing, and the power of online writing! Andy's Substack: andymasley.substack.com

In this first episode, I make an AI expert (Steven Adler) explain to me why some people are so worried about artificial intelligence and what we can do about it. Steven Adler is a former safety researcher at OpenAI, the frontier lab behind ChatGPT. Steven worked there for four years on safety and policy, including leading the Dangerous Capability Evaluations team. He now writes for his Substack, Clear‑Eyed AI, about the development of very capable systems and how to make AI go better. In this episode, Steven walks through the risks surrounding advanced artificial intelligence: (1) concerning behaviours we already see in current models; (2) plausible future risks; and (3) concrete ways people, technical or not, can work on the problem. I really enjoyed this conversation and I’m excited for everyone to listen!