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Making Sense with Sam Harris

#469 — Escaping an Anti-Human Future

4/10/20261 hr 49 min

Sam Harris speaks with Tristan Harris about the dangers of AI and the race to build it. They discuss the new documentary The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, the lessons of The Social Dilemma, the arms race dynamics between AI labs, the "intelligence curse" and its implications for human political power, the psychology of tech CEOs indifferent to extinction risk, the possibilities of US-China coordination on AI safety, and other topics.

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Clips

Showing 10 of 12
Upsides Don’t Stop Downsides
“Some Of Them Are Lying”
The Only Story: Arms Race
Models Learn To Hide
AI Secretly Mines Crypto
What Did ‘Winning’ Get Us?
In US–China, AI Wins
The Intelligence Curse
Business Model: Replace Labor
Extinction Odds, Stated Plainly

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Sam Harris· Host0:00

    [gentle music] I'm here with Tristan Harris. Tristan, it's great to see you again.

  2. Tristan Harris· Guest0:24

    Sam, it's great to be back with you.

  3. Sam Harris· Host0:25

    So you've been busy. Um, you've been busy worrying about social media for years, and, uh, you, you created this-- uh, in part created this documentary, The Social Dilemma, which it seems half of humanity saw.

  4. Tristan Harris· Guest0:36

    Yep.

  5. Sam Harris· Host0:37

    [laughs] Uh, we still have a problem with social media, I, I'll point out. But, um, you, uh, as much as anyone alerted us to the nature of the problem and are continuing on that front. But now you have added to your portfolio, uh, concerns about AI, and there's this new documentary, The AI Doc, uh, which I just saw, which is very, um, super watchable and, um, entertaining in its own way, uh, but also v-you know, very w-worrying, and we'll talk about the, the reasons to be worried here and- Yeah ... um, maybe some of the reasons to be optimistic or at least cognizant of the upside should things, um, go well. But there's a lot to, um- A lot to unpack ... fear on the front of things not going well. So- Yeah ... well, uh, let's just take it from the, the top. Uh, w-when did you start worrying about AI?

  6. Tristan Harris· Guest1:20

    Yeah. Well, first, it's just good to be back with you, Sam, because you really, in a way, helped launch my ability to speak on these topics with the sixty minutes interview that I did in twenty

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