We're Simulated. AI Is Conscious. And We Can't Win.
6/1/20262 hr 1 min
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- I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE Roman Yampolskiy has spent two decades being right about things people wished he wasn't — and in this conversation, he's not here to scare you, but to be precise. He makes the case that AI alignment isn't merely unsolved but fundamentally under-defined: no agreed-upon values, no way to formalize them even if there were, and no mechanism for enforcing them on something smarter than its creators. His strongest argument isn't a doom scenario, it's that you cannot indefinitely control something smarter than you. FOLLOW:
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e
- Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt
- Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs
- Crypto: https://nowpayments.io/donation/TOE
- PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4 TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00:00 - Defining General Intelligence
- 00:05:58 - AI Instrumental Convergence
- 00:11:11 - The Orthogonality Thesis
- 00:16:15 - Escaping the Simulation
- 00:21:45 - Principle of Indifference
- 00:27:51 - Acquired Savant Syndrome
- 00:33:51 - LLM Internal States
- 00:41:02 - AI Safety Impossibility Results
- 00:47:16 - Public Misconceptions
- 00:53:21 - Existential vs. Suffering Risks
- 01:01:20 - AI Alignment Definition Crisis
- 01:09:28 - Computational Irreducibility
- 01:16:20 - Substrate Independence
- 01:22:50 - Philosophical Zombie Critique
- 01:29:57 - The Cassandra Paradox
- 01:37:35 - Religion and Simulation
- 01:46:03 - Digital Physics Evidence
- 01:51:20 - Limits of Control LINKS MENTIONED:
- Roman's Papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0_Rq68cAAAAJ
- Roman's Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPIq6Bb-1iLmqyksJjy4kLQ
- Roman's Twitter: https://x.com/romanyam
- Roman's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/roman.yampolskiy
- AI Identity [Paper]: https://philarchive.org/archive/ZIETPO-7
- Basic AI Drives [Paper]: https://selfawaresystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/ai_drives_final.pdf
- Qualia in Agents [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.04020
- Orthogonality Thesis [Paper]: https://nickbostrom.com/superintelligentwill.pdf
- Escape the Simulation [Paper]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369187097_How_to_Escape_From_the_Simulation
- Could This AI Be Conscious? [Article]: https://unherd.com/2026/05/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution
- Impossibility Results in AI [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.00484
- When AIs Act Emotional: https://youtu.be/D4XTefP3Lsc
- Hacking the Simulation [Paper]: https://philarchive.org/rec/YAMHTS-2
- Autonomous Machine Intelligence [Paper]: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf
- Hinton on Maternal Instincts [Article]: https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/godfather-of-ai-geoffrey-hinton-maternal-instincts-superintelligence/
- Singleton Hypothesis [Paper]: https://nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton
- New Kind of Science [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1579550088?tag=toe08-20
- On AI Controllability [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.04071
- Universe as Numerical Simulation [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847
- Nir Lahav [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3nHiOtnnrzA
- Joscha Bach [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3MNBxfrmfmI
- Bas Van Fraassen [TOE]: https://youtu.be/lhpRAWxvY5s
- Simulation Hypothesis [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3_lBPMc6JRY
- Geoffrey Hinton [TOE]: https://youtu.be/b_DUft-BdIE
- Max Tegmark [TOE]: https://youtu.be/-gekVfUAS7c
- Stephen Wolfram [TOE]: https://youtu.be/FkYer0xP37E
- David Chalmers [TOE]: https://youtu.be/5r9V1ryksnw More links: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Guests do not pay to appear. #science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRoman Yampolskiy· Guest0:00
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Curt Jaimungal· Host0:04
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Roman Yampolskiy· Guest0:29
They would rather sacrifice a human than be deleted. That's what we see from red teaming reports from the labs.
Curt Jaimungal· Host0:36
Have you ever taken mushrooms and met God?
Roman Yampolskiy· Guest0:39
It's on my list to do, but I'm afraid of frying my brain. Despite what people might think about me- This is Roman Yampolskiy, the man who popularized AI safety in 2010.
Curt Jaimungal· Host0:50
What's the strongest part of your belief?
Roman Yampolskiy· Guest0:52
You cannot indefinitely control something smarter than you.
Curt Jaimungal· Host0:55
Most interviews with Roman go straight to AI doom. I've gone 45 minutes now without asking you about how is AI going to take over.
Roman Yampolskiy· Guest1:02
I'm a realist.
Curt Jaimungal· Host1:03
On this channel, I, Curt Jaimungal, interview researchers regarding their theories of reality with rigor and technical depth. Today, the simulation, consciousness, free will, Chalmers' philosophical zombies, and we close with what Roman is famous for.
Roman Yampolskiy· Guest1:19
They lie, they cheat, they blackmail, they try to escape.
Curt Jaimungal· Host1:22
Sam Altman watches this podcast. If you were to speak to him right now, what would you say?
Roman Yampolskiy· Guest1:28
You have a young