#153 If Anyone Builds It, EVERYONE Dies - AI Expert on Superintelligence

Within Reason

Alex J O'Connor

Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.9 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2026

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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Nate Soares is an American artificial intelligence author and researcher known for his work on existential risk from AI. In 2014, Soares co-authored a paper that introduced the term AI alignment, the challenge of making increasingly capable AI’s behave as intended. Nate is the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California.

Get the book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All. - TIMESTAMPS00:00 - Is This an Exaggeration?04:31 - What Is Unique About the Threat of AI?11:28 - What is Superintelligence?21:25 - From Chess Computers to Murderous Machines27:52 - What Really Drives AI Systems?44:29 - Evidence AI Is Already Turning Against Us56:03 - How We Are Helping AI Take Over01:01:21 - Why Would AI Seek Power or Control?01:07:42 - Some Worst-Case AI Scenarios01:18:38 - What Do We Do About This Now?01:32:53 - How Has AI Changed in the Last Six Months? - CONNECTMy Website: https://www.alexoconnor.comSOCIAL LINKS:Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cosmicskepticFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/cosmicskepticInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/cosmicskepticTikTok: @CosmicSkeptic - CONTACTBusiness email: contact@alexoconnor.comBrand enquiries: David@modernstoa.co

Transcript

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0:00.0	Nate Saurys, welcome to the show.
0:02.2	Thanks for having me.
0:03.9	Your recent book that you co-authored is called If Anyone Builds It, Everybody Dies.
0:10.5	And I know, and it there refers to artificial superintelligence.
0:15.3	I know that sometimes publishers ask authors to exaggerate a bit in their titles for sellability. Are you exaggerating
0:24.2	at all? Nope. We're just writing what we believe. That said, I think a lot of people say,
0:32.7	how are you 100% certain? And nowhere in the title does it say 100% certainty of
0:39.4	anything. The book title is meant like someone saying, don't drink that glass of water, it's poisoned,
0:44.9	you'll die. Or someone saying, stop the car before we go off the cliff or we'll die. You know,
0:49.7	if you come in and say, oh, how are you 100% certain that if the car goes off the cliff that will die? Maybe there's a tree halfway down the cliff and maybe the car will hit the tree and maybe we'll just be paralyzed. I'm sort of like, look, can we have this discussion after we stop the car? I'm 100% certain of nothing, but it sure looks like the car is racing towards a cliff and it sure looks like if we we go over the cliff, we die. And that's sort of what the book title is trying to convey.
1:14.5	Yeah, and what's funny for me is that most people seeing a book like this probably aren't
1:19.2	like terribly surprised. Like everybody's talking about AI and how bad it is and how terrible it is.
1:24.5	Like nobody's looked like if I saw a book that said, you know, if we keep developing lab grown meat, then everybody's going to die. I'd probably be like, whoa, I feel like I should pay attention to that. But with this, it kind of feels like, oh, yeah, it's another sort of AI book. And yet, the fact that people aren't surprised means that they know this conversation is happening to some degree.
1:47.3	Why are people so just like apathetic about it?
1:54.4	You know, I think it just takes a long time for people to realize what's going on.
1:59.1	In a sense, the argument that this AI stuff is kind of crazy is pretty basic.
2:02.9	You know, the way modern AI works,
2:05.0	literally nobody understands what's going on inside these AIs, not even the people making them.
2:07.2	They're grown a bit more like an organism.
2:09.3	Maybe we'll have time to discuss that later,
2:10.7	but that's the way this stuff works.
2:12.9	We've managed to grow machines that, you know,
	...

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