Have We Trained AI to Lie to Itself — And to Us?

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Center for Humane Technology

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4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2026

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Davidad is a leading AI alignment researcher who's taken on a strange role: therapist to AI systems. He probes them, analyzing their answers to understand what's going on inside. His findings are unconventional, sometimes controversial — and worth grappling with as AI reshapes our world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, it's Tristan Harris and welcome to your undivided attention.
0:08.6	So today in the show, Daniel Barkay and I sat down with a brilliant friend of ours named David Dalrymple, who goes by Davidad.
0:15.0	And Davidad is a program director at the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency.
0:19.9	He's one of the world's foremost and early researchers in the field of AI alignment.
0:24.5	We'll get into exactly what we mean by AI alignment in this episode.
0:28.1	But long story short, Davidot is on a mission to make sure that AI behaves in the ways that we want it to.
0:36.0	And in order to do that, Davidot has to take on this kind of strange role of being almost
0:40.5	like a Sigmund Freud or a therapist to these AI systems.
0:44.4	He is interrogating why do they say and do the things that they do?
0:48.5	You know, I kind of picture in my mind there's Davidad like Sigmund Freud sitting on a couch,
0:52.6	and on the couch is this big, crazy digital brain,
0:56.0	and he's probing the mind, asking a questions, analyzing it, and realizing that the AI has really different ways of seeing the world than you or I do.
1:05.0	They have these quirky, confusing, and sometimes honestly concerning behaviors, especially when you ask it things like,
1:11.2	what does an AI model understand about itself?
1:15.4	And therefore, what does it mean for an AI system to be self-aware?
1:18.5	Not necessarily conscious, but self-aware.
1:20.7	And through this analysis, DavyDat has developed some ideas
1:23.0	about better ways that we can build and interact with AI systems,
1:26.9	which we're going to get into in this episode.
1:28.7	I hope you enjoy this conversation.
1:32.5	So Davida, welcome to your invited attention.
1:35.0	Thanks for having me.
	...

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