In April 2023, weeks after GPT-4 launched, when many were saying it was just a "stochastic parrot", I went on AdQuick's Madvertising podcast hosted by Adam Singer and warned that GPT was "about to be the strongest hacker the world has ever known".
Watch that conversation, which also covered the Web3 bubble and AI doom more broadly, and judge for yourself how my claims are holding up.
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6gNwZWY-T8
Timestamps
00:00:00 — Adam Introduces Liron
00:02:03 — Liron's P(Doom) Poll
00:03:24 — Web3 Postmortem
00:05:05 — Axie Infinity and Hollow Abstractions
00:07:54 — Brand Marketers' Metaverse FOMO
00:13:33 — Near-Term AI: Elevator to Heaven
00:16:46 — AI at Relationship Hero
00:18:25 — From Chatbots to Bricking the Universe
00:20:17 — The Passive Income Doom Scenario
00:22:58 — 50 Orders of Magnitude Smarter
00:26:10 — Accelerationism and Transhumanism
00:28:51 — Why There's No Off Button
00:31:00 — Can't We Hard-Code Safeguards?
00:33:13 — CRISPR, Nukes, and Fusion
00:35:40 — AI Doom vs. Climate Change
00:39:10 — Nanotechnology Endgame
00:41:45 — AI Attackers vs. AI Defenders
00:43:28 — The Ethics of AI Persuasion
00:46:41 — The Blue Sky Scenario
00:49:04 — Will AI Kill Craft?
00:51:13 — Stuck Culture and Hollywood Sequels
00:54:50 — The Pause Letter: Don't Train GPT-5
00:59:00 — Worldcoin and Proof of Humanity
01:00:44 — "You Probably Won't Die of Old Age"
01:01:52 — Wrap-Up
Original episode: https://madvertising.buzzsprout.com/2118560/episodes/12603815-liron-shapira-web-3-mania-cybersecurity-how-ai-could-brick-the-universe-madvertising-6
Links
ADAM SINGER & MADVERTISING
Adam Singer on X: https://x.com/AdamSinger
Madvertising by AdQuick (the original show): https://madvertising.buzzsprout.com/
LIRON'S PROJECTS MENTIONED
Bloated MVP (Liron's blog on hollow abstractions): https://www.bloatedmvp.com/
REFERENCED IN THE EPISODE
"Pause Giant AI Experiments" open letter (FLI, March 2023): https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/
Eliezer Yudkowsky — "Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down" (TIME, March 2023): https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/
Rob Miles AI Safety on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/robertmilesai
Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler: https://www.amazon.com/Engines-Creation-Nanotechnology-Library-Science/dp/0385199732
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