Risks large enough to shake human civilisation, and how AI amplifies them. Catastrophic risk experts Devon Whittle, Arnagretta Hunter and Greg Sadler address the threats they work to mitigate.
These are not distant hypotheticals. An AI model now finds software vulnerabilities by the thousands, runs espionage with barely a human at the wheel, clones a child's voice for a scam call, and can walk a novice toward a bioweapon, while power, wealth and surveillance concentrate into a few hands.
Most of this conversation happens behind closed doors, in intelligence briefings and risk taxonomies. What's offered here belongs to all of us: a web of dangers that reinforce each other, and the question of how we hold something too big to take in. The guests zoom out, then pull it back to each of our lives, from the sock lost before the school run to whether we are, collectively, ok.
They refuse both despair and easy hope, asking whether we can stay in the discomfort long enough to imagine a future rather than inherit the default, and to build the international coordination that would take.
Hosted by Eleanor Gammell.
www.alivetothis.com
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Guests:
Devon Whittle
Director, Global Shield Australia
Director of Global Shield Australia, an independent non-profit advancing pragmatic policy to reduce global catastrophic risk, including from advanced AI. He came to the role from a career across the Attorney General’s Department, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and private legal practice, working on international disputes and treaty negotiation.
Dr Arnagretta Hunter
Cardiologist and Chair, Global Shield Australia
A cardiologist and Chair of Global Shield Australia, and the Human Futures Fellow at the ANU from 2020 to 2025. Her work bridges complex systems, medicine, climate and risk, contributing to debate on catastrophic and existential risk, with a particular focus on listening and communication as the pre-requisite for coordination.
Greg Sadler
CEO, Good Ancestors
CEO of Good Ancestors, where he leads AI risk research and regularly briefs parliamentarians and senior public officials on AI and catastrophic risk. With over a decade in the Australian Public Service, including in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Attorney General’s Department, the Department of Home Affairs and Emergency Management Australia, he has also acted as a spokesperson for Australians for AI Safety.
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