The Opera Game

In 1858, chess prodigy Paul Morphy played the most famous game in history, in an opera box in Paris, mid-performance. He announced his victory to the crowd before anyone could see how he'd win. Because he could see the board in a way no one else could, he knew for certain he'd already won just a few moves into the game.

That unknowability is the worst fear of AI doomers: that we're building something that has already won, and we'll never know how.

This episode was supposed to be about the literal mechanics of AI killing us. It turned out to be about something stranger: why the people building this technology appear to genuinely believe it might destroy the world — and why that belief hasn't stopped a single one of them.

Justin Sinclair writes for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists — the group who calibrates the Doomsday Clock, currently set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it's ever been to the apocalypse. Malo Bourgon is CEO of MIRI, the organization that coined the term "AI alignment." Ted Tremper spent two and a half years making a documentary about this, interviewing over 140 people — including three of the five frontier model AI CEOs.

Their collective verdict on whether AI will actually cause the apocalypse: maybe. And somehow, that's the most terrifying answer they could have given.

The Opera Game is the third episode of an investigation into humanity's oldest fear, and whether artificial intelligence has finally given us reason to take it seriously.

We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com

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Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady

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Guests:

- Ian Gold, PhD - Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness: https://amzn.to/4upyA8U

- Malo Bourgon - CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute - https://intelligence.org/team/malo-bourgon/

- Justin Sinclair, PhD - Clinical Psychologist, Writer for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists - https://www.drjustinsinclair.com/background.html

- Ted Tremper - Film Producer - https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist

- Johann Hari - author, Stolen Focus: https://amzn.to/4vAL2mV

Other works mentioned in this episode: 

Empire of AI by Karen Hao: https://amzn.to/4uKwekf

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares: https://amzn.to/49gpPW1

The Techno Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreessen: https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/

The Doomsday Clock: thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock

The Opera Game: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1233404

The Paperclip Maximizer by Nick Bostrom: https://aicorespot.io/the-paperclip-maximiser/

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too.

This episode was made by:

Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi

Produced by: Jesse Ford

Editor: David Justin Martin 

Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford

Sound Mix: Scott Loudon

Graphics: Semi:Formal 

Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR

Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma)

Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright

Additional Camera and Audio: Archetype Studios

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