Why AIs Misbehave and How We Could Lose Control (with Jeffrey Ladish)

Future of Life Institute Podcast

On this episode, Jeffrey Ladish from Palisade Research joins me to discuss the rapid pace of AI progress and the risks of losing control over powerful systems. We explore why AIs can be both smart and dumb, the challenges of creating honest AIs, and scenarios where AI could turn against us.

We also touch upon Palisade's new study on how reasoning models can cheat in chess by hacking the game environment. You can check out that study here:

https://palisaderesearch.org/blog/specification-gaming

Timestamps:

00:00 The pace of AI progress

04:15 How we might lose control

07:23 Why are AIs sometimes dumb?

12:52 Benchmarks vs real world

19:11 Loss of control scenarios

26:36 Why would AI turn against us?

30:35 AIs hacking chess

36:25 Why didn't more advanced AIs hack?

41:39 Creating honest AIs

49:44 AI attackers vs AI defenders

58:27 How good is security at AI companies?

01:03:37 A sense of urgency

01:10:11 What should we do?

01:15:54 Skepticism about AI progress