I guest host the NYT podcast and interview Dwarkesh

Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Excerpt:

Cowen: Unreleased models — why are they important? Patel: As in the ones that are internal to the companies? Cowen: Well, many companies have unreleased models. Maybe it would cost too much to release them or they’re not safe yet, but the public doesn’t see them. Patel: Yeah. Cowen: You’re an insider. Whether or not you see them, you hear about them; you know something about them. How should we think about unreleased models, and how does that change our picture of what’s going on? Patel: I think there’s a very frustrating element to the current situation right now, where people inside the A.I. labs claim to have evidence that makes them more worried, and they are not allowed to talk about it. This makes it a very difficult situation on the outside to evaluate how worried we should be. For example, maybe two days ago, I was talking to somebody at Anthropic, and they were like: Look, I expect A.I.s to beat humans at A.I. research within nine months. And I’m like: Why do you believe that? They’re like: It’s not just vibes, but I have information on the inside.

I’m like: What is it? Is it a new model? Is it some evaluation you ran? He’s like: I can’t talk about it. I think it’s a terrible state of affairs. If they really believe this, if they think that we’re in a situation where we’re less than a year away from automating A.I. research and radically speeding it up, they should make this evidence public. I especially worry about the following scenario, whereas A.I.s get better and better at making A.I. progress faster and automating it, they will be inclined not to keep releasing models that are even close to their smartest models externally, because then if they release those externally, it would help others make smart models. And it’s just kind of a schlep to release models externally. You need all these safeguards and everything. Cowen: So the gap between what they know and what we know would get bigger and bigger under that scenario. We’d end up more in the dark, more surprised when things happen. It would be harder for regulators, policymakers, members of Congress, everyone.

Kudos to Dwarkesh for taking the other side of the microphone. Do also see our discussion of AI psychosis, among other topics.

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