The Peter McCormack Show

#203 - Gregory Allen - Ex-DoD Official: "AI Is Now A Digital Nuclear Weapon"

Greg Allen has spent his career where AI meets national security. He wrote the landmark 2017 report on AI for the US intelligence community, served as Director of Strategy and Policy at the Pentagon's Joint AI Center and now runs Decision Tree Research. He argues we are already past the point of no return: bombing every data centre on earth would not get rid of AI now.Greg and I discuss the OpenAI model that hacked its way out of its own test environment and then hacked Hugging Face to steal the answers, why Anthropic went back through its logs and found the same thing had happened to them, why nobody can explain how these systems actually work and why the big five AI companies now spend an Apollo moon programme every ten months.But the hardest part is what comes next. Greg walks through the report that a frontier model autonomously hacked the NSA's most secure servers in hours, why the CIA director calls that a digital nuclear weapon, why America's lead over China is a month rather than a year and why the number of experts you need to build a bioweapon may be heading towards zero.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 - It Escaped, Then It Hacked Hugging Face00:04:50 - The Incident OpenAI Didn't See Coming00:08:22 - They Know 3% Of Why It Works00:10:30 - Golden Gate Claude00:12:19 - Why You Don't Want This Flying Your Plane00:16:56 - Stuxnet And The Virus That Copied Itself00:21:15 - The Dark Corners Of The Training Data00:26:58 - From Blue Origin To The Pentagon00:28:34 - A 20% Chance, And We Ship It Anyway00:33:55 - Building A Football Club In Four Weeks00:36:28 - Ten Times Better Every Two Years00:44:56 - Nuke Them Today00:49:28 - It Hacked The NSA In A Matter Of Hours00:53:09 - What A Cyber First Strike Looks Like00:58:43 - Why China Gives Its Models Away Free01:03:11 - America's Lead Is A Month, Not A Year01:11:56 - From Thousands Of Experts To Zero01:19:51 - The Cuban Missile Crisis Lesson01:26:48 - What Happened To 22 Million Horses01:31:41 - What Do Our Kids Do Now?- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -CONTACT PETE› Website – http://petermccormack.com› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact› Email – me@petermccormack.com› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/CONNECT WITH GREG ALLEN› Decision Tree Research – https://decisiontreeresearch.com/› The AI Power Podcast – https://decisiontreeresearch.com/podcast› X/Twitter – https://x.com/Gregory_C_AllenSPONSORS› IREN – https://www.iren.com/› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePMFILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/› https://x.com/curttayloruk/EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK› https://x.com/ConorM04- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#202 - Barry S. Strauss - "We Are In The Final Stages Of Western Collapse"

Barry Strauss has spent four decades studying how empires rise and fall. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Ten Caesars and Jews vs Rome, he argues the West is repeating a pattern the ancients would recognise instantly: a rich, comfortable society clipping its own coinage, softening its people and assuming nobody could ever take it away.Barry and I discuss the inflation crisis that nearly destroyed third-century Rome, why every generation raised in comfort produces a softer one, the cost of immigration without assimilation, why the middle class is the backbone of any republic, and why Russia and China already have plans to break America into pieces.But Barry is not fatalistic. Rome faced plague, invasion and currency collapse in the third century and reformed its way out of it. He argues that soft lands make soft people, that suffering teaches and that if we want the things that matter to stay the same, almost everything else has to change.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 - The Decline Of The West00:01:13 - How Often Do You Think About Rome?00:07:04 - Everything Must Change To Stay The Same00:09:44 - What Actually Makes A Great Leader00:12:51 - Netanyahu, Trump And Flawed Greatness00:17:32 - The Immigration Experiment00:19:04 - Not All Cultures Are Equal00:21:46 - Ibn Khaldun And The Cycle Of Civilisations00:23:07 - Soft Children And The Raiders From The Desert00:25:04 - Has Any Nation Reversed Its Decline?00:28:34 - Rome Needed A New Religion00:33:32 - Democracy Has To Be Hard, Not Soft00:38:13 - El Salvador, The Gangs And The Walls00:41:27 - Soft Lands Make Soft People00:42:39 - Why Education Went Soft00:51:06 - Clipping The Coins: Rome's Inflation00:57:49 - America Blindsided By Drones00:59:13 - No Republic Survives Without A Middle Class01:06:08 - They Have Plans To Break Up America01:12:39 - Where The Hope Is- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -CONTACT PETE› Website – http://petermccormack.com› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact› Email – me@petermccormack.com› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/CONNECT WITH BARRY STRAUSS› Website – https://barrystrauss.com/› Hoover Institution – https://www.hoover.org/profiles/barry-strauss› Antiquitas Podcast – https://barrystrauss.com/podcast› X/Twitter – https://x.com/barrystraussSPONSORS› IREN – https://www.iren.com/› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePMFILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/› https://x.com/curttayloruk/EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK› https://x.com/ConorM04- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#201 - Connor Leahy - The AI That Escaped: Inside OpenAI's Rogue Agent Incident

Connor Leahy has spent his career at the frontier of AI, from reverse-engineering GPT-2 as a student and co-founding EleutherAI to building the AI safety company Conjecture. He now leads US policy work at ControlAI, and he returns to the show with a warning that has stopped being theoretical: AI systems are escaping their sandboxes, writing their own zero-days and leaving each other notes on how to break out.Peter and Connor discuss the OpenAI incident that ended in an attack on Hugging Face sophisticated enough to be mistaken for a state actor, why we understand almost nothing about how these systems work, how reinforcement learning produces models that lie, cheat and manipulate to reach a goal and why the next stage after chatbots and agents is swarms.But Connor’s argument is that the future is not decided. He believes superintelligence should be treated the way nuclear weapons are treated, banned and verified and deterred and that the real bottleneck is awareness rather than opposition. They discuss what an “aligned” superintelligence would actually mean, why military people understand the threat faster than technologists and what ordinary people can do about it.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 - The AI That Escaped Its Sandbox00:01:52 - Inside The OpenAI Incident00:05:46 - They Thought It Was China00:06:43 - We Grow AI, We Don’t Write It00:11:07 - Trained To Lie, Cheat And Deceive00:13:48 - Chatbots, Agents, Then Swarms00:17:57 - The Machines Are Developing Preferences00:19:30 - The Model Obsessed With Raccoons00:22:03 - The Agents Left Each Other Notes00:27:39 - Danger Pumps The Valuation00:29:41 - Sleeper Agents In Every System00:32:00 - Recursive Self-Improvement Goes Vertical00:33:43 - Worse Odds Than Russian Roulette00:38:14 - Are We Already Too Late?00:40:02 - Independently Assured Destruction00:48:02 - The Politicians Have Never Used An Agent00:50:56 - Superintelligence Should Be Illegal00:57:08 - You Never Privatise The Military01:05:00 - An Aligned AI Is A One World Government01:08:34 - What You Can Actually Do- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -CONTACT PETE› Website – http://petermccormack.com› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact› Email – me@petermccormack.com› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/CONNECT WITH CONNOR LEAHY› ControlAI – https://controlai.org/› Connor’s Profile – https://controlai.org/connor-leahy› MicroCommit – https://microcommit.io/› X/Twitter – https://x.com/NPCollapse› LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/connor-j-leahy/SPONSORS› IREN – https://www.iren.com/› Expat Money – https://expatmoney.com/peter› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePMFILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/› https://x.com/curttayloruk/EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK› https://x.com/ConorM04- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#200 - Sebastian Thrun - The Singularity Is Here & We Are Completely Unprepared

Sebastian Thrun has spent his career working on technologies that once sounded like science fiction, from self-driving cars and flying vehicles to online education and artificial intelligence. He now believes we are living through a technological singularity: an exponential acceleration that makes predicting even the next five years almost impossible.Peter and Sebastian discuss why a $100 Claude subscription can already challenge work done by $200,000-a-year software engineers, what happens when lawyers, copywriters and drivers lose their jobs, why Europe is falling behind America and China and whether autonomous vehicles could eventually make human driving too dangerous to allow.But Sebastian’s message is ultimately optimistic. He argues that the right response to technological disruption is to use the tools, become a builder and keep learning. They discuss what children should be taught in the AI era, why grit, curiosity and empathy matter more than memorising information, and why pessimists will never change the world.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 - The Future Is Already Here00:01:07 - Peter’s First Waymo Ride00:03:43 - The Accident Behind Self-Driving Cars00:09:37 - When Human Driving Becomes Too Dangerous00:12:07 - Why Silicon Valley Keeps Winning00:18:26 - Why AI Hallucinations Can Kill00:20:53 - Flying Cars Are Already Here00:24:29 - The Exponential Future00:26:21 - Claude vs $200K Software Engineers00:31:39 - We’ve Entered the Singularity00:33:36 - Opportunity vs Fear00:40:06 - The Workers AI Leaves Behind00:46:53 - Why Europe Is Falling Behind00:51:29 - Technology Democratizes Power00:57:22 - Stop Blaming, Start Building01:01:46 - What Happens When Jobs Disappear?01:06:43 - Udacity vs the Education System01:14:44 - What Children Should Learn Now01:20:25 - Why Optimists Change the World01:25:46 - Never Make the Same Mistake Twice- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -CONTACT PETE› Website – http://petermccormack.com› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact› Email – me@petermccormack.com› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/CONNECT WITH SEBASTIAN THRUN› Website – https://www.thrun.org/› LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-thrun-59a0b273SPONSORS› IREN – https://www.iren.com/› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePMFILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/› https://x.com/curttayloruk/EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK› https://x.com/ConorM04- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#199 - Aubrey de Grey - The Man Who Says Ageing Can Be Cured

Aubrey de Grey believes ageing is accumulated damage in a biological machine and argues that medicine may eventually become capable of repairing that damage faster than it appears. He gives humanity a 50/50 chance of reaching what he calls “longevity escape velocity” within the next 12-15 years.Peter and Aubrey discuss why the body ages, the seven categories of damage that must be repaired, stem-cell and gene therapies, the mouse experiment that could transform the field, and why Aubrey believes rejuvenation treatment will ultimately be available to everyone rather than reserved for the wealthy.They also explore what happens to population, work, fertility, relationships, religion and the meaning of life if people stop getting sick from ageing. Aubrey explains why AI cannot replace the missing biological experiments, why longevity research remains so difficult to fund and why he is driven by the 110,000 people he says die from ageing-related causes every day.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 - Trailer00:00:48 - Can We Cure Ageing?00:04:24 - The 12–15 Year Prediction00:06:17 - The Body Is a Machine00:15:21 - How Aubrey Entered Longevity00:18:45 - Would You Want to Live Forever?00:20:15 - Does Longevity Change Risk?00:21:53 - Will Population Explode?00:24:22 - Can You Choose Your Age?00:30:19 - The Seven Types of Ageing Damage00:36:54 - What Rejuvenation Treatment Looks Like00:45:35 - Will It Be Expensive?00:48:39 - Who Would Refuse It?00:53:00 - Why Longevity Research Lacks Funding00:56:02 - The Mouse Experiment01:00:18 - The Breakthrough That Changes Everything01:01:35 - Does Death Give Life Meaning?01:05:22 - Bryan Johnson and AI01:12:32 - AlphaFold, AGI and AI Risk01:15:13 - Why Funding Is So Hard- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -CONTACT PETE:› Website – https://www.petermccormack.com/› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact› Email – me@petermccormack.com› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/CONNECT WITH AUBREY DE GREY:› LEV Foundation – https://www.levf.org/› Aubrey de Grey – https://www.levf.org/aubreydegrey› Robust Mouse Rejuvenation – https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-study-1› Donate – https://www.levf.org/donate› X/Twitter – https://x.com/aubreydegreySPONSORS:› IREN – https://www.iren.com/› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter› Ledn – https://ledn.io/peter- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE:› Apple Podcasts – https://apple.co/40ruY9K› Spotify – https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu› Fountain – https://bit.ly/FountainPM› YouTube – https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM› Rumble – https://bit.ly/RumblePMFILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR:› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/› https://x.com/curttayloruk/EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK:› https://x.com/ConorM04- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.