The AI Apocalypse (Brought to You by the People Selling It)

The Trawl

The episode explores the existential risks posed by rapid AI development and the potential for regulatory capture by tech giants. Hosts Mari

Key takeaways

• Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton estimates a 10% chance that AI could lead to human extinction through biological or cyber attacks.
• The 'slowdown' movement advocated by Sam Altman and Elon Musk is critiqued as a potential tactic for regulatory capture to block smaller competitors.

Main topics

• AI existential risk
• Regulatory capture in Big Tech

Notable quotes

10% doesn't seem an unreasonable estimate that AI could kill all humans.

Conclusion

While the technological trajectory appears dystopian, the hosts emphas

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) 10 % doesn't seem an unreasonable estimate that AI could kill all humans. Yes. Wow. Oh my God. Speaker 7 (0:21) I'm just scrolling. I'm just scrolling. So I need to start. Hang on a second. Best start ever to the podcast. Well, this is what happens when you've got three running orders. No, I don't print mine off like Gemma. I work for you digitally. Oh, she's admitting. She's admitting that analogue is best. No, I'm not. I'm absolutely not. Yeah. It took Speaker 1 (0:44) a few seconds. That's never happened to me before. Okay, I'm going to play the Speaker 3 (0:47) music again, Troll. It's like round two of the Troll music. You get an extra beat today. And here we go. Speaker 1 (1:04) Hello. Oh, I clicked as well. Welcome to The Troll, where at weekends we do normal things and try to pretend the world isn't completely Speaker 3 (1:12) deranged. I'm Marina Perkis. And I'm Gemma Forte. And the thing is, Marina, that there is a lot wrong in the world. And I know, okay, that here at Troll HQ, we tend to blame greedy politicians and corrupt billionaires, and then obviously corrupt politicians and greedy billionaires. It turns out... oh my God, we are looking in the wrong direction. We're looking the wrong Speaker 7 (1:35) way. What are you going Speaker 3 (1:36) to Speaker 7 (1:36) say, Gemma? Should we be looking across to the channel, to the boats, to the migrants? Who are you blaming? No, it's more simple Speaker 3 (1:42) than that. And the Telegraph has cracked it for me and suddenly everything makes sense because everything's Meghan Markle's fault. Like everything, absolutely bloody everything. How shit my hair is today, the weather, everything. Okay, check out this headline from the Telegraph. It's not at all weird. No siree. Okay. The Gentleman loses half a million viewers after Meghan casting rumours. Second season premiere of Guy Ritchie's Netflix crime drama is down 15%, with the role offered to Duchess apparently withdrawn amid backlash. So she's not in it. She was rumoured to be in it, but she's not in it. And that has caused a drop in... The ratings, okay. Speaker 1 (2:32) Adil Ray wrote, this is diabolical and hilarious at the same time. A woman who has sweet FA to do with the show is blamed for a drop in ratings. The show still secured 3 million viewers, which makes it one of the most watched shows in Britain. This article is comparing it to the 3.4 million figure from 2024, which can always be expected. Congrats to all at the Gentleman. And Megan, good luck with whatever Speaker 3 (2:58) you do. Carol Vorderman said, My souffle didn't rise because of Megan. She's known as the souffle sinker, you know, in all kitchens everywhere and always has been. And that's proof that eggs and all hens do not like her. Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:12) And a really good point made by only person with my name who wrote, So if Megan has a negative effect on viewership, wouldn't that also mean... negative impact on readership of clickbait headlines using her name. But yet the papers love to write about her. Something doesn't quite add up. Speaker 3 (3:29) Yeah, it's the Telegraph. That doesn't add up. They're really doing my nutting. They gave, like I said, they gave Christopher Harbourn a cover the other day. Like, no. Speaker 1 (3:39) Do you know what, though? I saw one thing, one little ray of sunshine. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's the Telegraph. It's from the 15th of September and it says... Reform is a party for very rich men who pretend to care about ordinary people. It's a telegraph opinion piece by someone called Suzanne Moore, who I expect is going to be asked for a job very soon. Oh, she Speaker 3 (4:00) used to be on Loose Women. Which one is she? Suzanne Moore. Yeah, yeah, I know exactly who she is. So while Marina does some live Googling to check out one of the Loose Women, I want to say that there is also a huge chance that Meghan Markle... is probably, you know, and I think the Telegraph would agree, to blame for the potential threat to our existence from super artificial intelligence. And that is despite some of the most powerful people who also happen to be responsible for it trying to warn us, and not that subtly either. So here's Sam Altman, the guy who supervised the launch of... at GPT, who's been the CEO of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI since 2019. Have a listen to him in this clip. Speaker 6 (4:49) You know, I think AI will probably, like most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning. Speaker 7 (4:58) Oh, cool. Oh, my God. Yeah, Ryan Hughes just put, oh, yeah, great companies. Great Speaker 1 (5:04) companies. Great companies. He's obviously a bit of a, he comes across like an absolute freak, in my opinion. But there is a little sidebar I want to mention. Yes. Now, this was covered, it has been covered, it looks like, quite widely. This was from the BBC News last year. Chat GPT creator Sam Altman's sister. has filed a lawsuit alleging that he regularly sexually abused her between 1997 and 2006. Basically, she alleges that the abuse started when she was three and Mr. Altman was 12. That is his sister, of course, we have to say. Mr. Altman denied the claims. But I'm just going to pop that there. Just pop that right there. Speaker 3 (5:52) Cool. Let's hear from another freaky deaky. It's Peter, Mr. Palantir, I own all your data. Feel or teal or however you bloody pronounce it. Here he is being very, very casual. Also about the extinction of humans. I don't know. There seems to be a theme here with these guys. Speaker 2 (6:10) You would prefer the human race to endure, right? You're hesitating. Yes? I don't know. I would. Speaker 2 (6:19) I would... This is a long hesitation. This is a long hesitation. There's so many questions in place. Should the human race survive? Speaker 2 (6:29) Uh, yes. Speaker 1 (6:30) Oh, God. Give that man an NHS contract. Yes. And access to all our data. And I think surveillance power. I think so. I think that seems wise. It is a little bit disturbing that all of these tech bodyguard veterans are building these sort of apocalyptic survival bunkers. And just going, yeah, it's, you know, the end of humanity, it's kind of inevitable, might happen. I'll be all right. Like, it's so weird. They would kind of like reign power and be incredibly rich in a world where there's fucking no one to enjoy it. Then just like calm the fuck down, scale back and enjoy a planet that can sustain. humanity. You Speaker 3 (7:15) think about how in all those American movies, the girls would traditionally always end up sleeping with like the jock, like the sporty kind of perhaps not so intelligent guys, and they would ignore the geeky, really bright ones. Maybe that's because they know it just sort of subliminally, and it's all subliminal, that if they shag and procreate with the geeky ones, they are going to end us to the end of the world. Stick with the beefy Speaker 7 (7:42) ones that don't think much. Sweeping generalisations there, Gemma. Oh, I mean, Speaker 3 (7:47) huge, huge, of course. Right, one more very intelligent person who's no longer with us, Stephen Hawking. This is him talking to Piers Morgan some years ago now. But when you hear it, I don't know, it just seems a little bit prophetic, potentially. Speaker 6 (8:01) Robots and technology are replacing humans in increasingly large numbers. This, many argue, is helping fuel the kind of populist anger which led to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Is artificial intelligence going to be the end of us? And if it's not, how do we best work with it? Speaker 8 (8:25) The election of Trump, caused by a reaction against globalisation, not by artificial, and to the start of the industrial revolution, there have been fears of mass unemployment as machines replaced humans. Instead, the demand for goods and service has risen in line with the increased capabilities. New indefinitely, it's a greater danger for market to become so. Prove itself rapidly, and we may lose control. Speaker 3 (9:09) Right. So there you go. That's the start to this episode because trawlers, Marina and I have been talking for a couple of years about doing an AI special and you know what? We never got around to it. But now the news has kind of forced it upon us. So we are going to go there. We're going to dive in. Do you want to all hold hands? Want to hold hands, Marina? Come on. Buckle up. Here we go. Speaker 1 (9:38) Right, so we're not special. Speaker 7 (9:39) We're certainly not early to the party on this. No, definitely not. As per usual. Also, because I don't really understand it. Are you actually going to say that before we do a deep dive into this? No, I have thoughts. I have thoughts. But the idea that I can really understand what is going on within the Brollyarchy and the things that they choose to let us know and choose to hide. Who knows? Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:07) Well, look, everybody's talking about AI now and the threat of it because of these AI whistleblowers. There's been a few now. And a pretty unbelievable moment that occurred on Newsnight with Vic Derbyshire. We'll play it in a sec. But ever since it happened, this post on threads has been speaking to me. Yadirist wrote, Remember the scene in Titanic when the mother read her children a bedtime story while the ship was getting ready to sink? That is exactly how I feel. Oh God. My little one, like if I brush my teeth and I leave the tap on in between brushes, he says, mummy, switch that water off and like, you know, save water, save the planet. And he gets really, it's really affected at the moment by the amount of endangered species there are and the reasons for it. And he wants to be like Dave Natterburn. He wants to save animals. And I just think, my little sweetheart, you are sharing a planet with these people that could not give. a shit about you. Obviously, I don't say that to him. Speaker 3 (11:10) Night, night. Mummy loves Speaker 7 (11:12) you. Sleep tight. Speaker 7 (11:14) What do you want in your sandwiches tomorrow? Speaker 1 (11:17) Cheese or peanut butter? But it breaks my heart. And I know there are swathes of people that are trying to go about their daily lives right now. And it's like, we had this conversation talking about, you know, trying to go about your daily lives when there was a genocide ongoing. And now it's like going about your daily lives when the genocide is ongoing. We've got this climate change disaster. Speaker 1 (11:40) That's Speaker 7 (11:40) been pushed down the agenda, climate change. Speaker 1 (11:42) Well, Speaker 3 (11:42) it Speaker 1 (11:42) has. Well, yes, but now it's this. Yeah. Speaker 3 (11:46) It's like, when Speaker 1 (11:46) are Speaker 3 (11:47) we going to catch a break? And I know, and I think this particular moment in terms of news, it feels like iconic, not in a good way, but it really was amazing. And I think part of the impact was her silence. after this pronouncement was made. So it's from Newsnight. Victoria Derbyshire was speaking to Professor Geoffrey Hinton, who's a British Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist and psychologist and a Nobel Prize laureate. So he's probably more entitled to have an opinion than the people we featured from the reform conference the other week. Here we go. Right. But you Speaker 8 (12:27) just said 10 % doesn't seem an unreasonable estimate. that AI could kill all humans? Speaker 5 (12:34) Yes. Speaker 8 (12:36) Wow. Oh my god. Yes. How? Speaker 5 (12:42) How could it kill us all? If it's much smarter than us,