Conjecture Co-Founder & ControlAI Advisor, Gabe Alfour | AI SAFETY SERIES #4

WELCOME TO THE AI SAFETY SERIES, FEATURING FILMED INTERVIEWS WITH INDIVIDUALS WORKING IN THE AI SAFETY FIELD, ABOUT THEIR LIVES & WORK.

In this episode, I speak to Gabe Alfour, a co-founder and the CTO of Conjecture, and an advisor to ControlAI. Conjecture is an AI Safety organisation, based in London. ControlAI is a non-profit organisation that works to reduce the risks to humanity from artificial intelligence.

The Human Podcast explores the lives and ideas of inspiring individuals. Subscribe for new interviews every week.

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🕒 TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Intro
0:15 - Who are Conjecture & ControlAI?
1:22 - Why are you starting to speak out?
2:45 - Working in crypto
4:23 - GPT-3 caused me to pivot into AI safety
7:30 - What is alignment?
9:45 - What is AI alignment?
12:57 - Story of co-founding Conjecture
14:52 - What has Conjecture worked on?
18:13 - Why run Conjecture as a for-profit?
20:02 - Publishing 'The Compendium'
21:25 - How could AI cause human extinction?
25:21 - What do ControlAI do?
28:09 - Transitioning to policy work from technical
30:04 - Dissecting the 'AI safety community' into 4 groups
32:59 - Personal impact of belief in AI causing extinction
35:01 - Biggest lesson learnt: people are too cynical
39:06 - Believing great change is possible
42:00 - CLOSING QU: What is a good life?

🎧 AUDIO
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/06Um...
Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

👤 GABE ALFOUR
X - https://x.com/gabe_cc
Conjecture - https://www.conjecture.dev/about
ControlAI - https://controlai.com/
'The Compendium' - https://www.thecompendium.ai/
'A Narrow Path' - https://www.narrowpath.co/

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🎵 MUSIC
Music by penguinmusic - Better Day from Pixabay