Everyone agrees we can’t pause AI. So what do we do instead?

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Five people who think about AI for a living sit down for a rapid-fire debate, and the host throws a handful of big statements at them. First up: can we, or should we, pause AI? Almost nobody says yes, and the more interesting part is what they’d do instead. Some want to slow the frontier, some want to shape it as it goes, and one is trying to seed a beneficial AGI before someone else builds a worse one.

From there the panel gets into recursive self-improvement and whether you can keep an AI’s goals stable, whether AI will widen the gap between rich and poor (and rich and poor countries), and who foots the bill when jobs disappear. Then comes the question of why experts and the public see AI so differently. Media, culture, and trust all take some blame. The last stretch compares a Manhattan Project approach with open, decentralized AGI, and everyone gets to say the one thing they think the world needs right now, plus a parting sentence.

Key Takeaways

• Nearly everyone calls a pause a non-starter: “AI” is too fuzzy to define, and a pause would just push work underground

• Keeping an AI’s goals stable while it rewrites itself may be a solvable engineering problem, but not everyone agrees that’s even desirable

• On inequality, the panel splits between “it’s already happening” and “the floor keeps rising”

• Public opinion on AI is shaped more by culture and media than by the tech itself

• The alternative to corporate control or a government Manhattan Project: open, decentralized AGI, in the spirit of Linux

Meet the Panelists:

• Ben Goertzel is the CEO of SingularityNET and Executive Chairman & Chief Scientist of BGI Labs who popularized the term “artificial general intelligence.” He’s building open-source, decentralized AGI.

• Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist and AI researcher focused on models of the mind and consciousness. He’s known for his philosophical takes on AI and ethics.

• Kai Bickell is co-founder and Chief Ethics Officer of OpenBGI, working on a decentralized AI moral constitution. He’s also a survivor advocate honored by CHILD USA.

• AJ Green is Executive Director of The AI Collective, the world’s largest AI nonprofit community. 

• Catherine McMillan is Chief Operating Officer of The AI Collective. She helps run its global network of chapters and events.

⏱ Timestamps

00:00  Intro

01:11 Can We Pause AI?

08:50 Would AGI Actually Kill Us All?

10:16 What’s Really Behind the Pause AI Debate

13:40 How People Really Use AI Day to Day

18:49 Can Self-Improving AI Stay Moral?

20:46 How to Build a Moral AGI

26:43 Will AI Widen the Wealth Gap?

32:36 What a Beneficial Superintelligence Looks Like

37:11 Will AI Destroy More Jobs Than It Creates?

39:28 Society’s Bumpy Transition to AGI

49:56 How the World Sees AI

51:54 Why Culture Shapes Our View of AI

01:03:04 Was AI Ever a Manhattan Project?

01:10:50 Fear, Awareness, and the Public Knowledge Gap

01:12:24 Who’s Funding the AI Narrative?

01:15:26 The Case for Open, Decentralized AGI

Connect with Ben

Website: https://singularitynet.io/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bengoertzel 

Connect with Kai

Website: https://singularitynet.io/ 

Connect with AJ

Website: https://www.aicollective.com/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aj-green-ai 

Connect with Catherine

Website: https://catherine-mcmillan.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-r-mcmillan 

Connect with Joscha

Website: http://bach.ai/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joschabach/ 

Connect with Julian

Instagram: @thebeyondtomorrowpodcast / @juliankissa 

LinkedIn: julian-issa

X: @juliankissa

Website: www.beyondtomorrowpodcast.com