A full writeup of this episode is available on our website: hearthisidea.com/episodes/esvelt-sandbrink.

Kevin Esvelt is an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab, where he is director of the Sculpting Evolution group, which invents new ways to study and influence the evolution of ecosystems. He helped found the SecureDNA Project and the Nucleic Acid Observatory, both of which we discuss in the episode. Esvelt is also known for proposing the idea of using CRISPR to implement gene drives.

Jonas Sandbrink is a researcher and DPhil student at the Future of Humanity Institute. He is a fellow at both the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and with the Ending Bioweapons Program at the Council on Strategic Risks. Jonas’ research interests include the dual-use potential of life sciences research and biotechnology, as well as fast response countermeasures like vaccine platforms.

We discuss:

• The concepts of differential technological development, dual-use research, transfer risks in research, 'information loops', and responsible access to biological data
• Strengthening norms against risky biological research, such as novel virus identification and gain of function research
• Connection-based warning systems and metagenomic sequencing technology
• Advanced PPE, Far-UVC sterilisation technology, and other countermeasures against pandemics potentially worse than Covid
• Analogies between progress in biotechnology and the early history of nuclear weapons
• How to use your career to work on these problems — even if you don’t have a background in biology.

You can read more about the topics we cover in this episode's write-up: hearthisidea.com/episodes/farmer.

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Bruce Friedrich is the co-founder and executive director of The Good Food Institute — a nonprofit that works with scientists, investors, and entrepreneurs to support the development and marketing of cell-cultured and plant-based alternatives to animal food products.

In this episode we discuss:

• [00:02:21] Bruce's path to GFI
• [00:06:01] Inefficiencies of animal agriculture
• [00:10:06] Other external harms of animal agriculture
• [00:18:27] GFI's theory of change
• [00:27:54] Why focus on affluent markets?
• [00:32:53] Is regular meat-eating an historical abberation?
• [00:35:22] Protein alternative research
• [00:38:49] Plant-based vs cultivated meat
• [00:42:40] Marketing protein alternatives
• [00:47:27] Nomenclature
• [00:49:44] Policy
• [00:53:46] Why do we need government spending on R&D?
• [00:57:40] GFI's counterfactual impact
• [01:01:08] Religious influences
• [01:04:43] The supreme court
• [01:09:16] Three book recommendations
• [01:13:14] Outro

You can read much more on these topics in our accompanying write-up: earthisidea.com/episodes/bruce.

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Peter Singer is a moral philosopher and public intellectual, most widely known for his writings about animal ethics and global poverty.

In this episode we discuss:

• [00:00:00] Introduction
• [00:01:43] Background — Peter Singer introduces himself.
• [00:02:16] Speciesism — Defining the term, and explaining the case against speciesism.
• [00:06:55] Wild Animal Suffering — hould we intervene to reduce suffering in nature?
• [00:09:00] Weighing and Ending Animal Lives — Are all animal lives equal? What, if anything, is wrong with (painlessly) killing animals?
• [00:13:20] Ignoring Animals: Why did thinkers of the past apparently neglect the moral worth of animals? Why is animal ethics relatively new?
• [00:16:50] History of Western Attitudes to Animals—Can we trace the origins of contemporary attitudes to animals back to ancient Greece and Judeo-Christian values?
• [00:21:07] Counterfactual Impact of Animal Advocacy
• [00:24:10] The Power of Moral Argument
• [00:25:00] The Schwitzgebel Study
• [00:29:30] What should we do now? — Are veganism and vegetarianism all-or-nothing decisions? Or is it worth choosing a more incremental pathway?
• [00:32:25] The case for Human Challenge Trials
• [00:35:46] Trade-off between Lives and Well-being in Lockdowns — Can the cure for the pandemic be worse than the disease? How would we know?
• [00:42:07] Moral Realism — Parfit's 'Future Tuesday Indifference'
• [00:46:10] Other Moral Systems — What about egalitarianism or prioritarianism?
• [00:49:10] Controversial ideas
• [00:52:28] Journal of Controversial Ideas
• [00:54:35] What have you changed your mind about?
• [00:55:57] Book Recommendations
• [00:57:18] Where to Find PS Online

You can read much more on these topics in our accompanying write-up: https://hearthisidea.com/episodes/peter.

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Show Notes

Tobias Cremer is a PhD student in Politics and International Studies. His thesis examines the relationship between right-wing populism and religion in Western Europe and North America.

You can read more on this episode's accompanying write-up.

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Joe Carlsmith is a writer, researcher, and philosopher. He works as a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy, where he focuses on existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence. He also writes independently about various topics in philosophy and futurism, and holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford.

You can find links and a transcript at www.hearthisidea.com/episodes/carlsmith

In this episode we talked about a report Joe recently authored, titled ‘Scheming AIs: Will AIs fake alignment during training in order to get power?’. The report “examines whether advanced AIs that perform well in training will be doing so in order to gain power later”; a behaviour Carlsmith calls scheming.

We talk about:

• Distinguishing ways AI systems can be deceptive and misaligned
• Why powerful AI systems might acquire goals that go beyond what they’re trained to do, and how those goals could lead to scheming
• Why scheming goals might perform better (or worse) in training than less worrying goals
• The ‘counting argument’ for scheming AI
• Why goals that lead to scheming might be simpler than the goals we intend
• Things Joe is still confused about, and research project ideas

You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter. Consider leaving us an honest review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best free way to support the show. Thanks for listening!