logo
episode-header-image
Jun 2023
3h 7m

Carl Shulman (Pt 2) - AI Takeover, Bio &...

Dwarkesh Patel
About this episode

The second half of my 7 hour conversation with Carl Shulman is out!

My favorite part! And the one that had the biggest impact on my worldview.

Here, Carl lays out how an AI takeover might happen:

* AI can threaten mutually assured destruction from bioweapons,

* use cyber attacks to take over physical infrastructure,

* build mechanical armies,

* spread seed AIs we can never exterminate,

* offer tech and other advantages to collaborating countries, etc

Plus we talk about a whole bunch of weird and interesting topics which Carl has thought about:

* what is the far future best case scenario for humanity

* what it would look like to have AI make thousands of years of intellectual progress in a month

* how do we detect deception in superhuman models

* does space warfare favor defense or offense

* is a Malthusian state inevitable in the long run

* why markets haven't priced in explosive economic growth

* & much more

Carl also explains how he developed such a rigorous, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary model of the biggest problems in the world.

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple PodcastsSpotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

Catch part 1 here

Timestamps

(0:00:00) - Intro

(0:00:47) - AI takeover via cyber or bio

(0:32:27) - Can we coordinate against AI?

(0:53:49) - Human vs AI colonizers

(1:04:55) - Probability of AI takeover

(1:21:56) - Can we detect deception?

(1:47:25) - Using AI to solve coordination problems

(1:56:01) - Partial alignment

(2:11:41) - AI far future

(2:23:04) - Markets & other evidence

(2:33:26) - Day in the life of Carl Shulman

(2:47:05) - Space warfare, Malthusian long run, & other rapid fire



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkeshpatel.com
Up next
Today
Stephen Kotkin — How Stalin became the most powerful dictator in history
The Stephen Kotkin episode. Kotkin is arguably the world’s foremost expert on Joseph Stalin and has written a massive 2-volume biography of Stalin (with a 3rd volume in the works).No other individual had more of a profound impact on the 20th century than Stalin. He held the power ... Show More
2h 12m
Jul 3
Why I don’t think AGI is right around the corner
I’ve had a lot of discussions on my podcast where we haggle out timelines to AGI. Some guests think it’s 20 years away - others 2 years. Here’s an audio version of where my thoughts stand as of June 2025. If you want to read the original post, you can check it out here. Get full ... Show More
14m 1s
Jun 2
Why I don’t think AGI is right around the corner
I’ve had a lot of discussions on my podcast where we haggle out timelines to AGI. Some guests think it’s 20 years away - others 2 years. Here’s where my thoughts stand as of June 2025. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe 
14m 1s
Recommended Episodes
May 2023
The AI Will See You Now: Exploring Biomedical AI and Google’s Med-PaLM2 With Karan Singhal
What if AI could revolutionize healthcare with advanced language learning models? Sarah and Elad welcome Karan Singhal, Staff Software Engineer at Google Research, who specializes in medical AI and the development of MedPaLM2. On this episode, Karan emphasizes the importance of s ... Show More
42m 48s
May 17
OpenAI whistleblower Daniel Kokotajlo on superintelligence and existential risk of AI
How much could our relationship with technology change by 2027? In the last few years, new artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek have transformed how we think about work, creativity, even intelligence itself. But tech experts are ringing alarm bells that powerfu ... Show More
38m 16s
Aug 2019
AI, Robot
Forget what sci-fi has told you about superintelligent robots that are uncannily human-like; the reality is more prosaic. Inside DeepMind’s robotics laboratory, Hannah explores what researchers call ‘embodied AI’: robot arms that are learning tasks like picking up plastic bricks, ... Show More
32m 33s
Sep 2024
The Frontier of Spatial Intelligence with Fei-Fei Li
Fei-Fei Li and Justin Johnson are pioneers in AI. While the world has only recently witnessed a surge in consumer AI, our guests have long been laying the groundwork for innovations that are transforming industries today.In this episode, a16z General Partner Martin Casado joins F ... Show More
44m 40s
Mar 2025
Apple's Siri-ous Problem + How Starlink Took Over the World + Is AI Making Us Dumb?
This week, as the long-promised new Siri faces increasing delays, we explore why Apple seems to be falling even further behind in artificial intelligence. Then, the New York Times reporter Adam Satariano joins us to explain how Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink too ... Show More
1h 2m
Sep 2024
The Road to Autonomous Intelligence with Andrej Karpathy
Andrej Karpathy joins Sarah and Elad in this week of No Priors. Andrej, who was a founding team member of OpenAI and former Senior Director of AI at Tesla, needs no introduction. In this episode, Andrej discusses the evolution of self-driving cars, comparing Tesla and Waymo’s app ... Show More
44m 16s
Apr 2024
777: Generative AI in Practice, with Bernard Marr
Generative AI is reshaping our world, and Bernard Marr, world-renowned futurist and best-selling author, joins Jon Krohn to guide us through this transformation. In this episode, Bernard shares his insights on how AI is transforming industries, revolutionizing daily life, and add ... Show More
1h 8m
Sep 2024
Human Data is Key to AI: Alex Wang from Scale AI
What if the key to unlocking AI's full potential lies not just in algorithms or compute, but in data? In this episode, a16z General Partner David George sits down with Alex Wang, founder and CEO of Scale AI, to discuss the crucial role of "frontier data" in advancing artificial i ... Show More
30m 56s
May 8
Industry Roundup #4: O3 & O4-mini, LLama 4’s Rocky Release & Google’s Agent Ecosystem
Welcome to DataFramed Industry Roundups! In this series of episodes, Adel & Richie sit down to discuss the latest and greatest in data & AI. In this episode, we touch upon the launch of OpenAI’s O3 and O4-mini models, Meta’s rocky release of Llama 4, Google’s new agent tooling ec ... Show More
44m 14s