45 - Samuel Albanie on DeepMind's AGI Safety Approach

In this episode, I chat with Samuel Albanie about the Google DeepMind paper he co-authored called "An Approach to Technical AGI Safety and Security". It covers the assumptions made by the approach, as well as the types of mitigations it outlines.
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Transcript: axrp.net/episode/2025/07/06/episode-45-samuel-…

Topics we discuss, and timestamps:
0:00:37 DeepMind's Approach to Technical AGI Safety and Security
0:04:29 Current paradigm continuation
0:19:13 No human ceiling
0:21:22 Uncertain timelines
0:23:36 Approximate continuity and the potential for accelerating capability improvement
0:34:29 Misuse and misalignment
0:39:34 Societal readiness
0:43:58 Misuse mitigations
0:52:57 Misalignment mitigations
1:05:20 Samuel's thinking about technical AGI safety
1:14:02 Following Samuel's work

Samuel on Twitter/X: x.com/samuelalbanie

Research we discuss:
An Approach to Technical AGI Safety and Security: arxiv.org/abs/2504.01849
Levels of AGI for Operationalizing Progress on the Path to AGI: arxiv.org/abs/2311.02462
The Checklist: What Succeeding at AI Safety Will Involve: sleepinyourhat.github.io/checklist
Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks: arxiv.org/abs/2503.14499

Episode art by Hamish Doodles: hamishdoodles.com