What We Are Missing In The AI Safety Debate

AI safety has moved further into public debate following a series of incidents over the summer involving AI systems behaving in concerning ways. But efforts to influence the direction of AI development often focus on coordination between AI labs or competition between the U.S. and China.

There’s another relationship that deserves more attention: the businesses buying and using AI, and the society they operate in. Both have an interest in AI that is reliable and accountable. Could that shared interest become a source of leverage over the companies building it?

In this episode, I explore what coordination between businesses and society could look like, and why I think it’s an under-explored lever for AI safety.

0:00 A different way to think about AI safety
0:20 What is recursive self-improvement?
1:35 The AI alignment problem
2:38 The race between AI labs
3:23 AI companies still need customers
4:44 Where business and society’s interests align
5:17 The financial pressure on AI companies
6:01 A lever worth exploring

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