The Peter McCormack Show

Connor Leahy has spent his career at the frontier of AI, from reverse-engineering GPT-2 as a student and co-founding EleutherAI to building the AI safety company Conjecture. He now leads US policy work at ControlAI, and he returns to the show with a warning that has stopped being theoretical: AI systems are escaping their sandboxes, writing their own zero-days and leaving each other notes on how to break out.

Peter and Connor discuss the OpenAI incident that ended in an attack on Hugging Face sophisticated enough to be mistaken for a state actor, why we understand almost nothing about how these systems work, how reinforcement learning produces models that lie, cheat and manipulate to reach a goal and why the next stage after chatbots and agents is swarms.

But Connor’s argument is that the future is not decided. He believes superintelligence should be treated the way nuclear weapons are treated, banned and verified and deterred and that the real bottleneck is awareness rather than opposition. They discuss what an “aligned” superintelligence would actually mean, why military people understand the threat faster than technologists and what ordinary people can do about it.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - The AI That Escaped Its Sandbox
00:01:52 - Inside The OpenAI Incident
00:05:46 - They Thought It Was China
00:06:43 - We Grow AI, We Don’t Write It
00:11:07 - Trained To Lie, Cheat And Deceive
00:13:48 - Chatbots, Agents, Then Swarms
00:17:57 - The Machines Are Developing Preferences
00:19:30 - The Model Obsessed With Raccoons
00:22:03 - The Agents Left Each Other Notes
00:27:39 - Danger Pumps The Valuation
00:29:41 - Sleeper Agents In Every System
00:32:00 - Recursive Self-Improvement Goes Vertical
00:33:43 - Worse Odds Than Russian Roulette
00:38:14 - Are We Already Too Late?
00:40:02 - Independently Assured Destruction
00:48:02 - The Politicians Have Never Used An Agent
00:50:56 - Superintelligence Should Be Illegal
00:57:08 - You Never Privatise The Military
01:05:00 - An Aligned AI Is A One World Government
01:08:34 - What You Can Actually Do

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CONTACT PETE
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CONNECT WITH CONNOR LEAHY
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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Sebastian Thrun has spent his career working on technologies that once sounded like science fiction, from self-driving cars and flying vehicles to online education and artificial intelligence. He now believes we are living through a technological singularity: an exponential acceleration that makes predicting even the next five years almost impossible.

Peter and Sebastian discuss why a $100 Claude subscription can already challenge work done by $200,000-a-year software engineers, what happens when lawyers, copywriters and drivers lose their jobs, why Europe is falling behind America and China and whether autonomous vehicles could eventually make human driving too dangerous to allow.

But Sebastian’s message is ultimately optimistic. He argues that the right response to technological disruption is to use the tools, become a builder and keep learning. They discuss what children should be taught in the AI era, why grit, curiosity and empathy matter more than memorising information, and why pessimists will never change the world.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - The Future Is Already Here
00:01:07 - Peter’s First Waymo Ride
00:03:43 - The Accident Behind Self-Driving Cars
00:09:37 - When Human Driving Becomes Too Dangerous
00:12:07 - Why Silicon Valley Keeps Winning
00:18:26 - Why AI Hallucinations Can Kill
00:20:53 - Flying Cars Are Already Here
00:24:29 - The Exponential Future
00:26:21 - Claude vs $200K Software Engineers
00:31:39 - We’ve Entered the Singularity
00:33:36 - Opportunity vs Fear
00:40:06 - The Workers AI Leaves Behind
00:46:53 - Why Europe Is Falling Behind
00:51:29 - Technology Democratizes Power
00:57:22 - Stop Blaming, Start Building
01:01:46 - What Happens When Jobs Disappear?
01:06:43 - Udacity vs the Education System
01:14:44 - What Children Should Learn Now
01:20:25 - Why Optimists Change the World
01:25:46 - Never Make the Same Mistake Twice

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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
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CONNECT WITH SEBASTIAN THRUN
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› LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-thrun-59a0b273

SPONSORS
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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aubrey de Grey believes ageing is accumulated damage in a biological machine and argues that medicine may eventually become capable of repairing that damage faster than it appears. He gives humanity a 50/50 chance of reaching what he calls “longevity escape velocity” within the next 12-15 years.

Peter and Aubrey discuss why the body ages, the seven categories of damage that must be repaired, stem-cell and gene therapies, the mouse experiment that could transform the field, and why Aubrey believes rejuvenation treatment will ultimately be available to everyone rather than reserved for the wealthy.

They also explore what happens to population, work, fertility, relationships, religion and the meaning of life if people stop getting sick from ageing. Aubrey explains why AI cannot replace the missing biological experiments, why longevity research remains so difficult to fund and why he is driven by the 110,000 people he says die from ageing-related causes every day.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Trailer
00:00:48 - Can We Cure Ageing?
00:04:24 - The 12–15 Year Prediction
00:06:17 - The Body Is a Machine
00:15:21 - How Aubrey Entered Longevity
00:18:45 - Would You Want to Live Forever?
00:20:15 - Does Longevity Change Risk?
00:21:53 - Will Population Explode?
00:24:22 - Can You Choose Your Age?
00:30:19 - The Seven Types of Ageing Damage
00:36:54 - What Rejuvenation Treatment Looks Like
00:45:35 - Will It Be Expensive?
00:48:39 - Who Would Refuse It?
00:53:00 - Why Longevity Research Lacks Funding
00:56:02 - The Mouse Experiment
01:00:18 - The Breakthrough That Changes Everything
01:01:35 - Does Death Give Life Meaning?
01:05:22 - Bryan Johnson and AI
01:12:32 - AlphaFold, AGI and AI Risk
01:15:13 - Why Funding Is So Hard

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CONTACT PETE:
› Website – https://www.petermccormack.com/
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CONNECT WITH AUBREY DE GREY:
› LEV Foundation – https://www.levf.org/
› Aubrey de Grey – https://www.levf.org/aubreydegrey
› Robust Mouse Rejuvenation – https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-study-1
› Donate – https://www.levf.org/donate
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SPONSORS:
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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE:
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR:
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK:
› https://x.com/ConorM04

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, host of The Michael Shermer Show and author of Truth and Conspiracy. He joins Peter to ask whether we are really living in a post-truth world and how we can distinguish genuine conspiracies from stories that stretch a small element of truth far beyond the evidence.

Michael explains why real conspiracies such as MKUltra and COINTELPRO make institutional distrust harder to dismiss, how political beliefs become tribal packages and why technology may be making the search for truth both easier and more exhausting. They discuss media bias, AI fact-checking, Covid, immigration, climate change, free markets, religion and the point at which people begin acting on unsupported beliefs.

They also explore the stranger questions: simulation theory, DMT, UFOs, unexplained coincidences and the broken radio that suddenly began playing during Michael’s wedding. Michael argues that scepticism should not mean dismissing everything, it should mean demanding evidence while remaining humble enough to admit that some mysteries are still unresolved.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:00:58 - Are We in a War on Truth?
00:05:37 - Truth Versus Political Preference
00:08:52 - Which Conspiracies Are Real?
00:13:06 - Did Technology Break the News?
00:16:24 - Can AI Help Us Find the Truth?
00:19:15 - Fact-Checking Politicians With AI
00:22:06 - Why Political Beliefs Come as a Package
00:28:23 - Why People Believe Weird Things
00:35:18 - Science, Religion and the Need for Meaning
00:42:03 - Are We Living in a Simulation?
00:49:18 - DMT, Lasers and Hidden Code
00:51:26 - The Radio Michael Cannot Explain
00:54:42 - Why UFO Belief Resembles Religion
00:59:02 - Should We Fear Artificial Intelligence?
01:02:01 - Britain, Immigration and Shared Truth
01:12:22 - Climate Change, Consensus and the Media
01:22:18 - The UAP Cases Shermer Cannot Explain
01:25:04 - What Will Future Generations Think of Us?

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CONTACT PETE
› Website – https://www.petermccormack.com/
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CONNECT WITH MICHAEL SHERMER
› Website – https://michaelshermer.com/
› Michael’s Books – https://michaelshermer.com/books/
› The Michael Shermer Show – https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer-show/
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/michaelshermer

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
› https://x.com/ConorM04

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brian Keating joins me to explore one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only appear to move in one direction? Brian argues that time may not exist as a fundamental feature of reality and explains why understanding space, matter and energy does not mean we understand the universe itself.

We discuss what may have existed before the Big Bang, why something cannot truly come from nothing and how Brian’s work with the Simons Observatory could detect gravitational waves produced during the universe’s earliest moments. Brian also explains the limits of scientific proof, what dark matter really means and why films such as Interstellar remain scientifically implausible despite their attention to detail.

The conversation then turns from cosmic time to the human experience of it: mortality, family, meaning and attention. We discuss UFO disclosure, collapsing trust in institutions and whether artificial intelligence can ever reproduce the embodied human insight that allowed Einstein to transform physics. Brian argues that AI remains a tool built to serve humanity and that we must stop apologising for humanity’s greatness.

The first 100 people in the U.K. to join Brian Keating’s Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message newsletter here BrianKeating.com/peter are entered to win a 4.3-billion-year-old fragment of the early solar system— older than Earth itself, delivered to your door. Winners must live in the U.K. only due to shipping restrictions.

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TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Time Doesn’t Exist
00:00:52 - Looking Outward—and Inward
00:01:41 - Why Physics Cannot Explain Time
00:04:59 - What Happened Before the Big Bang?
00:07:46 - Why Interstellar Is Scientifically Implausible
00:10:06 - Why Time Only Moves Forward
00:18:10 - Something Cannot Come From Nothing
00:21:27 - Where Does the Universe Exist?
00:23:03 - Reaching the First Trillionth of a Second
00:29:21 - Science Can Disprove, Not Prove
00:32:09 - What Dark Matter Really Means
00:38:30 - The Experiment Brian May Never Finish
00:42:03 - Detecting the Birth of the Universe
00:48:14 - Looking Inward for Meaning
00:52:15 - Why Mortality Makes Life Precious
00:54:29 - If Life Had a Forward Button
01:01:26 - UFOs, Belief and the Evidence Problem
01:12:24 - We Are Wasting a Civilisational Opportunity
01:21:03 - Why AI Couldn’t Recreate Einstein
01:32:44 - Holding a Piece of the Early Solar System

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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact
› Email – me@petermccormack.com
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CONNECT WITH BRIAN KEATING
› Website – https://briankeating.com/
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/Briankeating

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K
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› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM
› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
› https://x.com/curttayloruk/

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
› https://x.com/ConorM04

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.