Samuel Hammond on why AI Progress is Accelerating - and how Governments Should Respond

Samuel Hammond joins the podcast to discuss whether AI progress is slowing down or speeding up, AI agents and reasoning, why superintelligence is an ideological goal, open source AI, how technical change leads to regime change, the economics of advanced AI, and much more.   

Our conversation often references this essay by Samuel: https://www.secondbest.ca/p/ninety-five-theses-on-ai   

Timestamps: 

00:00 Is AI plateauing or accelerating?  

06:55 How do we get AI agents?  

16:12 Do agency and reasoning emerge?  

23:57 Compute thresholds in regulation

28:59 Superintelligence as an ideological goal 

37:09 General progress vs superintelligence 

44:22 Meta and open source AI  

49:09 Technological change and regime change 

01:03:06 How will governments react to AI?  

01:07:50 Will the US nationalize AGI corporations?  

01:17:05 Economics of an intelligence explosion  

01:31:38 AI cognition vs human cognition  

01:48:03 AI and future religions 

01:56:40 Is consciousness functional?  

02:05:30 AI and children