Sabrina Halper Show

Sabrina Halper
  • 5.0 (12)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

The mind, the machine, and the meaning of it all.

  1. FEB 6

    Moxie Marlinspike, Founder of Signal

    Moxie Marlinspike founded Signal, the nonprofit privacy messenger used by millions. He’s now building Confer, a fully private, end-to-end encrypted AI chat. This conversation covers everything.TIMESTAMPS:00:00 Intro 01:09 Building Physical World Projects Centered on Experiences07:43 Tales from Hitchhiking15:04 The Birth of Signal22:23 Privacy in the Digital Age31:21 Introducing Confer: Private AI Chat37:17 Generative AI and Developer Responsibility38:21 Encryption and Cryptography: A Historical Perspective39:15 Skepticism Towards Crypto41:24 The Impact of Self-Publishing and Cancel Culture44:01 Imagining MoxieLand49:41 Why Do Conspiracy Theories Exist58:00 Signal Gate1:02:30 Limits of Solo Ambitions1:05:09 Solving Aging1:09:00 Moxie’s Next Physical World Project FOLLOW:Follow MoxieSign up for ConferFollow SabrinaPlease support this show by subscribing!

    1h 13m

  2. JAN 8

    When AI Becomes Conscious, How Will We Even Know? — Ken Liu

    Ken Liu: Renowned sci-fi author of The Paper Menagerie, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, and his new book All That We See or Seem; producer of Pantheon; futurist who works with world governments to prepare for what’s ahead. TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) Introduction (1:41) Mechanism vs meaning: what science explains vs what stories explain (5:47) What is consciousness, really? (6:42) Psychedelics and the mystery of the mind (7:55) Can intelligence exist without consciousness? (12:10) How mind-uploading might actually work (and the Singularity) (19:15 — Falling in love with AI - why “imaginary companions” aren’t new (23:40) Modern day myths around romantic love (27:15) Preservation vs. transformation of humanity (32:37) When technical skill disappears: what is craft? (40:00) When using AI actually makes us feel more human (41:05) Writing, imagination, and “All That We See or Seem” (47:35) Dreams, reality, and how we know what’s real (54:45) Privacy in an age of digital selves (58:03) Data, the commons, and how knowledge should be shared Follow Ken: https://x.com/kyliu99 Buy his new book All That We See or Seem : https://www.amazon.com/All-That-Seem-Julia-Novel/dp/1668083175 When will AI become conscious and how would we even know if it did? We talk about the decoupling of intelligence and consciousness in today's LLMs, and the ethical questions in regulating models.Ken walks me through a thought experiment to understand the singularity: what uploading our minds might actually look like, a theme explored in his Netflix series Pantheon. If we replace our minds piece by piece with silicon, at what point do “we” disappear? In the age of AI, when many technical skills are made obsolete, who are the experts of craft? We explore why falling in love with AI may be grounded in our religious history, and is an act of falling in love with our own reflection. We discuss how phones have killed daydreaming and access to the collective unconscious, and the mysteries of psychedelics, natural intelligence, and the universe at large. “We are willing to die for the sake of a story. In fact, it’s the only thing humans have ever willingly died for.” Most of human life, Ken argues, has two levels of explanation: 1.Evolution & 2.Stories — the way we make sense of the world and find meaning in it.

    1h 5m

  3. 11/27/2025

    Isabelle Boemeke - The Real Story of Nuclear: Fear, Politics, and the Grid We Need for AI

    Isabelle Boemeke went from Brazilian model to the internet’s most creative nuclear advocate who led the largest pro nuclear rally in US history. In this episode, we talk about nuclear energy's wild history, political drama, and what America’s energy grid needs to look like to keep up with the future demands. Shownotes:  0:00 : Introduction 1:37 : Growing up in rural Brazil 3:44 : Getting to the United States 5:15 : Reading Richard Dawkins, getting involved in the climate movement, learning about nuclear 12:05 : A historical deep dive: What went wrong with nuclear energy? 24:32 : What really happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl - separating fear from facts. 30:43 : Deaths from Nuclear Vs. Fossil Fuels 37:15 : Nuclear Proliferation Risk 42:17 : Gaps in the US supply chain & AI’s need for more energy 49:40 : Promise vs. reality of SMRs (Small modular reactors) 54:54 : Designing energy grid for the US 59:10 : Why are Germany, Taiwan, and Australia shutting down nuclear energy programs? 1:02:10 : Saving California’s last nuclear plant Diablo Canyon 1:08:24 : Today’s nuclear renaissance

    1h 10m

  4. 11/14/2025

    OpenAI’s Isa Fulford on Building Deep Research, ChatGPT’s Agent, and the Future of the Internet

    Isa Fulford is only a few years out of school and is already the mind behind Deep Research and ChatGPT Agent - two of the most important and ambitious projects at OpenAI. She’s a close friend from our Stanford days, someone I adore, and someone the world is going to hear a lot more about in coming years. We talk about how her upbringing and violin training shaped the discipline behind her professional work. Isa breaks down how these systems were built, how they think, and where AI is heading, from agents talking to agents to a future where humans guide the work instead of doing it.SHOWNOTES: 0:00 Introduction 1:50 Early life, math, music, and discipline 4:40 Stanford, Journey into AI, & joining OpenAI 7:15 Deep Research, building datasets, & early indications 11:35 Building ChatGPT Agent 13:47 What comes next from OpenAI? 15:58 Personal Use of AI 16:40 Future of Internet + Agent Communication 19:03 Personal AI agents 20:06 Safety Risks 22:44 AGI 24:03 Agents for personal growth 25:00 How AI is changing the way we work 27:43 Talent war and poaching 28:30 Lessons from Sam Altman: raise ambition level 30:18 Rapid questions EPISODE LINKS: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SabrinaHalper Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sabrina-halper-show/id1627753991

    32 min

  5. 11/06/2025

    Life After AGI — Richard Ngo (Philosopher & Researcher, ex-OpenAI / DeepMind)

    Richard Ngo is a leading AI philosopher and researcher, formerly at OpenAI and DeepMind. We discuss what life looks like once we have AGI and how every aspect of the human experience could change. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Introduction 01:44 – Technology as an Inequality Engine 03:52 – AI as a Personal Tutor vs. Distraction Machine 06:11 – Therapy, Coaching, and Emotional Mediation 09:16 – The Future of Work and the Socio-Political Economy 13:15 – Relationships, Intimacy, and AI Companions 19:03 – Marriage Decline and the Birth Rate Crisis 22:15 – Speed of Change and Political Control 23:55 – Human Augmentation and Speciation 30:52 – Comparing Artificial Intelligence to Natural Intelligence 35:57 – Religion, Continuity, and Identity in the Future 37:26 – China vs. the U.S. in AI Governance 39:39 – Why Richard Left OpenAI 43:43 – Drones, Simulation, Power, and More

    47 min

  6. 12/21/2023

    The AI Revolution in Music: A Conversation with DAOuda Leonard, Manager of Grimes and Founder of CreateSafe

    In this episode, Sabrina Halper sits down with DAOuda Leonard, Grimes' manager and founder of music tech studio CreateSafe, which just launched its generative AI-powered platform Triniti. Triniti enables artists to create an AI voice clone, generate text-to-audio samples, ask a chatbot music industry-related questions, monetize creations and manage music IP. Subscribe to stay up to date on all the best clips and upcoming episodes! Socials👇 *Follow DAOuda on Twitter and check out CreateSafe. *Connect with Sabrina on Twitter *Engage with HOF on Twitter or read our March to Utopia.

    1h 3m

  7. 11/29/2023

    Eric Jang on Humanoid Robots, Why AI is Good For You, and a Future of Abundance.

    In this episode, Sabrina Halper sits down with Eric Jang. Eric is the VP of AI at 1X Technologies, a humanoid robot company built to benefit society, with investment led by OpenAI. He also published AI is Good for You, a book about the last 10 Years and the next 10 Years of Artificial Intelligence (link to buy attached below). Previously, Eric was a senior research scientist at Google on their robotics team. Timestamps: (0:00) - Highlights (2:53) - Intro (3:32) - The outdated political system & AI's applications for campaigns7:55 - Debating ideas with AI "champions" (9:20) - How Meta's VR Quest headset could be a humanoid robot, data engines for AI (13:20) - Building genuine AI companionship (18:26) - AI chatbots as sparring partners and improving peoples' social capabilities (20:45) - Can we achieve AGI through online, text-only data? Or do we need a data engine such as VR, robots, or cars? (24:20) - How to acquire and label "truth" for LLMs?30:00 - How far are we from AGI? How do you define AGI? (32:20) - Should we be modeling AI systems after biology and replicating nature-inspired architectures?36:00 - Confronting workforce disruption of humanoid robots, 1X's approach39:00 - Lump of labor fallacy, 10X-ing workforces (40:10) - Security risks of humanoid robots, high leverage technology = risk (42:35) - Engineering hardware to mimic the human body, lack of robotics parts (46:04) - Why is now the right time to invest and build in general purpose robots? (48:25) - Visualizing a post-AGI future of abundance & utopia situation (52:27) - What will our relationship to robots look like and which hierarchies will exist? How to engineer an equality dynamic (55:50) - The academia vs start-up landscape in AI and why some researches are going back to academia (59:54) - Criticisms of the effective altruist and AI safety communities (1:04:20) - Good policies and models for regulation, issues with regulation today Please subscribe to stay up to date on all the best clips and upcoming episodes! Follow Eric on Twitter Purchase Eric's book here. Connect with Sabrina on Twitter Engage with HOF on Twitter or learn more and visit HOF's website.

    1h 9m

  8. 10/09/2023

    Martin Varsavsky on fertility and birth rate decline, gene editing, modern evolution, and why humanity needs more babies.

    In this episode, Sabrina Halper sits down with renowned entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky. Martin has founded five unicorn companies across industries. He discusses his cutting edge work in the fertility space and how technology will revolutionize our biology. Timestamps: (0:00) - Intro (1:30) - Catalyst for building in fertility (3:00) - Reasons for increased infertility in society (7:00) - Climate change and overpopulation narrative (10:00) - Reasons for declining birth rates & how to design a society that combats this (16:40) - Europe vs America on abortion, surrogacy, and the anti-science movements (22:00) - How to decrease the cost of fertility treatments by an order of magnitude (27:15) - Embryo selection vs CRISPR (32:34) - Mapping out IQ to a gene, editing for intelligence (34:00) - How regulation of CRISPR will vary between China and the west (36:00) - The potential disparity between humans, and the context of AI (37:20) - Why evolution doesn't work anymore (39:40) - Why humans may speciate and evolve into multiple species (41:59) - Is CRISPR happening today? 45:30 - In-vitro gametogenesis (IVG) (47:00) - What having a baby will look like in the future (49:05) - Male birth control, longevity, gene therapy (52:00) - Martin's philosophy around company building (54:15) - Having clear views around where the future is going (58:00) - Fast-paced popcorn questions: space, Einstein, quantum physics (1:00:30) - Outro Follow Tomorrow Talk to stay up to date on all the best clips and upcoming episodes! Follow Martin on Twitter Connect with Sabrina on Twitter Engage with HOF on Twitter or visit our website

    1h 1m
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5
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About

The mind, the machine, and the meaning of it all.

Information

  • Creator
    Sabrina Halper
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    23
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Sabrina Halper
  • Show Website
    Sabrina Halper Show