
Episode 231 min
APR Ep02: The Four Risks of AGI
Chapters
Show Notes
What could go wrong with AGI? Alex and Thuy walk through the paper's four risk categories — misuse, misalignment, mistakes, and structural risks — and why DeepMind chose to focus on just two.
In this episode:
- Misuse — When bad actors weaponize AI for cyberattacks, fraud, and disinformation
- Misalignment — When the AI itself pursues goals contrary to developer intent, including deceptive alignment
- Mistakes — Why standard engineering practices handle these and the paper deprioritizes them
- Structural risks — Race dynamics, collective action problems, and why these need governance not just tech
- Four background assumptions — No capability ceiling, 2030 timelines, recursive improvement, and approximate continuity
- The paper's philosophy — Proactive risk management and defense in depth