For episode 22 of Consistently Candid, I chatted with Andy Masley. Andy is the former director of Effective Altruism DC, and now writes full-time on his Substack, Twitter, and website about EA, AI, policy, and many other topics!

(Note: There were some lighting issues on my end for part of this episode, which I have somewhat clumsily attempted to correct with Claude. Sorry about that!).

Topics covered:

• How Andy went viral discussing AI’s water use
• Talking about AI risk with climate-minded people
• Andy’s p(doom) and uncertainty
• EA’s bad press and the Trump administration’s attacks
• Dating culture and professionalism in EA
• Can AI really think?
• Why people resist anthropomorphising AI
• Animal welfare and moral circles
• AI welfare vs. AI safety
• Is current AI conscious?
• Doing better EA communication

After a long hiatus, I am resurrecting my podcast! For this episode, I spoke with Steven Adler. Steven worked on policy and safety at OpenAI between 2020 and 2024. He has since left to pursue independent writing to raise public awareness about AI risks and co-founded Guidelight AI, an organisation focused on scrutinising and improving safety practices at major AI companies. Guidelight was one of two organisations instrumental in spearheading the Pacing the Frontier open letter, which has garnered 1300+ signatories from employees at frontier labs. It has also published a scorecard of AI control practices across OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, and xAI.

Topics covered in the episode:

• Why Steven left OpenAI in 2024 — o1, NDAs, safety staff turnover
• Counterarguments to AI pessimism, and where Steven's cruxes lie
• The OpenAI–Hugging Face incident and OpenAI's response
• AI control: monitoring, prevention, and whether it scales to superintelligence
• Why incident reporting is inadequate, and communicating risk when nothing visibly bad has happened
• Where AI policy stands: SB 53, RAISE, Illinois, the EU AI Act, and how weak enforcement is
• Companies quietly diluting their own safety commitments
• The Pacing the Frontier letter, what "pacing" means and how it's landing
• Guidelight's control scorecard: method, findings, and theory of change

Links:

Follow Steven on Twitter and subscribe to his Substack

The Pacing the Frontier open letter

Read Guidelight's AI control scorecard

In this episode, I chatted with Frances Lorenz, events associate at the Centre for Effective Altruism. We covered our respective paths into AI safety, the emotional impact of learning about x-risk, what it's like to be female in a male-dominated community and more!

Follow Frances on Twitter

Subscribe to her Substack

Register for EAG London!