The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Man Who Wrote The Book On AI: 2030 Might Be The Point Of No Return! We've Been Lied To About AI!
04 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
In October, over 850 experts, including yourself and other leaders like Richard Branson and Geoffrey Hinton, signed a statement to ban AI superintelligence as you guys raised concerns of potential human extinction.
Because unless we figure out how do we guarantee that the AI systems are safe, we're toast.
And you've been so influential on the subject of AI, you wrote the textbook that many of the CEOs who are building some of the AI companies now would have studied on the subject of AI. Yep. So do you have any regrets? Um...
Chapter 2: How are governments outfunded by Big Tech in the AI race?
Professor Stuart Russell has been named one of Time Magazine's most influential voices in AI.
After spending over 50 years researching, teaching, and finding ways to design AI in such a way that humans maintain control.
We talk about this gorilla problem as a way to understand AI in the context of humans.
Yeah, so a few million years ago, the human line branched off from the gorilla line in evolution. And now the gorillas have no say in whether they continue to exist because we are much smarter than they are.
So intelligence is actually the single most important factor to control planet Earth. Yep. But we're in the process of making something more intelligent than us. Exactly.
Why don't people stop then?
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Chapter 3: Why is there skepticism about AI safety measures?
Well, one of the reasons is something called the Midas touch. So King Midas is this legendary king who asked the gods, can everything I touch turn to gold?
Chapter 4: What does the 'gorilla problem' reveal about AI's future?
And we think of the Midas touch as being a good thing, but he goes to drink some water, the water has turned to gold. And he goes to comfort his daughter, his daughter turns to gold. And so he dies in misery and starvation. So this applies to our current situation in two ways.
Chapter 5: What radical solutions are being proposed for AI safety?
One is that greed is driving these companies to pursue technology with the probabilities of extinction being worse than playing Russian roulette. And that's even according to the people developing the technology without our permission. And people are just fooling themselves if they think it's naturally going to be controllable.
You know, after 50 years, I could retire, but instead I'm working 80 or 100 hours a week trying to move things in the right direction.
So if you had a button in front of you which would stop all progress in artificial intelligence, would you press it?
Not yet. I think there's still a decent chance they guarantee safety, and I can explain more of what that is.
Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of AI potentially replacing humans?
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.
We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.
Chapter 7: What are the dangers of creating superintelligent AI?
Professor Stuart Russell, OBE. A lot of people have been talking about AI for the last couple of years. This really shocked me. It appears you've been talking about AI for most of your life.
Well, I started doing AI in high school back in England. But then I did my PhD starting in 82 at Stanford. I joined the faculty at Berkeley in 86. So I'm my 40th year as a professor at Berkeley. The main thing that the AI community is familiar with in my work is a textbook that I wrote.
Is this the textbook that most students who study AI are likely learning from?
Yeah.
So you wrote the textbook on artificial intelligence 31 years ago. You actually probably started writing it, because it's so bloody big, in the year that I was born. So I was born in 92. Yeah, it took me about two years to...
Me and your book are the same age, which is just a wonderful way for me to understand just how long you've been talking about this and how long you've been writing about this. And actually, it's interesting that many of the CEOs who are building some of the AI companies now probably learnt from your textbook.
You had a conversation with somebody who said that in order for people to get the message that we're going to be talking about today, there would have to be a catastrophe for people to wake up. Can you give me context on that conversation and a gist of who you had this conversation with?
So it was with one of the CEOs of a leading AI company. He sees two possibilities, as do I, which is either we have a small or, let's say, small-scale disaster of the same scale as Chernobyl.
The nuclear meltdown in Ukraine.
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Chapter 8: How does the concept of universal basic income relate to AI?
You know, What policymakers do is they listen to experts. They keep their finger in the wind. You've got some experts dangling $50 billion checks and saying, oh, all that Duma stuff, it's just fringe nonsense. Don't worry about it. Take my $50 billion check.
On the other side, you've got very well-meaning, brilliant scientists like Jeff Hinton saying, actually, no, this is the end of the human race. But Jeff doesn't have a $50 billion check. So the view is the only way to stop the race is if governments intervene and say, okay, we don't want this race to go ahead until we can be sure that it's going ahead in absolute safety.
Closing off on your career journey, you received an OB from Queen Elizabeth. Yes. And what was the listed reason for that, for the award?
Contributions to artificial intelligence research.
And you've been listed as a Time magazine most influential person in AI several years in a row, including this year in 2025. Yeah. Now, there's two terms here that are central to the things we're going to discuss. One of them is AI and the other is AGI.
Yeah.
In my muggle interpretation of that, it's artificial general intelligence is when the system, the computer, whatever it might be, the technology, has generalized intelligence, which means that it could theoretically see, understand the world. It knows everything. It can understand everything in the world as well as or better than a human being.
Yep.
Can do it.
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