2025 Highlight-o-thon: Oops! All Bests

2025 Highlight-o-thon: Oops! All Bests

It’s that magical time of year once again — highlightapalooza! Stick around for one top bit from each episode we recorded this year, including:

  • Kyle Fish explaining how Anthropic’s AI Claude descends into spiritual woo when left to talk to itself
  • Ian Dunt on why the unelected House of Lords is by far the best part of the British government
  • Sam Bowman’s strategy to get NIMBYs to love it when things get built next to their houses
  • Buck Shlegeris on how to get an AI model that wants to seize control to accidentally help you foil its plans

…as well as 18 other top observations and arguments from the past year of the show.

Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/best25

It's been another year of living through history, whether we asked for it or not. Luisa and Rob will be back in 2026 to help you make sense of whatever comes next — as Earth continues its indifferent journey through the cosmos, now accompanied by AI systems that can summarise our meetings and generate adequate birthday messages for colleagues we barely know.

Chapters:

  • Cold open (00:00:00)
  • Rob's intro (00:02:35)
  • Helen Toner on whether we're racing China to build AGI (00:03:43)
  • Hugh White on what he'd say to Americans (00:06:09)
  • Buck Shlegeris on convincing AI models they've already escaped (00:12:09)
  • Paul Scharre on a personal experience in Afghanistan that influenced his views on autonomous weapons (00:15:10)
  • Ian Dunt on how unelected septuagenarians are the heroes of UK governance (00:19:06)
  • Beth Barnes on AI companies being locally reasonable, but globally reckless (00:24:27)
  • Tyler Whitmer on one thing the California and Delaware attorneys general forced on the OpenAI for-profit as part of their restructure (00:28:02)
  • Toby Ord on whether rich people will get access to AGI first (00:30:13)
  • Andrew Snyder-Beattie on how the worst biorisks are defence dominant (00:34:24)
  • Eileen Yam on the most eye-watering gaps in opinions about AI between experts and the US public (00:39:41)
  • Will MacAskill on what a century of history crammed into a decade might feel like (00:44:07)
  • Kyle Fish on what happens when two instances of Claude are left to interact with each other (00:49:08)
  • Sam Bowman on where the Not In My Back Yard movement actually has a point (00:56:29)
  • Neel Nanda on how mechanistic interpretability is trying to be the biology of AI (01:03:12)
  • Tom Davidson on the potential to install secret AI loyalties at a very early stage (01:07:19)
  • Luisa and Rob discussing how medicine doesn't take the health burden of pregnancy seriously enough (01:10:53)
  • Marius Hobbhahn on why scheming is a very natural path for AI models — and people (01:16:23)
  • Holden Karnofsky on lessons for AI regulation drawn from successful farm animal welfare advocacy (01:21:29)
  • Allan Dafoe on how AGI is an inescapable idea but one we have to define well (01:26:19)
  • Ryan Greenblatt on the most likely ways for AI to take over (01:29:35)
  • Updates Daniel Kokotajlo has made to his forecasts since writing and publishing the AI 2027 scenario (01:32:47)
  • Dean Ball on why regulation invites path dependency, and that's a major problem (01:37:21)


Video and audio editing: Dominic Armstrong, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour
Music: CORBIT
Coordination, transcripts, and web: Katy Moore

Jaksot(332)

#27 - Dr Tom Inglesby on careers and policies that reduce global catastrophic biological risks

#27 - Dr Tom Inglesby on careers and policies that reduce global catastrophic biological risks

How about this for a movie idea: a main character has to prevent a new contagious strain of Ebola spreading around the world. She’s the best of the best. So good in fact, that her work on early detect...

18 Huhti 20182h 16min

#26 - Marie Gibbons on how exactly clean meat is made & what's needed to get it in every supermarket

#26 - Marie Gibbons on how exactly clean meat is made & what's needed to get it in every supermarket

First, decide on the type of animal. Next, pick the cell type. Then take a small, painless biopsy, and put the cells in a solution that makes them feel like they’re still in the body. Once the cells a...

10 Huhti 20181h 44min

#25 - Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do

#25 - Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do

On February 2, 1685, England’s King Charles II was struck by a sudden illness. Fortunately his physicians were the best of the best. To reassure the public they kept them abreast of the King’s treatme...

28 Maalis 20182h 39min

#24 - Stefan Schubert on why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause

#24 - Stefan Schubert on why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause

How honest should we be? How helpful? How friendly? If our society claims to value honesty, for instance, but in reality accepts an awful lot of lying – should we go along with those lax standards? Or...

20 Maalis 201855min

#23 - How to actually become an AI alignment researcher, according to Dr Jan Leike

#23 - How to actually become an AI alignment researcher, according to Dr Jan Leike

Want to help steer the 21st century’s most transformative technology? First complete an undergrad degree in computer science and mathematics. Prioritize harder courses over easier ones. Publish at lea...

16 Maalis 201845min

#22 - Leah Utyasheva on the non-profit that figured out how to massively cut suicide rates

#22 - Leah Utyasheva on the non-profit that figured out how to massively cut suicide rates

How people kill themselves varies enormously depending on which means are most easily available. In the United States, suicide by firearm stands out. In Hong Kong, where most people live in high rise ...

7 Maalis 20181h 8min

#21 - Holden Karnofsky on times philanthropy transformed the world & Open Phil’s plan to do the same

#21 - Holden Karnofsky on times philanthropy transformed the world & Open Phil’s plan to do the same

The Green Revolution averted mass famine during the 20th century. The contraceptive pill gave women unprecedented freedom in planning their own lives. Both are widely recognised as scientific breakthr...

27 Helmi 20182h 35min

#20 - Bruce Friedrich on inventing outstanding meat substitutes to end speciesism & factory farming

#20 - Bruce Friedrich on inventing outstanding meat substitutes to end speciesism & factory farming

Before the US Civil War, it was easier for the North to morally oppose slavery. Why? Because unlike the South they weren’t profiting much from its existence. The fight for abolition was partly won bec...

19 Helmi 20181h 18min

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