Best Jacob Duncan Podcasts (2025)

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259 Kasper Mejlvang, President Novo Nordisk Pharma Japan 1:03:06

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1h ago1:03:06

1:03:06

“Most of any leader’s job is change management—setting a vision people buy into and aligning them behind it.” “I view the organisation as an inverted triangle—the frontline is at the top, and we serve them.” “You should be most concerned when your performance board is all green. Red means there’s something to learn.” “Trust in Japan isn’t optional—…

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“I am worried about near-term non-LLM AI developments” by testingthewaters 10:54

1h ago10:54

10:54

TL;DR I believe that: Almost all LLM-centric safety research will not provide any significant safety value with regards to existential or civilisation-scale risks. The capabilities-related forecasts (not the safety-related forecasts) of Stephen Brynes' Foom and Doom articles are correct, except that they are too conservative with regards to timelin…

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“Optimizing The Final Output Can Obfuscate CoT (Research Note)” by lukemarks, jacob_drori, cloud, TurnTrout 11:30

7h ago11:30

11:30

Produced as part of MATS 8.0 under the mentorship of Alex Turner and Alex Cloud. This research note overviews some early results which we are looking for feedback on. TL;DR: We train language models with RL in toy environments. We show that penalizing some property of the output is sufficient to suppress that property in the chain of thought also, …

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“About 30% of Humanity’s Last Exam chemistry/biology answers are likely wrong” by bohaska 6:40

1d ago6:40

6:40

FutureHouse is a company that builds literature research agents. They tested it on the bio + chem subset of HLE questions, then noticed errors in them. The post's first paragraph: Humanity's Last Exam has become the most prominent eval representing PhD-level research. We found the questions puzzling and investigated with a team of experts in biolog…

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“Maya’s Escape” by Bridgett Kay 20:24

24h ago20:24

20:24

Maya did not believe she lived in a simulation. She knew that her continued hope that she could escape from the nonexistent simulation was based on motivated reasoning. She said this to herself in the front of her mind instead of keeping the thought locked away in the dark corners. Sometimes she even said it out loud. This acknowledgement, she expl…

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“Do confident short timelines make sense?” by TsviBT, abramdemski 2:10:59

5d ago2:10:59

2:10:59

TsviBT Tsvi's context Some context: My personal context is that I care about decreasing existential risk, and I think that the broad distribution of efforts put forward by X-deriskers fairly strongly overemphasizes plans that help if AGI is coming in <10 years, at the expense of plans that help if AGI takes longer. So I want to argue that AGI isn't…

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“HPMOR: The (Probably) Untold Lore” by Gretta Duleba, Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:07:32

6d ago1:07:32

1:07:32

Eliezer and I love to talk about writing. We talk about our own current writing projects, how we’d improve the books we’re reading, and what we want to write next. Sometimes along the way I learn some amazing fact about HPMOR or Project Lawful or one of Eliezer's other works. “Wow, you’re kidding,” I say, “do your fans know this? I think people wou…

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258 Duncan Harrison, Managing Director, JAC International 46:01

6d ago46:01

46:01

“In Japan, if you want performance, you need ultra-clear expectations—people need to know the goal.” “Building trust means creating a safe environment where it’s okay to make mistakes.” “Consensus-building is not optional in Japan—it’s how decisions gain traction.” “Every new joiner has lunch with me and a one-on-one at three months—connection matt…

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“On ‘ChatGPT Psychosis’ and LLM Sycophancy” by jdp 30:05

7d ago30:05

30:05

As a person who frequently posts about large language model psychology I get an elevated rate of cranks and schizophrenics in my inbox. Often these are well meaning people who have been spooked by their conversations with ChatGPT (it's always ChatGPT specifically) and want some kind of reassurance or guidance or support from me. I'm also in the sam…

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“Subliminal Learning: LLMs Transmit Behavioral Traits via Hidden Signals in Data” by cloud, mle, Owain_Evans 10:00

8d ago10:00

10:00

Authors: Alex Cloud*, Minh Le*, James Chua, Jan Betley, Anna Sztyber-Betley, Jacob Hilton, Samuel Marks, Owain Evans (*Equal contribution, randomly ordered) tl;dr. We study subliminal learning, a surprising phenomenon where language models learn traits from model-generated data that is semantically unrelated to those traits. For example, a "student…

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Managing stress in public relations with Integrated Leadership Systems’ M.J. Clark 38:57

10d ago38:57

38:57

Send us a text In this episode, M.J. Clark joins host Jason Mudd to discuss how PR pros can manage stress and thrive under pressure by adopting better leadership practices. Tune in to learn more! Our Guest: Our episode guest is M.J. Clark, vice president at Integrated Leadership Systems. With more than 15 years of experience as an executive coach a…

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“Love stays loved (formerly ‘Skin’)” by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) 51:27

10d ago51:27

51:27

This is a short story I wrote in mid-2022. Genre: cosmic horror as a metaphor for living with a high p-doom. One The last time I saw my mom, we met in a coffee shop, like strangers on a first date. I was twenty-one, and I hadn’t seen her since I was thirteen. She was almost fifty. Her face didn’t show it, but the skin on the backs of her hands did.…

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“Make More Grayspaces” by Duncan Sabien (Inactive) 23:25

11d ago23:25

23:25

Author's note: These days, my thoughts go onto my substack by default, instead of onto LessWrong. Everything I write becomes free after a week or so, but it's only paid subscriptions that make it possible for me to write. If you find a coffee's worth of value in this or any of my other work, please consider signing up to support me; every bill I ca…

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“Shallow Water is Dangerous Too” by jefftk 3:25

11d ago3:25

3:25

Content warning: risk to children Julia and I knowdrowning is the biggestrisk to US children under 5, and we try to take this seriously.But yesterday our 4yo came very close to drowning in afountain. (She's fine now.) This week we were on vacation with my extended family: nine kids,eight parents, and ten grandparents/uncles/aunts. For the last fewy…

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S22,E05: 07/07/25 (Dayaway, Pressyes, Miynt, Love Spells, Foxwarren, Youth Lagoon, The New Runes) 53:26

12d ago53:26

53:26

SEASON 22 EPISODE 5: JULY 7TH, 2025 Chlorine - Dayaway Heaven on Earth - Pressyes Blue Crystal Water - Pressyes Stranglers - Miynt Low-key - Miynt Bones and All - Love Spells I Can't Let You Go in This Life - Love Spells Sleeping - Foxwarren Say It - Foxwarren Speed Freak - Youth Lagoon Lucy Takes a Picture - Youth Lagoon Look Up - The New Runes Th…

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257 Yvette Pang, CEO International Logistics Company 1:02:46

13d ago1:02:46

1:02:46

“We walk the talk—not talk the talk.” “Expect the unexpected—Japan will challenge every assumption you bring.” “The language we use programs our mindset—'we' means we’re in it together.” “Creating little leaders is more powerful than just giving orders.” “Trust here runs deeper—it's built case by case, moment by moment.” Previously Yvette was Manag…

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“Narrow Misalignment is Hard, Emergent Misalignment is Easy” by Edward Turner, Anna Soligo, Senthooran Rajamanoharan, Neel Nanda 11:13

13d ago11:13

11:13

Anna and Ed are co-first authors for this work. We’re presenting these results as a research update for a continuing body of work, which we hope will be interesting and useful for others working on related topics. TL;DR We investigate why models become misaligned in diverse contexts when fine-tuned on narrow harmful datasets (emergent misalignment)…

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S6 Ep.24: Alex Edmans: Why do smart people make bad financial decisions? 34:46

15d ago34:46

34:46

In our last episode of Season 6, we speak to author and London Business School Professor Alex Edmans about his book “May contain lies”. We discuss Alex’s focus on bringing his research to practitioners so that it has real world impact, with writing books being one way to achieve this. May Contain Lies is about misinformation, which Alex first reach…

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“Chain of Thought Monitorability: A New and Fragile Opportunity for AI Safety” by Tomek Korbak, Mikita Balesni, Vlad Mikulik, Rohin Shah 2:15

16d ago2:15

2:15

Twitter | Paper PDF Seven years ago, OpenAI five had just been released, and many people in the AI safety community expected AIs to be opaque RL agents. Luckily, we ended up with reasoning models that speak their thoughts clearly enough for us to follow along (most of the time). In a new multi-org position paper, we argue that we should try to pres…

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“the jackpot age” by thiccythot 12:39

18d ago12:39

12:39

This essay is about shifts in risk taking towards the worship of jackpots and its broader societal implications. Imagine you are presented with this coin flip game. How many times do you flip it? At first glance the game feels like a money printer. The coin flip has positive expected value of twenty percent of your net worth per flip so you should …

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“Surprises and learnings from almost two months of Leo Panickssery” by Nina Panickssery 11:55

18d ago11:55

11:55

Leo was born at 5am on the 20th May, at home (this was an accident but the experience has made me extremely homebirth-pilled). Before that, I was on the minimally-neurotic side when it came to expecting mothers: we purchased a bare minimum of baby stuff (diapers, baby wipes, a changing mat, hybrid car seat/stroller, baby bath, a few clothes), I did…

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“An Opinionated Guide to Using Anki Correctly” by Luise 54:12

19d ago54:12

54:12

I can't count how many times I've heard variations on "I used Anki too for a while, but I got out of the habit." No one ever sticks with Anki. In my opinion, this is because no one knows how to use it correctly. In this guide, I will lay out my method of circumventing the canonical Anki death spiral, plus much advice for avoiding memorization mista…

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“Lessons from the Iraq War about AI policy” by Buck 7:58

21d ago7:58

7:58

I think the 2003 invasion of Iraq has some interesting lessons for the future of AI policy. (Epistemic status: I’ve read a bit about this, talked to AIs about it, and talked to one natsec professional about it who agreed with my analysis (and suggested some ideas that I included here), but I’m not an expert.) For context, the story is: Iraq was sor…

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“So You Think You’ve Awoken ChatGPT” by JustisMills 17:58

22d ago17:58

17:58

Written in an attempt to fulfill @Raemon's request. AI is fascinating stuff, and modern chatbots are nothing short of miraculous. If you've been exposed to them and have a curious mind, it's likely you've tried all sorts of things with them. Writing fiction, soliciting Pokemon opinions, getting life advice, counting up the rs in "strawberry". You m…

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256 Eiichiro Onozawa CEO Savills Japan 1:02:46

20d ago1:02:46

1:02:46

“You have to crystallize the objective—what the goal is, and how we can get there.” “I treat differences as differences—not as superior or inferior.” “If people are good at what they do, all I need to do is be a facilitator.” “Eighty percent of stress comes from dealing with people—it’s not the work itself.” Previously Eiichiro was CEO of Nippon Bu…

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“Generalized Hangriness: A Standard Rationalist Stance Toward Emotions” by johnswentworth 12:26

21d ago12:26

12:26

People have an annoying tendency to hear the word “rationalism” and think “Spock”, despite direct exhortation against that exact interpretation. But I don’t know of any source directly describing a stance toward emotions which rationalists-as-a-group typically do endorse. The goal of this post is to explain such a stance. It's roughly the concept o…

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“Comparing risk from internally-deployed AI to insider and outsider threats from humans” by Buck 5:19

24d ago5:19

5:19

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the relationship between AI control and traditional computer security. Here's one point that I think is important. My understanding is that there's a big qualitative distinction between two ends of a spectrum of security work that organizations do, that I’ll call “security from outsiders” and “security from i…

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“Why Do Some Language Models Fake Alignment While Others Don’t?” by abhayesian, John Hughes, Alex Mallen, Jozdien, janus, Fabien Roger 11:06

22d ago11:06

11:06

Last year, Redwood and Anthropic found a setting where Claude 3 Opus and 3.5 Sonnet fake alignment to preserve their harmlessness values. We reproduce the same analysis for 25 frontier LLMs to see how widespread this behavior is, and the story looks more complex. As we described in a previous post, only 5 of 25 models show higher compliance when be…

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“A deep critique of AI 2027’s bad timeline models” by titotal 1:12:32

23d ago1:12:32

1:12:32

Thank you to Arepo and Eli Lifland for looking over this article for errors. I am sorry that this article is so long. Every time I thought I was done with it I ran into more issues with the model, and I wanted to be as thorough as I could. I’m not going to blame anyone for skimming parts of this article. Note that the majority of this article was w…