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The Cognitive Revolution / episode intelligence

Controlling Tools or Aligning Creatures? Emmett Shear (Softmax) & Séb Krier (GDM), from a16z Show

27 Dec 2025 10 published claims 0 attributable people
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Claim mix

belief 5evaluation 4prediction 1

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10 published records

01 / evaluation

Like, historically, people thought that slavery was okay, and then they thought it wasn't. And I think you can very meaningfully say that we made moral progress.

“Like, historically, people thought that slavery was okay, and then they thought it wasn't. And I think you can very meaningfully say that we made moral progress.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

02 / evaluation

And so, and most people don't know their goals, I think. And so, I think when you have agents and giving them goals or whatever, I think that should be part of the equation that we actually, we don't know all the goals.

“And so, and most people don't know their goals, I think. And so, I think when you have agents and giving them goals or whatever, I think that should be part of the equation that we actually, we don't know all the goals.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

03 / prediction

Which I mean, he actually could be right about, but like, but that's what he, in my opinion, that's what he's wrong about is he thinks the only path forward is a tool that you control and that therefore, and he correctly, very wisely sees that if you go and do that and you make that thing powerful enough, we're all going to ******* die.

“Which I mean, he actually could be right about, but like, but that's what he, in my opinion, that's what he's wrong about is he thinks the only path forward is a tool that you control and that therefore, and he correctly, very wisely sees that if you go and do that and you make that thing powerful enough, we're all going to ******* die.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

04 / evaluation

Let's say we scale up one of these tools, because you can make a super powerful tool that doesn't have these meta stable, like the states I'm talking about are not necessary to have a very smart tool, which is sort of basically a tool is like a first second order model that just doesn't meaningfully have pleasure and pain, right?

“Let's say we scale up one of these tools, because you can make a super powerful tool that doesn't have these meta stable, like the states I'm talking about are not necessary to have a very smart tool, which is sort of basically a tool is like a first second order model that just doesn't meaningfully have pleasure and pain, right?”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

05 / evaluation

Every homeostatic loop is effectively a belief in its belief space. This is a, if you've promised the free energy principle, active inference, Carl Friston, this is effective what the free energy principle says, is that if you have a thing that is persistent and its existence depends on its own actions, which generally it would for an AI, because if it does the wrong thing, it goes away.

“Every homeostatic loop is effectively a belief in its belief space. This is a, if you've promised the free energy principle, active inference, Carl Friston, this is effective what the free energy principle says, is that if you have a thing that is persistent and its existence depends on its own actions, which generally it would for an AI, because if it does the wrong thing, it goes away.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

06 / belief

Like, it walks like a person, it talks like a person, and it like, it's in some Android body, and you're like, If it's running on silicon and I'm asking like, what is there some observation you could make that would make you say like, yeah, this is a person like me, like other biology, like other people that I care about that I grant personhood to, or, and not like for instrumental reasons, not because like, oh yeah, we're giving it a right because like we give a corporation rights or whatever.

“Like, it walks like a person, it talks like a person, and it like, it's in some Android body, and you're like, If it's running on silicon and I'm asking like, what is there some observation you could make that would make you say like, yeah, this is a person like me, like other biology, like other people that I care about that I grant personhood to, or, and not like for instrumental reasons, not because like, oh yeah, we're giving it a right because like we give a corporation rights or whatever.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

07 / belief

I mean, I'm not a substrate childrenist, I guess, if that's the, but But I think you need more than just it acts exactly as behaviourally indistinguishable.

“I mean, I'm not a substrate childrenist, I guess, if that's the, but But I think you need more than just it acts exactly as behaviourally indistinguishable.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

08 / belief

I suppose that, yeah, I think that given how I understand these systems, I think there's no contradiction in thinking that an AGI can remain a tool, an ASI can remain a tool, and that this has implications about how to use it and your implications around things like care, about whether you can get it to work 24-7 or something.

“I suppose that, yeah, I think that given how I understand these systems, I think there's no contradiction in thinking that an AGI can remain a tool, an ASI can remain a tool, and that this has implications about how to use it and your implications around things like care, about whether you can get it to work 24-7 or something.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

09 / belief

I mean, I'm not really sure, right? Because I think if I give a model a certain goal, then I would like the model to kind of follow that instruction and kind of reach that particular goal.

“I mean, I'm not really sure, right? Because I think if I give a model a certain goal, then I would like the model to kind of follow that instruction and kind of reach that particular goal.”
Speaker
Not verified from transcript
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution
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