Retro Tech, New AI, and the Blackmailing Bot - With Paul Ford
In this episode, we unpack a wild Anthropic experiment where an AI agent named “Alex” is told it’s about to be replaced… and responds by threatening to expose an executive’s affair if anyone dares shut it down. Casual!
Sara and Becca start diving into what this experiment tells us about AI “goals,” self-preservation, and why humans are so bad at recognizing sentience in anything that isn’t us. If we can’t even agree on what a “soul” is, how would we ever know if an AI had one?
Then we’re joined by writer, builder, and retro-computing fan Paul Ford, president and co-founder of Aboard, an…
The skinny
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