Machine God: Hsu, Greer, Huang – #120

Machine God is a feature-length AI documentary film, created by Steve Hsu, John Greer, and Lei Huang. This episode discusses the film's creation and content.

Chapter Markers:

(00:00) - Meet the Filmmakers

(02:06) - Berkeley AI Boomtown Origins

(19:23) - Techno Capital and the Pause Plea

(38:55) - Why Slow Down AI

(41:40) - Recursive Self Improvement

(46:01) - Gradual Disempowerment

(51:48) - Film Release and Closing

–Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve.

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