#251 – The UK's former head AI safety scientist on how to solve alignment before superintelligence arrives | Geoffrey Irving

#251 – The UK's former head AI safety scientist on how to solve alignment before superintelligence arrives | Geoffrey Irving

August 11, 2026 · 2h 2m

About this episode

Geoffrey Irving discusses the urgent need for AI alignment before superintelligence emerges.

When should governments slow the race toward superintelligence? According to Geoffrey Irving , the careful answer is sometime in the past. The useful answer is now. Geoffrey — formerly a safety researcher at OpenAI and Google DeepMind and chief scientist at the UK AI Security Institute — expects full-blown superintelligence in roughly two to three years. *** Want to work with Geoffrey to help align superintelligence? Resolution is hiring! https://80k.info/work-at-resolution *** The leading AI companies all have broadly similar plans for keeping superintelligence under control: Train models to have good character Use increasingly capable AIs to supervise other AIs Monitor them closely for signs of deception or scheming Geoffrey thinks that combination could work. The alarming part is that nobody has a strong argument that it will . He expects a crucial “phase shift” as models move beyond human intelligence: Below that threshold, humans can usually tell whether a model’s work is good and correct its mistakes. Above it, the models themselves will increasingly determine the feedback used to train their successors. In this episode, Geoffrey and new host Tom Reed explore what might go…

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