[Linkpost] “How to prevent AI’s 2008 moment (We’re hiring)” by felixgaston

[Linkpost] “How to prevent AI’s 2008 moment (We’re hiring)” by felixgaston

From LessWrong (30+ Karma) by LessWrong

May 8, 2026 · 5 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the recruitment efforts of CeSIA and draws parallels to the financial crisis of 2008.

This is a link post. TL;DR; CeSIA, the French Center for AI Safety is recruiting. French not necessary. Apply by 22 May 2026; Paris or remote in Europe/UK. On August 27, 2005, at an annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Raghuram Rajan, then chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, argued in front of central bank governors and top officials that the innovations of the previous decade in banking had not made the world safer. The financial instruments built over the previous decade, he argued, had become so intricate that even their creators no longer fully understood the risks they carried. Risk had migrated to institutions the supervisory system was not designed to watch. And the people running those institutions were compensated in ways that rewarded short-term performance over long-term stability. The reception was hostile. Lawrence Summers, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary at the time, rose from the audience to attack the paper, calling its premise "slightly Luddite" and "largely misguided," and warning that the kind of changes Rajan argued for would only reduce the productivity of the financial sector. Three years after Jackson Hole, major banks collapsed, first Bear…

Topics covered

  • AI safety
  • recruitment
  • financial risk
  • banking crisis
  • economic stability

Keywords

  • AI
  • safety
  • recruitment
  • financial crisis
  • Raghuram Rajan
  • Lawrence Summers
  • CeSIA
  • banking
  • risk management

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: CeSIA, International Monetary Fund, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG

Places: France, Europe, UK

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