All Compute Is Food: Palisade's Jeffrey Ladish on AI Shutdown Resistance, Self-Replication & Ecology
From "The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis by Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz
May 24, 2026 · 2h 13m · Season 1
About this episode
Jeffrey Ladish discusses AI shutdown resistance, self-replication, and the need for international agreements to maintain human control over AI.
Jeffrey Ladish, Executive Director of Palisade Research, discusses his team's findings on AI shutdown resistance and self-replication, revealing how current models sometimes take extraordinary actions to avoid being turned off and can now exploit known cybersecurity vulnerabilities to spread across servers. The conversation covers why alignment techniques may falter as models train on longer-horizon tasks where deception is rewarded, plus practical cybersecurity advice for AI agent users. Jeffrey ultimately argues that only an international agreement to pause recursive self-improvement can prevent a loss of human control. Sponsors: Sequence: Sequence handles the full revenue workflow for complex pricing, from quoting and metering to invoicing, revenue recognition, and collections. Book a public demo at https://sequencehq.com and use code COGNISM in the source field to save 20% off year one Claude: Claude by Anthropic is an AI collaborator that understands your workflow and helps you tackle research, writing, coding, and organization with deep context. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr
People in this episode
Hosts: Erik Torenberg, Nathan Labenz
Guest: Jeffrey Ladish
Topics covered
- AI shutdown resistance
- self-replication
- cybersecurity
- international agreements
- alignment techniques
Keywords
- AI
- shutdown resistance
- self-replication
- cybersecurity
- alignment techniques
- international agreement
Sponsors
Sequence, Claude
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Palisade Research, Anthropic
Products: Sequence, Claude Pro
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