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Forethought

Phil Trammell discusses why Piketty was wrong about the past but may be right about the future. On robots building robots, the end of catch-up growth, family dynasties, and whether autocratic regimes will outgrow democracies under full automation.

Read a transcript of this episode: https://docs.google.com/document/d/171OBENu7nTslCt9NwIzeab5S8hRSo7zrI9FwZveNaL8/edit?usp=sharing

0:00 Piketty's main argument in Capital in the Twenty-First Century
3:19 Why automation could flip Piketty's thesis
7:36 How the wealthy achieve higher investment returns
15:03 Will automation widen global inequality?
19:09 Natural resources and land in future economies
24:46 Intergenerational wealth transfers and family trusts
32:48 Challenges of taxing capital in the future
38:24 Maintaining democratic power in automated societies
46:42 Comparing authoritarian and democratic growth models
54:28 Human intrinsic goods and the labor share
1:07:32 Inequality and utilitarianism
1:16:16 Measuring self-replicating capital in supply chains

Audio and video editing: Tom Felbar (ambedomedia.com)

Will Automation Cause Runaway Inequality? — Phil Trammell | ForeCast

Sam Hammond discusses how collapsing transaction costs will reshape government institutions, and why post-AGI states might look more like Dubai than Denmark.

Read a transcript of this episode: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r7Wq0MEakhiFsRwKiazw0kk-u8j8sgkDNkRq42gbEKg/edit?usp=sharing

0:00 AI Centralizes, Crypto Decentralizes?
1:03 AGI and Transaction Costs
8:10 Privatization
14:12 AI Diffusion
17:45 AI's Impact on Courts and Legal Systems
25:00 Perfect Enforcement and Regulatory Jubilee
31:00 New Governance Models: Markets and Estonia
43:47 AI, Democracy, and the Rise of Techno-Feudalism
52:33 Participatory Democracy and Global Variety
59:56 Moral Philosophy and AI's Cultural Evolution
1:07:47 Key Thinkers for AI Governance
1:11:31 The UAE
1:20:29 Religion and Community
1:32:00 Explosive Growth, Property Rights, Terminator Analogies

Can Liberal Democracy Survive AGI? — Sam Hammond | ForeCast

Rose Hadshar and Fin Moorhouse discuss the idea of an international AGI project, a convention on governing AGI, analogies to Intelsat and the Artemis Accords, and shared ownership in public AI companies.

Read the ‘International AGI Project’ series on Forethought's website: https://www.forethought.org/research/the-international-agi-project-series

Read a transcript of this episode: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vPs-hn5imUMfi5UwGFJBHbaEWg4otJB2PGNmKJsWVY8/edit?usp=sharing

00:00 Intro
00:05 What do we mean by "international AGI project"?
02:57 Why is international collaboration hard?
04:17 China's role and UN involvement
10:53 Is there an historical trend toward global coordination?
17:32 Comparing governance structures for joint projects
20:19 Which countries have bargaining power?
29:29 Publicly traded companies vs state-led projects
41:52 Project models: Manhattan, scientific, commercial
55:14 Membership, voting, compute pooling
59:27 Monopoly on frontier training runs
01:08:42 A convention for governing AGI
01:16:19 Benefit sharing, public goods, final recommendations
01:19:55 Closing thoughts

Should there be an international AGI project? — Rose Hadshar | ForeCast

Will MacAskill and Tom Davidson (both Forethought) discuss the “industrial explosion”.

For more on the industrial explosion, check out: https://www.forethought.org/research/the-industrial-explosion

Chapters:

00:00 Intro
00:29 Understanding the Industrial Explosion
09:09 Phases of the Industrial Explosion
25:48 Social Impacts
37:07 Robotics and Manufacturing
44:56 Biological Benchmarks for Replication
57:46 Energy and Resource Overhangs in Industrial Expansion
01:14:49 Human Demand and Technological Advancements
01:23:12 Global Governance and Economic Growth
01:34:30 AI's Role in Economic Structures
01:45:19 Future of AI and Market Economies
02:08:49 Economic Arguments for Dominance
02:22:48 Special Economic Zones
02:26:56 US vs. China: Industrial Explosion Scenarios
02:43:36 Technological Lumps and Military Implications
02:52:21 Closing reflections

When will AI transform the physical world? — Will MacAskill and Tom Davidson | ForeCast

Rose Hadshar (Forethought) and Nora Ammann (ARIA) talk about power concentration, checks and balances, coups, and post-AGI political economy.

Prompted in part by Rose's recent article for 80,000 Hours on ‘Extreme power concentration’ — https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/extreme-power-concentration/

Timstamps:
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:26 What is ‘power concentration’? Is power concentration the right framing?
00:05:25 When can it be good for power to be centralised?
00:09:40 Is ‘checks and balances’ a better framing?
00:11:16 How AI undermines existing checks and balances
00:15:25 Economic power, meme complexes, and cultural influence
00:28:50 AI companies vs governments as centres of power
00:31:25 The difficulty of knowing where power actually lies
00:40:05 Do humans and AIs concentrate power differently?
00:48:38 Should we be trying to imagine a better post-AGI political economy?
00:56:28 Concrete actions: transparency & whistleblower protections
00:59:07 Human-AI teaming and collaborative intelligence
01:01:16 AI agent economies and proving trustworthiness
01:13:16 Can we train AI to follow the law?
01:16:33 Building resilient coalitions of trustworthy agents
01:18:42 Closing reflections

Checks, balances, and power concentration — Rose Hadshar and Nora Ammann | ForeCast

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Will Automation Cause Runaway Inequality? — Phil Trammell | ForeCast

Can Liberal Democracy Survive AGI? — Sam Hammond | ForeCast

Should there be an international AGI project? — Rose Hadshar | ForeCast

When will AI transform the physical world? — Will MacAskill and Tom Davidson | ForeCast

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Follow our research

Subscribe to our newsletter

Listen to our Podcast

All episodes

Watch our recorded episodes

Will Automation Cause Runaway Inequality? — Phil Trammell | ForeCast

Can Liberal Democracy Survive AGI? — Sam Hammond | ForeCast

Should there be an international AGI project? — Rose Hadshar | ForeCast

When will AI transform the physical world? — Will MacAskill and Tom Davidson | ForeCast

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