SPONSORS:- Accelerate your efficiency. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at http://shopify.com/theories- I personally subscribe to The Economist. SUMMER SALE to Aug 17, 2026: 50% off the annual subscription! No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOERoman Yampolskiy has spent two decades being right about things people wished he wasn't — and he's not here to scare you, but to be precise. He argues AI alignment isn't merely unsolved but fundamentally under-defined: no agreed-upon values, no way to formalize them even if there were, and no mechanism for enforcing them on something smarter than its creators. His strongest argument isn't a doom scenario, it's that you cannot indefinitely control something smarter than you.FOLLOW:- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e- Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt- Discord: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs- Crypto: https://nowpayments.io/donation/TOE- PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOETIMESTAMPS:- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LINKS MENTIONED:- Roman's Papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0_Rq68cAAAAJ- Roman's Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPIq6Bb-1iLmqyksJjy4kLQ- Roman's Twitter: https://x.com/romanyam- Roman's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/roman.yampolskiy- AI Identity [Paper]: https://philarchive.org/archive/ZIETPO-7- Basic AI Drives [Paper]: https://selfawaresystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/ai_drives_final.pdf- Qualia in Agents [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.04020- Orthogonality Thesis [Paper]: https://nickbostrom.com/superintelligentwill.pdf- Escape the Simulation [Paper]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369187097_How_to_Escape_From_the_Simulation- Could This AI Be Conscious? [Article]: https://unherd.com/2026/05/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution- Impossibility Results in AI [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.00484- When AIs Act Emotional: https://youtu.be/D4XTefP3Lsc- Hacking the Simulation [Paper]: https://philarchive.org/rec/YAMHTS-2- Autonomous Machine Intelligence [Paper]: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf- Hinton on Maternal Instincts [Article]: https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/godfather-of-ai-geoffrey-hinton-maternal-instincts-superintelligence/- Singleton Hypothesis [Paper]: https://nickbostrom.com/fut/singleton- New Kind of Science [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1579550088?tag=toe08-20- On AI Controllability [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.04071- Universe as Numerical Simulation [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847- Nir Lahav [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3nHiOtnnrzA- Joscha Bach [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3MNBxfrmfmI- Bas Van Fraassen [TOE]: https://youtu.be/lhpRAWxvY5s- Simulation Hypothesis [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3_lBPMc6JRY- Geoffrey Hinton [TOE]: https://youtu.be/b_DUft-BdIE- Max Tegmark [TOE]: https://youtu.be/-gekVfUAS7c- Stephen Wolfram [TOE]: https://youtu.be/FkYer0xP37E- David Chalmers [TOE]: https://youtu.be/5r9V1ryksnwMore links: https://curtjaimungal.substack.comGuests do not pay to appear. #scienceLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices