For Humanity: An AI Risk Podcast

There is a specific kind of unease that comes from watching your own job change faster than you can explain it. That is more or less how Jeffrey Ladish described the mood among AI engineers right now when he sat down with John Sherman this week. Ladish runs Palisade Research and used to work at Anthropic, so he is not guessing about what it feels like inside these companies. According to him, rese...

Most of the AI timeline debate happens in software. Benchmark scores, model releases, the shape of the capability curve. Jon Billow watches a different number for a living: lead times. Billow is on the leadership team at BNS, a firm that manufactures and installs electrical and communication infrastructure. The same critical power equipment his teams put into data centers also goes onto Navy and C...

Most people who care about AI risk are focused on what happens inside the models. Elena Schlossberg has spent 12 years focused on what happens outside them - the concrete, the transmission lines, the water, and the electricity bill landing in your mailbox. She founded the Coalition to Protect Prince William County in Northern Virginia after Amazon Web Services quietly proposed a data center campus...

In this episode of For Humanity, John sits down with Daniel Roher - Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker and director of The Apocaloptimist , a new feature-length film designed as what Roher calls “a first date with AI” for people who haven’t been following the technology closely. Roher brings a career in high-profile documentary filmmaking and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. Now...

In this episode of For Humanity, John sits down with Philip Trippenbach, Strategy Director at the Seismic Foundation, a team of veteran advertising, PR, and communications professionals who have turned their expertise toward one of the most urgent challenges of our time: getting the public to actually care about AI risk. Philip brings a decade in journalism at the CBC and BBC, and another decade i...

In this episode of For Humanity, John travels to Brussels, Belgium for PauseCon — the global gathering of Pause AI volunteers and advocates — joined by board member and author Louis Berman and filmmaker Beau Kershaw. The goal: train activists to be more effective in the fight against AI risk. What unfolded was one of the most honest conversations in the AI safety movement about why, despite 80% pu...

TW: This episode deals with mental health, attachment, and AI-related distress. If you’re struggling, please seek support from a licensed professional or local crisis resources. In this episode of For Humanity, John sits down with Dorothy Bartomeo, a mom of five, entrepreneur, mechanic, and self-described AI “power user”, to discuss her deeply personal relationship with ChatGPT 4.0.What began as h...

In this episode of For Humanity, John sits down with AI professor and safety advocate David Krueger to discuss his new nonprofit Evitable, the race toward superintelligence, AI alignment, job loss, geopolitics, and why he believes we have less than five years to change course. David shares his journey from deep learning researcher to public advocate, his role in the 2023 Center for AI Safety extin...

What happens when AI risk stops being theoretical—and starts showing up in people’s jobs, families, and communities? In this episode of For Humanity, John sits down with Maxime Fournes, the new CEO of PauseAI Global, for a wide-ranging and deeply human conversation about burnout, strategy, and what it will actually take to slow down runaway AI development. From meditation retreats and personal sus...

What if the biggest mistake in AI safety is believing that laws, treaties, and regulations will save us? In this episode of For Humanity, John sits down with Peter Sparber, a former architect of Big Tobacco’s successful war against regulation, to confront a deeply uncomfortable truth: the AI industry is using the exact same playbook—and it’s working. Drawing on decades of experience inside Washing...

What if the greatest danger of AI isn’t extinction — but the quiet loss of our ability to think and choose for ourselves? In this episode of For Humanity, John sits down with journalist and author Jacob Ward (CNN, PBS, Al Jazeera; The Loop) to unpack the most under-discussed risk of artificial intelligence: decision erosion. Jacob explains why AI doesn’t need to become sentient to be dangerous — i...

In this episode of For Humanity, John Sherman sits down with Congressman Bill Foster — the only PhD scientist in Congress, a former Fermilab physicist, and one of the few lawmakers deeply engaged with advanced AI risks. Together, they dive into a wide-ranging conversation about the accelerating capabilities of AI, the systemic vulnerabilities inside Congress, and why the next few years may determi...

In this episode of For Humanity , John sits down with Liv Boeree — poker champion, systems thinker, and longtime AI risk advocate — for a candid conversation about where we truly stand in the race toward advanced AI. Liv breaks down why public understanding of superintelligence is so uneven, how misaligned incentives shape the entire ecosystem, and why issues like surveillance, culture, and gender...

In this episode of For Humanity , host John Sherman speaks with Esben Kran , one of the leading figures in the for-profit AI safety movement, joining live from Ukraine — where he’s exploring the intersection of AI safety, autonomous drones, and the defense tech boom. 🔎 They discuss: * The rise of for-profit AI safety startups and why technology must lead regulation. * How Ukraine’s drone industry...

Let’s face it: in the long run, there’s either going to be safe AI or no AI. There is no future with powerful unsafe AI and human beings. In this episode of For Humanity, John Sherman speaks with Professor Stuart Russell — one of the world’s foremost AI pioneers and co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach — about the terrifying honesty of today’s AI leaders. Russell reveals that th...

In this episode of For Humanity , John speaks with New York Assemblymember Alex Bores , sponsor of the groundbreaking RAISE Act , one of the first state-level bills in the U.S. designed to regulate frontier AI systems. They discuss: * Why AI poses an existential risk , with researchers estimating up to a 10% chance of extinction. * The political challenges of passing meaningful AI regulation at th...

What happens when AI collides with the next generation? In this episode of For Humanity #70 — Young People vs. Advancing AI, host John Sherman sits down with Emma Corbett, Ava Smithing, and Sam Heiner from the Young People’s Alliance to explore how artificial intelligence is already shaping the lives of students and young leaders. From classrooms to job applications to AI “companions,” the next ge...

Get 40% off Ground News’ unlimited access Vantage Plan at https://ground.news/airisk for only $5/month, explore how stories are framed worldwide and across the political spectrum. TAKE ACTION TO DEMAND AI SAFETY LAWS: https://safe.ai/act In Episode 69 of For Humanity: An AI Risk Podcast, we explore one of the most striking acts of activism in the AI debate: hunger strikes aimed at pushing Big Tech...

Get 40% off Ground News’ unlimited access Vantage Plan at https://ground.news/airisk for only $5/month, explore how stories are framed worldwide and across the political spectrum. TAKE ACTION TO DEMAND AI SAFETY LAWS: https://safe.ai/actTyler Johnston, Executive Director of The Midas Project, joins John to break down the brand-new open letter demanding that OpenAI answer seven specific questions a...

🚨 RIGHT‑WING AI ALARM | For Humanity #67 Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and other conservative voices are sounding fresh warnings on AI extinction risk. John breaks down what’s real, what’s hype, and why this moment matters. ⏰ WHAT’S INSIDE • The ideological shift that’s bringing the right into the AI‑safety fight • New bills on the Hill that could shape model licensing & oversight • Action s...

🎙️ Guest: Cameron Berg, AI research scientist probing consciousness in frontier AI systems📍 Host: John Sherman, journalist & AI-risk communicatorWhat does it mean to be alive? How close do current frontier AI models get to consciousness? See for yourself like never before. Are advanced language models beginning to exhibit signs of subjective experience? In this episode, John sits down with Ca...

For Humanity Episode #65: Kevin Roose on AGI, AI Risk, and What Comes Next🎙️ Guest: Kevin Roose, NYT columnist & bestselling author📍 Host: John Sherman, Director of Public Engagement at the Center for AI Safety (CAIS)In this landmark episode of For Humanity, I sit down with New York Times columnist Kevin Roose for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of artificial intelligence. We dig in...

In Episode #64, interview, host John Sherman interviews seventh grader Dylan Pothier, his mom Bridget and his teach Renee DiPietro. Dylan is a award winning student author who is converend about AI risk. (FULL INTERVIEW STARTS AT 00:33:34)Sam Altman/Chris Anderson @ TEDhttps: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MWT_doo68kCheck out our partner channel: Lethal Intelligence AILethal Intelligence AI - Home htt...

In an emotional interview, host John Sherman interviews Poornima Rao and Balaji Ramamurthy, the parents of Suchir Balaji. (FULL INTERVIEW STARTS AT 00:18:38)Suchir Balaji was a 26-year-old artificial intelligence researcher who worked at OpenAI. He was involved in developing models like GPT-4 and WebGPT. In October 2024, he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright laws by using propriet...

Host John Sherman conducts an important interview with Anthony Aguirre, Executive Director of the Future of Life Institute. The Future of Life Institute reached out to For Humanity to see if Anthony could come on to promote his very impressive new campaign called Keep The Future Human. The campaign includes a book, an essay, a website, a video, it’s all incredible work. Please check it out: https:...