Next week for the 80,000 Hours Podcast I'll be interviewing Carl Shulman, advisor to Open Philanthropy, and generally super informed person about history, technology, possible futures, and a shocking number of other topics.
He has previously appeared on our show and the Dwarkesh Podcast:
- Carl Shulman (Pt 1) - Intelligence Explosion, Primate Evolution, Robot Doublings, & Alignment
- Carl Shulman (Pt 2) - AI Takeover, Bio & Cyber Attacks, Detecting Deception, & Humanity's Far Future
- Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implications
He has also written a number of pieces on this forum.
What should I ask him?
I'd like to hear his advice for smart undergrads who want to build their own similarly deep models in important areas which haven't been thought about very much e.g. take-off speeds, the influence of pre-AGI systems on the economy, the moral value of insects, preparing for digital minds (ideally including specific exercises/topics/reading/etc.).
I'm particularly interested in how he formed good economic intuitions, as they seem to come up a lot in his thinking/writing.