# Understanding AI World Models w/ Chris Canal

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051/understanding-ai-world-models-w-chris-canal
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051/understanding-ai-world-models-w-chris-canal.md
Podcast: [muckrAIkers](https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051)
Published: 2025-01-27T15:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://kairos.fm/muckraikers/e011/
Audio file: https://op3.dev/e/media.transistor.fm/ca6e9de7/411a72bc.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/muckraikers-7026051/episodes/understanding-ai-world-models-w-chris-canal
Duration seconds: 11985

## Resource

Chris Canal, co-founder of EquiStamp, joins muckrAIkers as our first ever podcast guest! In this ~3.5 hour interview, we discuss intelligence vs. competencies, the importance of test-time compute, moving goalposts, the orthogonality thesis, and much more. A seasoned software developer, Chris started EquiStamp as a way to improve our current understanding of model failure modes and capabilities in late 2023. Now a key contractor for METR, EquiStamp evaluates the next generation of LLMs from frontier model developers like OpenAI and Anthropic. EquiStamp is hiring, so if you're a software developer interested in a fully remote opportunity with flexible working hours, join the EquiStamp Discord server and message Chris directly; oh, and let him know muckrAIkers sent you! (00:00) - Recording date (00:05) - Intro (00:29) - Hot off the press (02:17) - Introducing Chris Canal (19:12) - World/risk models (35:21) - Competencies + decision making power (42:09) - Breaking models down (01:05:06) - Timelines, test time compute (01:19:17) - Moving goalposts (01:26:34) - Risk management pre-AGI (01:46:32) - Happy endings (01:55:50) - Causal chains (02:04:49) - Appetite for democracy (02:20:06) - Tech-frame based fallacies (02:39:56) - Bringing back real capitalism (02:45:23) - Orthogonality Thesis (03:04:31) - Why we do this (03:15:36) - Equistamp! Links EquiStamp Chris's Twitter METR Paper - RE-Bench: Evaluating frontier AI R&D capabilities of language model agents against human experts All Trades article - Learning from History: Preventing AGI Existential Risks through Policy by Chris Canal Better Systems article - The Omega Protocol: Another Manhattan Project Superintelligence & Commentary Wikipedia article - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom Ref…

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