Klaus Schwab and the End of the World He Built

Can a single leader fix a broken world? Or does the United Nations simply reflect our deepest global divisions without being able to bridge them? In this episode of We’re All Going To Die!!, we are joined by Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, former UN Deputy Secretary-General, to discuss the future of global diplomacy as the UN prepares to select a new Secretary-General. With the world facing unprecedented existential threats - from AI and nuclear proliferation to climate change and proliferating state-based conflicts - we explore whether the UN is still fit for purpose and what kind of leader it will take to navigate these turbulent times. What You’ll Discover: - Regulating Existential Threats: The urgent need for a “mediator-in-chief” to tackle challenges that transcend national boundaries: from the renewed nuclear arms race, to the considerable risk that Artificial Intelligence will run out of control and the reality that the UN itself did a better job of describing climate risk than containing it. - The Search for a “Bull in Sheep’s Clothing”: Why the most successful UN Secretaries-General are often underestimated bureaucrats who hide their sharp teeth until after they are selected. - Navigating a Fragmented World: How the rise of a new two-block global system led by the US and China is gridlocking the Security Council and pushing nations toward rival institutions. If the UN were dismantled tomorrow, we would have to reinvent it immediately. While the organisation may no longer be able to promise a perfect world, its true value today lies in its ability to keep humanity from the brink of catastrophe.

The future of Artificial Intelligence is too important to leave to computer scientists alone. Chris Olah of Anthropic said this at a symposium with Pope Leo. In this episode we bring an example. Alexandros Washburn is an urban planner and architect. He became fascinated by the power of AI to model urban resilience. He realized the models were impressive, but wrong. His fix offers a path to control AI agents without engineering endless guardrails into each agent, an approach that has visibly failed in several rogue incidents. His solution? Form AI agents in digital cities that can imbue in each of them behavior similar to the good citizenship cities have been inculcating in people since before ancient Athens. He is building just such a digital city, called Meta Gotham. Will it work? No way to know yet. But at least he is forcing the conversation outside the box of the frontier AI labs. His new book is Chatting with Barbarians: Can Cities Civilize AI?

Pope Leo XIV has entered the AI debate with a blunt challenge: artificial intelligence needs to be “disarmed.” Mike Oreskes and Edie Lush unpack Magnifica Humanitas with Fordham president Tania Tetlow, exploring AI, war, Silicon Valley power, colonialism, conscience, and why the humanities may matter as much as engineering in deciding who this technology serves. 00:00 Cold open: “AI needs to be disarmed” 01:07 Welcome to We’re All Gonna Die 03:06 Tania Tetlow joins the conversation 06:00 What Magnifica Humanitas means 09:52 Silicon Valley, Babel, and technological hubris 15:35 Who Pope Leo is and why his voice matters 17:53 Chris Olah on why AI labs need outside critics 25:50 Listening to people left out of AI decisions 27:35 AI, colonialism, data, and the Global South 33:24 Why the Industrial Revolution frame matters 39:35 Closing: every person is unique and irreplaceable

It is the biggest trial in the history of artificial intelligence.Elon Musk is trying to prove that his OpenAI co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, abandoned the nonprofit’s original mission, to build safe AI for the benefit of humanity, in pursuit of money and power.To make that case, Musk’s legal team called Stuart Russell, the UC Berkeley professor whose writing helped define the field of AI. For years, Russell has warned that unrestrained AI development could pose an existential threat to humanity.The judge allowed Russell to testify. But OpenAI’s lawyers successfully blocked him from making his central argument. The jury never heard his full warning about the risks of advanced AI.But you are not on that jury.In the debut episode of We’re All Going to Die!, Mike Oreskes and Edie Lush speak with Russell about the race toward artificial general intelligence, why he sees it as an arms race, and why he believes today’s AI companies are making irreversible bets on behalf of the rest of us.Chapters00:00 Opening: Musk v. OpenAI and the AI safety warning02:15 Meet Stuart Russell02:58 The AGI arms race04:35 The “six guys in an elevator” problem15:17 What would an AI Chernobyl look like?20:23 Amazon, Alexa, and mocking AI risk31:18 What governments can do now33:34 Where Stuart Russell sees hope35:47 Safe-by-design AI38:38 What listeners can do