Show Notes
The AI industry loves to talk about safety, but their version of safety is putting us at risk.
More like this: The Palestine Laboratory w/ Antony Loewenstein For our second to last series episode of Computer Says Kill, we’re joined by Heidy Khlaaf, a global expert in designing safe critical systems for high-risk infrastructures such as energy grids, nuclear power plants, and weaponry. Heidy outlines how the AI industry is working to redefine and shrink this essential, established field of expertise. By parading around sham “safety benchmarks”, this circus of an industry is marketing statistics that literally amount nothing at best, and proof that today’s LLMs aren’t safe at all, at worst. We explore the centuries of precedent and practice established in the safety field and examine how today’s AI safety “experts” are eroding this work to rush the incorporation of shoddy tech into the lucrative nooks and crannies of our militaries, economies, and physical infrastructure. Further reading & resources: Safety Co-Option and Compromised National Security: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Weakened AI Risk Thresholds — Heidy Khlaaf & Sarah Myers West, 2025 Social Benefit versus Technological Risk: What is our society willing to pay for safety? — Chauncey Starr, 1969 Israel built an ‘AI factory’ for war. It unleashed it in Gaza. — WaPo December 2024 Join The Maybe Collective to explore the politics of technology through fresh ideas that you won't hear anywhere else. Sign up for monthly insights, access to exclusive digital events, and real ways to get more involved on issues you care about. Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout
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When a tech executive says AI will be doing your job next year, it sounds like a forecast. Dr. Carissa Véliz argues it's something else: a command, delivered in advance, that works only if enough of us obey it. If you believe the prediction, you buy the product, reorganize your company, and bet the economy on it, and the prediction comes true because you made it so. So who gets to make predictions that stick? And what would it take to stop treating them as news and start hearing them as orders? More like this: AGI is Scientifically Impossible w/ Adam Becker In this episode, Alix Dunn talks with Carissa Véliz, associate professor at Oxford's Institute for Ethics in AI and author of Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, From Ancient Oracles to AI. Carissa explains why a prediction is a command disguised as a description, how powerful people use algorithms to fulfill their own forecasts, and why the alternative just might be being relying on preparation over prediction. Further reading & resources: Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, From Ancient Oracles to AI — Carissa Véliz Beware the Power of Prediction — Carissa Véliz, TED Talk The Origins of Totalitarianism — Hannah Arendt The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk” — Émile P. Torres, Current Affairs
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