Gladstone AI CEO: Washington won't slow AI until an 'AI Chernobyl' strikes
AaronBergman18 · x · 2026-11-07
A cross-posted NonZero podcast episode (via 80,000 Hours) features Jeremie Harris, CEO of Gladstone AI and coauthor of a 2024 State Department-commissioned AI risk action plan.
- He argues only an "AI Chernobyl" — a disaster severe enough that the president fears for their own life — will flip Washington's stance on AGI risk.
- He has bet for six years that the scaling curve won't bend; his biggest miss: "I thought we ought to be dead by now." Capabilities improve almost automatically, but "no one knows how to make a curve of control or a curve of alignment."
- He recounts pushing to get "AGI" into a Biden-era State Department report.
- He criticizes Open Philanthropy (now Coefficient Giving) for discouraging outsiders from briefing Washington and fostering a grantee culture of telling funders what they wanted to hear — while crediting it with being "much more right" on the problem overall.
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