DeepMind: The Podcast

Imagine a future where we interact regularly with a range of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) assistants — and where millions of assistants interact with each other on our behalf. These experiences and interactions may soon become part of our everyday reality.In this episode, host Hannah Fry and Google DeepMind Senior Staff Research Scientist Iason Gabriel discuss the ethical implications of advanced AI assistants. Drawing from Iason's recent paper, they examine value alignment, anthropomorphism, safety concerns, and the potential societal impact of these technologies. Timecodes: 00:00 Intro01:13 Definition of AI assistants04:05 A utopic view06:25 Iason’s background07:45 The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants paper13:06 Anthropomorphism14:07 Turing perspective15:25 Anthropomorphism continued20:02 The value alignment question24:54 Deception27:07 Deployed at scale28:32 Agentic inequality31:02 Unfair outcomes34:10 Coordinated systems37:10 A new paradigm38:23 Tetradic value alignment41:10 The future42:41 Refle