Why Bridgewater's CIO Says AI's Human Extinction Risk Is Real

Greg Jensen was one of the earliest backers of both OpenAI and Anthropic, and at Bridgewater Associates, where he is the managing chief investment officer, he leads the hedge fund’s AI strategy. As an early adopter of the technology, he has a lot of thoughts on where things stand right now in terms of model capability and safety, as well as the broader economic impacts of AI. Just recently, he published an op-ed in the New York Times that proposes a “token tax,” to help mitigate the job losses that AI might cause. (Bridgewater predicts as much as 18% of US jobs might be displaced in five years.) We last spoke with Jensen in 2023, and so much of what we discussed then (like AI hallucinations) seems quaint now that models have come so far — capable of lying, cheating, and much worse. On this episode, Jensen tells us how Bridgewater is currently using AI, why there needs to be a stronger AI regulatory state, and why it feels like the AI discourse is starting to resemble the months before Covid-19 took over the world in 2020.

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