Why Are We Sprinting Off the A.I. Cliff? | The Ezra Klein Show
The Ezra Klein Show
874,276 views
Fears of out-of-control A.I. have reached a boil over the last few weeks, and several industry executives have called for a coordinated slowdown of A.I. development. But if our goal is to control A.I. — and that should be our goal — slowing down isn’t enough. We need to stop the labs from doing something they’re already on the cusp of doing: recursive self-improvement, or handing over the training of A.I. models to A.I.
00:00 The Chasm
00:52 Why Frontier Labs Are Alarmed
01:41 Recursive Self-Improvement
04:16 How A.I. Models Are Trained
05:48 The Alignment Problem
14:32 The Call Is Coming From Inside the House
17:48 A.I. Race Dynamics
19:05 Loss of Control as Common Ground
25:16 The Case for Stopping R.S.I.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft claiming copyright infringement. The companies have denied those claims.)
Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/op...
Watch more on @EzraKleinShow
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...
20 Comments
We all survived COVID for this? Heartbreaking.
Thank you Ezra!
We should stop now, because we might not be able to stop later!
Regulations make sense, but the AI companies are in a classic prisoner's dilemma with themselves and with China - we know that controlling the frontier is crucial, but they also don't want to be behind in the AI race with other competitors and with China. This needs to be a joint effort, but given the distrusts between companies and the two superpowers, the frontier might not be able to be slowed
Why Are We Sprinting Off the A.I. Cliff? | The Ezra Klein Show
The Ezra Klein Show
874,276 views
Fears of out-of-control A.I. have reached a boil over the last few weeks, and several industry executives have called for a coordinated slowdown of A.I. development. But if our goal is to control A.I. — and that should be our goal — slowing down isn’t enough. We need to stop the labs from doing something they’re already on the cusp of doing: recursive self-improvement, or handing over the training of A.I. models to A.I.
00:00 The Chasm
00:52 Why Frontier Labs Are Alarmed
01:41 Recursive Self-Improvement
04:16 How A.I. Models Are Trained
05:48 The Alignment Problem
14:32 The Call Is Coming From Inside the House
17:48 A.I. Race Dynamics
19:05 Loss of Control as Common Ground
25:16 The Case for Stopping R.S.I.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft claiming copyright infringement. The companies have denied those claims.)
Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/op...
Watch more on @EzraKleinShow
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...