Roman Yampolskiy coined the term 'AI safety' in 2010 and has published over 100 papers on the dangers of AI.
Most Replayed Moment: AI Safety Expert Predicts The Next 20 Years! Will It Really Take All Jobs?
AI safety expert Roman Yampolskiy warns superintelligence is the last invention humanity will ever make — after that, it takes over everything, including the process of invention itself.
May 22, 2026
36:29
Difficulty: Intermediate
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The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: AI Safety Expert Predicts The Next 20 Years! Will It Really Take All Jobs?
AI safety expert Roman Yampolskiy warns superintelligence is the last invention humanity will ever make — after that, it takes over everything, including the process of invention itself.
May 22, 2026
36:29
Difficulty: Intermediate
Played
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This episode
Cast
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Futurist cited for his prediction that the technological singularity will arrive in 2045.
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AI safety expert and Professor of Computer Science who coined the term 'AI safety' in 2010; the primary guest discussing existential AI risk throughout the episode.
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Episode sponsor; described as one of the world's most downloaded travel apps that has helped over 1.8 billion guests find vacation rentals since 2010.
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Cited as a potential path to enhancing human intelligence through brain-computer interfaces to help humans remain competitive with AI.
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Mentioned as one of the leading companies developing humanoid robots at rapid speed.
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Cited as a real-world example of fully driverless taxi services already operating in Los Angeles, demonstrating that driver automation is not hypothetical.
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Used as an analogy for a distributed system that cannot be 'turned off' by any single actor, illustrating why a superintelligence also could not simply be unplugged.
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Used as an example of a deployed AI system whose builders must run experiments to discover its full capabilities, illustrating the black-box nature of modern AI.
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Science fiction franchise cited as an example of a story that avoids depicting superintelligence by simply banning AI within its fictional universe.
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Cited as the primary geopolitical rival in the AI race, used to argue that the US cannot unilaterally stop building advanced AI without ceding strategic advantage.
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Discussed in the context of leading global AI development and the geopolitical tension around whether the US should cede AI leadership to China.
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Used as a real-world example where both Tesla's self-driving vehicles and Waymo's driverless taxis are already operating, demonstrating driver automation is present-day reality.
This episode
Claims & Sources
3 / 14 cited (21%)
Factual claims made this episode, and whether a source was named.
Self-driving cars are already replacing human drivers, with Waymo operating driverless taxis in Los Angeles.
Driving is one of the most common occupations in the world.
AI became capable enough at coding that prompt engineering — once touted as a safe new career — is now itself being automated by AI within approximately two years.
No government currently has programs prepared to deal with unemployment rates approaching 99%.
Ray Kurzweil predicts 2045 as the year of the technological singularity.
As a percentage of total global knowledge, every individual human researcher gets relatively less knowledgeable every single day as AI generates knowledge faster than humans can absorb it.
Silicon substrate is faster, more resilient, and more energy efficient than biological neural substrate for the purpose of intelligence.
By 2030, humanoid robots will have sufficient flexibility and dexterity to compete with humans in all physical domains, including skilled trades like plumbing.
The cost to train sufficiently large AI models decreases every year, and what might cost a trillion dollars today could eventually be achievable on a single laptop.
Someone with a bachelor's degree in biology can probably already create a novel virus using advances in synthetic biology.
Even the engineers who build large AI models must run experiments on their own products to discover what capabilities those models possess, because the systems are not fully understood by their creators.
Booking.com has helped over 1.8 billion vacation rental guests find places to stay since 2010.
Nearly half of new hosts on Booking.com receive their first booking within a week of listing.
TL;DR
AI safety pioneer Dr. Roman Yampolskiy joins Steven Bartlett to discuss why all jobs — not just manual ones — will eventually be automated, why retraining is a dead end, and why the "just unplug it" argument is dangerously naive. Yampolskiy predicts humanoid robots competitive with humans by 2030 and a technological singularity by 2045, while arguing that superintelligence is the single most important existential challenge humanity faces. The key takeaway: unlike every prior technology, AI is not a tool but an agent — the last invention humanity will ever need to make.
#AI safety
#AGI risk
#job displacement
#technological singularity
#humanoid robots
#AI interpretability
#AI control problem
#existential risk
#future of work
#superintelligence
#cognitive bias
#autonomous agents
#job automation
#singularity
#AGI
#black box AI
#cognitive dissonance
#Roman Yampolskiy
#technological unemployment
#AI ethics
#self-driving cars
#Moore's Law
2 minute taster
The Last Invention: AI Takes Over the Process of Discovery
Fire was transformative. The wheel was transformative. But they stopped there — they couldn't invent new things. AI is an inventor that builds new inventors. Once it arrives, humanity's role in the process of discovery ends.
There Is No Plan B: All Jobs Will Be Automated
Every previous wave of automation displaced workers into new jobs. This time is fundamentally different. AI doesn't just replace one job — it replaces the very concept of a human worker, making every 'retrain into this instead' strategy obsolete.
You Can't Just Unplug It
People keep suggesting we can just unplug a dangerous AI. Yampolskiy's answer: try turning off Bitcoin. Try turning off a computer virus. Distributed systems can't be shut down — and a superintelligence will have already predicted your move and neutralised it.
Look closer
Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, AI safety expert and Professor of Computer Science, discusses why all jobs will eventually be automated, why the singularity is by definition unpredictable, and why humanity-level extinction from AI is a real and proximate risk.
Chapter list
- Singularity
- The theoretical point at which AI progress becomes so rapid that it is incomprehensible to humans; borrowed from physics where a singularity is a point beyond which normal laws break down and nothing can be observed.
- AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)
- An AI system with the ability to understand, learn, and apply intelligence across any intellectual task at or above human level — distinct from narrow AI, which excels only at specific tasks.
- Superintelligence
- A hypothetical AI system that significantly surpasses the cognitive abilities of the best human minds in virtually every domain, including scientific reasoning, social skills, and creative work.
- Black box AI
- An AI system whose internal decision-making processes are opaque even to its creators; inputs and outputs are observable but the reasoning pathway between them is not fully understood.
- Event horizon
- In physics, the boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing can escape; used metaphorically here to describe the point in time beyond which humans cannot predict or understand post-singularity AI behaviour.
- Neuralink
- A brain-computer interface company founded by Elon Musk that develops implantable chips aimed at connecting human brains directly to computers; cited here as a potential path to enhancing human intelligence.
- Prompt engineering
- The practice of crafting specific input instructions to elicit better outputs from AI language models; once considered an emerging career path, now itself being automated by AI.
- Waymo
- Alphabet's (Google's parent company) fully autonomous ride-hailing service operating driverless vehicles in cities including San Francisco and Los Angeles.
- Synthetic biology
- A field that applies engineering principles to biology to design and construct new biological parts, devices, or organisms — including the potential creation of novel pathogens.
- Moore's Law
- The observation by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles roughly every two years, effectively halving costs and doubling computing power over time.
- MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)
- A Cold War doctrine where two opposing powers with nuclear weapons are deterred from attacking each other because both would be destroyed; Yampolskiy applies this logic to uncontrolled superintelligence development.
- Manhattan Project
- The top-secret US-led research project during World War II that developed the first nuclear weapons; used here as a comparison for the scale of investment required to build superintelligence.
- Humanoid robot
- A robot with a body structure resembling a human, capable of operating in human environments; companies including Tesla are actively developing these for commercial deployment.
- Malevolent
- Having or showing a wish to do evil to others. Used by Yampolskiy to describe actors (human or AI) motivated by harmful intent.
- Paradigm shift
- A fundamental change in the underlying assumptions or framework of a discipline or society; used here to describe how AI-driven full employment automation is qualitatively different from all prior technological disruption.
- Cognitive dissonance
- The mental discomfort experienced when holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously; used here to describe workers who acknowledge AI progress in general but deny it applies to their own occupation.
- Dexterity
- Skill and ease in using one's hands or body; used in the context of humanoid robots needing sufficient fine motor control to perform physical jobs.
