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38.7 - Anthony Aguirre on the Future of Life Institute | AXRP - the AI X-risk Research Podcast
webA short interview with Anthony Aguirre, co-founder and executive director of the Future of Life Institute, discussing FLI's history, current AI safety activities, policy work, and the relationship between FLI and Metaculus, recorded at the Bay Area Alignment Workshop.
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Importance: 42/100podcast episodecommentary
Summary
Daniel Filan interviews Anthony Aguirre about his roles at the Future of Life Institute and Metaculus, both of which he co-founded roughly a decade ago. The conversation covers FLI's origins, current AI safety and policy activities, and the relationship between forecasting (Metaculus) and long-term risk planning. Aguirre reflects on how FLI has evolved as AI timelines have compressed dramatically.
Key Points
- •Anthony Aguirre is a theoretical physicist who co-founded FLI with Max Tegmark ~10 years ago to address risks from transformative technologies including AI.
- •FLI has been involved in high-profile AI policy efforts such as the AI pause open letter and improving the EU AI Act.
- •Metaculus was co-founded alongside FLI to support better forecasting and decision-making about the future, though Aguirre notes it has been 'surprisingly little' useful to FLI directly.
- •The interview was recorded at the Bay Area Alignment Workshop run by FAR.AI.
- •Topics include FLI's current funded work, AI policy positions, and the evolving landscape of AI existential risk.
Cited by 2 pages
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Future of Life Institute | Organization | 46.0 |
| Metaculus | Organization | 50.0 |
1 FactBase fact citing this source
| Entity | Property | Value | As Of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Future of Life Foundation (FLF) | Headcount | 5 | Jun 2025 |
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38.7 - Anthony Aguirre on the Future of Life Institute | AXRP - the AI X-risk Research Podcast
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The Future of Life Institute is one of the oldest and most prominant organizations in the AI existential safety space, working on such topics as the AI pause open letter and how the EU AI Act can be improved. Metaculus is one of the premier forecasting sites on the internet. Behind both of them lie one man: Anthony Aguirre, who I talk with in this episode.
Topics we discuss:
Anthony, FLI, and Metaculus
The Alignment Workshop
FLI’s current activity
AI policy
Work FLI funds
Daniel Filan (00:09):
Hello, everyone. This is one of a series of short interviews that I’ve been conducting at the Bay Area Alignment Workshop , which is run by FAR.AI . Links to what we’re discussing, as usual, are in the description. A transcript is, as usual, available at axrp.net . And, as usual, if you want to support the podcast, you can do so at patreon.com/axrpodcast . Well, let’s continue to the interview.
(00:29):
All right, well, I am currently speaking with Anthony Aguirre.
Anthony Aguirre (00:32):
Nice to be here.
Anthony, FLI, and Metaculus
Daniel Filan (00:33):
For those who aren’t as familiar with you and what you do, can you say a little bit about yourself?
Anthony Aguirre (00:39):
I’m a theoretical physicist by original training. I still hold a professorship at UC Santa Cruz, and I’ve studied a whole range of theoretical physics things in the early universe and gravity and foundations of quantum mechanics and all sorts of fun stuff. But about 10 years ago or so, I, as well as another colleague, Max Tegmark , and a few others, started to think about the long-term future, and in particular, transformative technologies and the role that they would be playing, and decided to start up a non-profit thinking about transformative technologies and what could be done to steer them in maybe a more favorable direction. At that point, AI was just starting to work a little bit and things like AGI were clearly decades away, if not centuries in some people’s opinion. So this was a more theoretical and pleasantly abstract set of things to think about.
(01:36):
But nonetheless, we felt like it was coming and started a bunch of activities and that was the birth of the Future of Life Institute . And I’m now, 10 years later, executive director of the Future of Life Institute pretty much full-time. And so I’ve got sort of a split between Future of Life Institute, my academic appointment and my students there, and a couple of other hats that I wear, including Metaculus .
Daniel Filan (01:58):
How does Metaculus fit into all of that? I imagine once you’re both a professor and helping run FLI, I’m surprised you had the time to start this other thing.
Anthony Aguirre (02:07):
Well, I started Metaculus at the same time as FLI, so I didn’t know what I was getting into at that point.
Daniel Fi
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