Host John Sherman had just asked Yampolskiy what he makes of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's flat dismissal of AI risk, and how much access Huang has to the president. This is the whole of Yampolskiy's answer. The exchange then turns to why enormous wealth doesn't reduce the incentive: "You have a strong bias towards not losing money, even if you can gain more."
I would listen carefully to the speech he gave at the big AI conference in July, I believe. He mentioned keeping humanity safe and in control. I think those are important indicators.
Do you think that, man, one of the worst actors in this whole thing, I think, is Jensen Wong. And, you know, the stuff he says about risk with just his outright denial of any sort of relevance to the risk conversation and the amount of power he has in this thing. And apparently the amount of the president's ear that he has is also very significant. What do you think of his just outright denial, dismissal of any risk concerns and his position in this conversation?
I suspect he might have a slight economic dependence on this not slowing down or arguing against data centers. Slight bias.
But he's so rich. Like, I don't understand. I've never had hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars. So I have no idea what that's like. But the idea that you have a billion dollars and people
have a strong bias towards not losing money, even if you can gain more, not losing is priority. And it doesn't matter what the number is. You just don't want it to go down. You like all the zeros in your account to stay there.
And that never changes? Like, that's so crazy to me that, like, you wouldn't be like. You don't