All Quotes

"The more complicated the game board, the more advantage goes to the player with more knowledge and more intelligence and more understanding of the game."

"We know, from years of talking to people about this subject, that some people are swayed by the abstract observation that a superintelligence could exploit options they didn’t even know were possible. For others, however, explanations such as these end up making them feel like we’re cheating in a child’s game of pretend. If we can’t even tell a story about how the bad guy is supposed to win, how is that convincing? We emphasize again: Reality has never been bound by that rule. Even if an Aztec soldier couldn’t have figured out in advance how guns work, the big boat on the horizon contained them anyway."

"We predict this with confidence: Once some AIs go to superintelligence – and nobody will delay much in pushing AIs that far, if in the middle of some great arms race – humanity does not stand a chance. Ends are sometimes easier to call than pathways. The only part of our story that is a real prediction is the ending – and then, only if the story is allowed to begin."

"The greatest and most central difficulty in aligning artificial superintelligence is navigating the gap between before and after.… Ideas and theories can only be tested before the gap. They need to work after the gap, on the first try."

"From each of the four curses we named, we draw these lessons: 1. An engineering challenge is much harder to solve when the underlying processes run on time scales faster than humans can react…. 2. An engineering challenge is much harder to solve when there is a narrow margin for error, especially if it’s a narrow margin between “unimpressive” and “explosive.”… 3. Self-amplifying processes, like an overheating reactor boiling off its coolant water and then overheating more, leave little room for error…. 4. Complications make engineering problems worse…."

"From these lessons in combination, we infer an additional lesson for engineers: If someone doesn’t know exactly what’s going on inside the complicated device subject to all these curses – speed, narrow margins, self-amplification, complications – then they should stop. They should shut it down immediately, at the moment the behavior looks strange; don’t wait until the behavior becomes visibly concerning."

"Computer security is widely understood to be a problem so hard, so cursed, that it cannot be solved, period."

"I want my songs to free their hearts and instill hope that everything will be okay"

"When I write I am writing for what i feel and when people relate to it, that is a bonus. But I am not just making music for myself, It's for everyone."

"Computer security is a test of an engineer’s ability to nail down every single path the computer could take, in the face of adversaries who can search all possible ways to perturb the system. It is a famously losing battle – even though the engineers can fully control and craft their own computer’s code. We dub this central challenge the curse of edge cases: To be secure, a computer system must work in the face of cases that are outside of the normal and expected range, cases that occur on the edges of possibility."

"Space probes. Nuclear reactors. Computer security. What do all these lessons add up to, and what can we learn from them about the difficulty of aligning an artificial superintelligence? An artificial superintelligence is like a space probe, in that we cannot test it in quite the same environment where it needs to work, and by default it is not retrievable or correctable once it rises high above us…. An artificial superintelligence is like a nuclear reactor, in that its underlying reality involves immense, potentially self-amplifying forces, whose inner processes run faster than humans can react. An artificial superintelligence is like a computer security problem, in that every constraint an engineer tries to place upon the system might be bypassed by the intelligent forces that those constraints hinder."

"We usually try to avoid shouting. It doesn’t help to shout, most of the time. It just makes people think you’re undisciplined. But at some point, after you’ve calmly gone through all the premises of your argument, we think it becomes unhelpful to downplay, lest people think it’s all just a game of calm words. When it comes to AI, the challenge humanity is facing is not surmountable with anything like humanity’s current level of knowledge and skill. It isn’t close. Attempting to solve a problem like that, with the lives of everyone on Earth at stake, would be an insane and stupid gamble that NOBODY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO TRY."

"Perhaps you don’t believe us about any of the foreseeable reasons why shaping ASI is unreasonably hard. There’s an independent and separate case for disaster, an alternate set of historical lessons: Humans sometimes flub easy problems, never mind hard problems."

"If you know the history of science, this kind of talk is recognizable as the stage of folk theory, the stage where lots of different people are inventing lots of different theories that appeal to them personally, the way people talk before science has really gotten started on something. They’re the words of an alchemist who’s decided that some complicated philosophical scheme will let them transmute lead into gold."

"The issue is not that AIs will desire to dominate us; rather, it’s that we are made of atoms they could use for something else."

"Likewise, the problem is not that some people will have “evil” AIs and other people will have “benevolent” ones. The problem is that nobody anywhere has any idea how to make a benevolent AI, that nobody can engineer exact desires into AI. Flatly asserting that you will is not the same as presenting a solution."

"We consider interpretability researchers to be heroes, and do not mean to degrade their work when we say: It’s not a good sign, when you ask an engineer what their safety plan is, and they start telling you about their plans to build the tools that will give them a better window into what the heck is going on inside the device they’re trying to control."

"Insofar as the AI has weird alien preferences, escape is in fact the course of action that best fulfills its objectives. Attempts to escape are not a weird personality quirk that an engineer could rip out if only they could see what was going on inside; they are generated by the same dispositions and capabilities that the AI uses to reason, to uncover truths about the world, to succeed in its pursuits."

"“We’ll make them care about truth, and then we’ll be okay.” “We’ll design them to be submissive. “We’ll just have AI solve the ASI alignment problem for us.” These are not what engineers sound like when they respect the problem, when they know exactly what they’re doing. These are what the alchemists of old sounded like when they were proclaiming their grandiose philosophical principles about how to turn lead into gold."

"When it comes to AI alignment, companies are still in the alchemy phase. They are still at the level of high-minded philosophical ideals, not at the level of engineering designs. At the level of wishful grand dreams, not carefully crafted grand realities. They also do not seem to realize why this is a problem."

"When imagining some new, unprecedented piece of future history, there is a temptation to fall into imagining that it will all go sensibly, rather than the way things usually go in history books. People sometimes ask us: How could the AI companies possibly be doing this thing, if matters are as we say? And maybe the simplest real answer is: Because this is the sort of awful, sad, real situation that you read about in history books, and not in the sensible world that exists only in imagination."

"But if someone has read the history of engineering disasters, they should quickly realize this phase of the standard template for disaster. It’s the part where the most informed and most worried parties have to downplay their fears, because the rest of the system hasn’t caught up, and others would give them strange looks…. History is full of other examples of catastrophic risk being minimized and ignored…."

"This is the normal way humanity learns to surmount challenges: We deny the problem, reality smacks us around a bit, and then we start treating the problem with more respect. The Titanic sank, and most people who were aboard died. But nowadays passenger ships have enough lifeboats, and nowadays if the captain said to board them then you’d board them. We don’t hype ships up as unsinkable anymore. We make a mistake the first time, and learn from it the second time. With ASI, there is no second time."

"Speed is often better, but AI is different from nearly every problem we’ve faced so far. When missteps kill everyone, you can’t just run fast and accept a few early mistakes."

"One of the lessons I learnt was not to rush things because everything has its time and place."

"The experts in this field argue in opaque academic terms about whether everyone on earth will die quickly (our view); versus whether humanity will be digitized and kept as pets by AIs that care about us to some tiny but nonzero degree; versus whether there’s a 20 percent chance we die, and an 80 percent chance that superintelligence will be harnessed successfully by a corporation, which will then be able to wield its power as they see fit.… When these are the debates experts are having, you don’t have to be certain which experts are right to understand that the current situation is not okay."

"It is not a matter of your own country outlawing superintelligence inside its own borders, and your country then being safe while chaos rages beyond. Superintelligence is not a regional problem because it does not have regional effects. If anyone anywhere builds superintelligence, everyone everywhere dies."

"We believe the ASI alignment problem is possible to solve in principle, by the sort of people so inhumanly smart that they never optimistically believe some plan will work when it won’t."

"If anyone builds it, everyone dies. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by benevolent corporations or selfish ones. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by researchers in the East or researchers in the West. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by reckless optimists or people who say they respect the problem. Nobody has the knowledge or skill to make a superintelligence that does their bidding."

"I am not well at all and I feel that if I had gone out of the country to seek better treatment, I would be better, but the court refused to give me my passport as part of bail conditions. I stay at my parents’ home because I have nothing. I don’t have a house and even a car, so I am under my parents’ care"

"Especially not seeing my children is very painful for me. Sometimes I start having thoughts of committing suicide — and don’t be surprised [if I do] . . . In a couple of days, it will be my daughter’s and my son’s birthdays. I have not spoken to them even over the phone. My lawyers have written to [Chiwenga’s] lawyers many times for me to get access to my children but that has not helped"

"It’s made me think whether we’re stealing from our clients under the guise of providing them with justice"

"I am of course emotionally and psychologically messed up"

"Justice is supposed to be just and tempered with mercy, humanity, empathy – all absent from our justice delivery system"

"Delays at the Plumtree/Ramokgwebana Border. We are collaborating with the Government of Botswana to address this challenge by transforming the current border into a One-Stop Border Post"

"In the interim, efforts are being made to improve efficiency and extend the operating hours of the border post"

"On the issue of processing passports, I am glad to inform you that the Government will, in the first quarter of 2026, install the e-passport system here at the Embassy in Gaborone"

"This will mean that as long as your documents are in order, you will now be able to apply for and collect your passports at the embassy within seven working days"

"Zimbabwe remains open for business for its nationals based abroad. Our mantra is that ‘Nyika Inovakwa Nevene Vayo / Ilizwe Lakhiwa Ngabanikazi Balo"

"We encourage you to form consortiums aimed at investing in agriculture, mining, infrastructure, tourism and real estate in line with your skill set and in recognition of the enabling environment the Government has created in those sectors"

"The valuable skills you have acquired in your sojourns here in Botswana should be harnessed for the promotion of business enterprises in your homeland, particularly in the domain of value addition and beneficiation"

"The Government is taking measures to address the concerns of our diaspora communities, including those pertaining to the ease of doing business in Zimbabwe and the challenges faced in the repatriation of profits and other related investments"

"I would like to assure you that the Government is ready to continue improving the ease of doing business in Zimbabwe and protecting the interests and welfare of the Zimbabwean business community in Botswana"

"Let me reiterate that you should take time to reflect and consider investing in your motherland"

"We have come to attend the fifth Regional Children’s Celebrations or Commemoration. This is the United Nations Children’s Day, but then the region decided to celebrate this day together to recognise the importance of children in the region. It started with Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and others were coming in. Now we are quite happy, we now have Namibia in, Mozambique, Malawi, South Africa, and we have Eswatini, they have all joined. This is a day when the children interact, and specifically for the Zimbabweans, we have the junior parliament, and we have the child president"

"It is this time that the children give to the Presidents what they feel should be done by authorities for them. Because they are the future leaders of tomorrow. And so I am here to represent His Excellency the President, who was supposed to be coming here to join with his colleagues in the region to commemorate this day"

"Every community I've been part of, from high school to tertiary, I've joined choirs."

"Music has always been my path."

"I come from a lineage of singing women. My achievements are the dreams they aspired to."

"In everything we do as black people, it is always important to know where we come from and we can show that through the art so easily because people are influenced easily by the art."