Anthropic researcher warns more than 10% chance AI ‘could kill us all’

19:49Geoffrey Hinton:So the challenge for champagne producers is to kind of mitigate some of these effects when they blend together the different grapes?

19:59Evan Hubinger:It depends on the type of wine because with non-vintage champagnes, they can blend a lot of different vintages together to blend out the spikes in alcohol in 2026. With vintage wines, it's a different consideration. By picking early, actually, they've retained a lot of the restrained potential alcohol. So we won't see a huge change in the final wines. I mean, you know, champagne is conventionally about 12 to 12.5%. This new derogation is only really exceptional parcels, just to make sure that they don't fall foul of regulations.

20:31Geoffrey Hinton:When you use the phrase parcels, you mean grapes coming from particular vineyards? Exactly. So some of those potentially could be the figure that's been quoted in some of the coverages up to 15 percent alcohol. But that effectively is going to be reduced, brought down to more typical average.

20:49Evan Hubinger:There might be some champagnes that will be very high level, but they'll be very exceptional, I think, because you won't see it across the board. It's really for these vineyards that maybe have very high sunlight and warm sites for whatever reason. In the shops, you won't see wines that are very different from what you see now. There might be a few more wines that are maybe 12.5 % rather than 12 % or 13 % instead of 12.5%. You're not suddenly going to see a lot of wines that are, you know, 14.5 % on the shelves.

21:20Geoffrey Hinton:Is it something that those particular champagne producers might want to promote to actually kind of make something of the fact that it has a slightly higher than average alcohol content? Is that likely to attract drinkers?

21:32Evan Hubinger:Conventionally, I think people think of champagne as kind of restrained alcohol, high acid, restrained flavor, ripeness, kind of style of wine. So it kind of threatens how people think about champagne, you know, and the identity of champagne, maybe to a certain extent. We know that the grapes are very high quality this year. So the concentration, the flavor concentration and so on will be very good. But yeah, I think in the future, especially with the balance also between the different elements in the wine, it could actually threaten the identity a little bit, at least change it a little bit.

22:07Geoffrey Hinton:And that is presumably an ongoing issue because we are told to expect more of these long, hot summers, certainly in Western Europe in the coming years.

22:17Evan Hubinger:Exactly. I mean, there are other ways to mitigate the hierarchies as well. I mean, I know the regional body has been experimenting with partial de-alkalisation of the base wine. That's the wine before, you know, the second fermentation of the adding of the bubbles, if you like. There are different techniques in vinification, as well as viticulture, to mitigate those things, which producers can consider. But yeah, it's definitely something that has the potential to affect the identity of the wine.

22:43Geoffrey Hinton:That is a master of wine there, giving us his assessment of Wine Hughes.

23:18Geoffrey Hinton:Welcome back to NewsHour. River Ahmad has become the first Afghan woman to climb Mount Everest. As a youngster, she dreamed of climbing the mountain with her brother, who later killed himself. As a teenager growing up in Afghanistan, River survived a Taliban attack. Living now in Australia, she spoke to the BBC's Soda Bar Haideri about what inspired her to reach the summit of the world's tallest mountain above sea level.

23:42Evan Hubinger:I just wanted to prove that Afghan women can do different things. Afghan women are not powerless as we live in the darkest part of the history. You come from Ghazni province. It's very mountainous. And I've read in interviews that you used to go up there with your brother. You had a mutual dream to climb Everest together. When my brother grew up, we both used to go to the mountain and we used to climb and we used to just laugh. And we used to just shout on the mountain. You know, you can hear your reflection of your voice. And I was like, I want to climb Mount Everest. And I was like, OK, we will do that.

24:24Evan Hubinger:I don't have my brother with me right now. And obviously, I miss him all the time. How did you mentally prepare? It's a big mountain and obviously different to the mountains of Ghazni where you grew up. First, I climbed a big mountain in my head. Finally, one day after three months, I woke up and I said, yes, I feel that I can climb. I just want to mention one specific time I questioned my decision. Why I put my life in danger to prove something. Probably I will die. I will never go back home. There were so many dead bodies and you see people were coming down, struggling to breathe. I just stand on the rock and I close my eyes.

25:07Evan Hubinger:I said to myself, you have a chance to try. Afghan women in Afghanistan, they don't have this chance. And the moment I said to myself, you can do it, you survived Taliban attack. Try harder because Afghan women cannot do it and give them hope. In 2014, you had your own experience with the Taliban. When the bus you were travelling on was attacked, many were killed. But you survived because you smudged period blood on your face and pretended to be dead. When I finished my year 12, I just wanted to go to study in Kabul. they store biases along the way and they just start fire and just began i had my period you know women when get pressure get scared the blood is coming constantly and i was like i'm not going to die i love life what should i do what should i do they were getting closer and i took the blood and i put it on my face and i just let pretend that i'm dead and they came to me and they just looked and said, oh, this prostitute lady is dead, and then leave the bus.

26:15Evan Hubinger:What is your message to Afghan women? I want them to dream big. I want them to believe themselves. I know it's a very tough time, but they are stronger than they think, and they can do different things.

26:30Geoffrey Hinton:That's Mountaineer Riva Ahmed talking to the BBC's Soda Bar Haderi.

26:47Geoffrey Hinton:You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service with me, Sean Lay. The Israeli authorities are taking further action against British and European linked organisations and individuals in response to sanctions imposed on goods from settlements in the occupied West Bank. The diaspora minister in the Israeli government has written to Israeli Border Control recommending that representatives from Oxfam and Save the Children, among other groups, should be denied entry. Meanwhile, Israel says the British consulate in East Jerusalem must cease work within 30 days. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said his country was putting action behind its words of support for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

27:29Geoffrey Hinton:Mr Burnham argues that actions by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank are intended to make a future Palestinian state unviable. Well, Aaron Katsoff is someone who could be affected by these sanctions. An American by birth, he's living in the illegal Israeli outpost of Esh Kodesh, not far from the settlement of Shiloh. He runs a small local business called the Settler Cellar, which makes wine. NewsHour's James Menendez asked Aaron Katsoff about the potential impact.

27:56Evan Hubinger:So we grow grapes, we make wine, we have a nice family business. I would say the first ones and the ones who get hurt the most are the actual Palestinians. The people, they work by us. They actually, when they work by us, they get four times or three times the amount of money that they would get working locally. And the first ones that you're hurting are the actual Palestinian Arab local workers. All my neighbors who have wineries, a big portion of their workers are Palestinian. And those will be the first ones losing their job. Now, you have to remember, just as a democracy country to another democracy country, besides the high pay that the Palestinians will get when they work by us, we also get full rights, leave days, sick days, vacation days, something that they don't get when they work in the Palestinian Authority.

28:42Evan Hubinger:And you're taking that away from them. But are you suggesting that those Palestinians will be laid off? I mean, presumably those businesses will continue to trade within Israel. I'm saying that if the business will get hurt, the first ones that will be hurt will be the weak link, which are the regular workers who are Palestinian. That's what I'm saying. Britain introduced these sanctions. And as I mentioned, other countries followed suit, including Canada, France, Poland and Spain and several others. In order to stop the further expansion of settlements, it also said that the occupation of the West Bank was illegal and was preventing the creation of the two state solution.

29:18Evan Hubinger:I mean, I'm assuming that you just don't believe in that two-state solution. So here, that's a great talk about two states. So, you know, if you remember, like not so long ago in history, when you had many Moroccans cross the border by foot. I'm not talking about to Spain. I'm talking about to the Western Sahara. 300 ,000 Moroccans were marched, the Green March, famous, and they occupied the Western Sahara. Everybody condemned it, but still the UK and Europe, most of their fish, they buy from Morocco, not just from Morocco, from occupied territory. That's not recognized by the UN, occupied territory, the Sahara.

29:56Evan Hubinger:Why doesn't it not just that, also fish, minerals and everything? Now, why is that that the UK all of a sudden cares about its two-state solution when you have a full nation, the Western Sahara, that are being jailed, murdered, fleeting Morocco, and you continue doing business with Morocco? and purchasing the fish from them. But just on my question, do you not believe there should be a Palestinian state as the UK government and others believe? The day that Jordan becomes a democracy, that will be the Palestinian state because there are majority Palestinians in Jordan today. But just very briefly, you don't believe there should be a Palestinian state on, for example, the land where you live?

30:34Evan Hubinger:On the land where you live? I think like this. I think that Palestinian state on the East Bank. So not where you are? In the East Bank. I think it would be great in the East Bank. There's already a majority of Palestinians there. In the West Bank, there's not a majority of Palestinians.

30:50Geoffrey Hinton:That's Aaron Gatsoff talking to NewsHour's James Menendez. Sanctions often fail to have the impact their proponents hope they will have. Already, Israel is implementing retaliation, which will affect aid organisations that are UK-based and who provide assistance to Palestinians. Dr. Mustafa Bhagouti is Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative Movement. He joins us from the city of Ramallah, the administrative center for Palestinians in the West Bank. Dr. Bhaguchi, thanks for being with us on NewsHour. What do you make of what Aaron Katsoff was saying there, that in the end, if sanctions damage settlers' business, the people who will end up suffering are the Palestinians who work in those businesses?

31:32Evan Hubinger:First of all, this is a big lie, because Israel has dismissed already 250 ,000 Palestinian workers who are now unemployed. So to claim that they care about Palestinian workers is nothing but a misleading statement.

31:48Geoffrey Hinton:Well, I think he wasn't necessarily saying whether he cared or not. What he was saying was it will be a consequence of sanctions. And that is a problem, isn't it? We talk about smart sanctions. But in the end, the policy option itself is a flawed one. It's a kind of sledgehammer that often misses the nut it's aimed at.

32:07Evan Hubinger:Can I answer you, please? Sure. you're talking about farmers who lost their land to this israeli settler this israeli settler is sitting on palestinian stolen land from palestinians and now he employs some of these farmers to work imagine your situation you own a land you have a farm somebody comes in he steals your land and then employs you and then he claims he's caring about us that's not true but if the outsiders It's all fault.

32:39Geoffrey Hinton:But if the outside country...

32:41Evan Hubinger:The reality is that today what we have witnessed from the measures taken by Britain and other 12 countries is the beginning of a big, big change which is showing how isolated Israeli policy is. Because Britain is following the decision of the International Court of Justice, which says that occupation is illegal, settlements are illegal, and settlement products are also illegal. And this is not enough. In my opinion, the sanctions should include the Israeli government itself because the Israeli government is the one that is funding and building illegal settlements.

33:25Geoffrey Hinton:I hear everything you're saying, but I still don't think you've given me an answer to my question. How do you deal with the consequence that sanctions can end up hurting the Palestinians potentially more than the settlers. That's not true.

33:39Evan Hubinger:That's a lie. Because the settlers are the ones who are making the profit. These workers, a small number of workers will be hurt. We will employ them. We'll find ways for them. The most important thing here is that you are talking about a crime of stealing people's land and then enslaving them. And now he claims he's caring about the slaves. That's not true.

34:02Geoffrey Hinton:I'm grateful you've answered the point. I was trying to get to because I think it's an important one. We often talk about sanctions. We often reflect on the fact that sanctions don't achieve their objectives. And one of the problems with sanctions, it is argued, is that they are punitive, but they don't actually change minds. And my question is, is that going to be possible with these sanctions? No.

34:25Evan Hubinger:What we see here is the beginning of what has happened before in South Africa. The apartheid system in South Africa would not have vanished if it wasn't for the boycott, divestment sanctions that were used by Europe and by other countries against it. That was the only way to liberate the people of South Africa, whether they were black or white, from the system of apartheid. And the sanctions on Israel, not only on settlements, is the way to liberate Palestinians and Israelis from the system of apartheid and the system of oppressing Palestinians, which has reached a horrible level where settler terrorists are now attacking Palestinian communities, burning houses, burning cars, already displacing more than 120 communities from their land.

35:14Evan Hubinger:The only solution besides Palestinian steadfastness today is that there will be boycott, sanctions, divestments from not only the settlements but the Israeli government that is funding, supporting and protecting these illegal settlers.

35:31Geoffrey Hinton:Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative Movement. Thank you.

35:46Geoffrey Hinton:The global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, says it's identified a new two-story building being used by North Korea to enrich uranium. It says that the building where Kim Jong-un, the country's leader, has been photographed inspecting steel tubes could contain up to 28 machines which can produce weapons grade uranium. Potentially that could lead to an additional four to eight bombs being produced each year. North Korea is estimated to have 60 warheads already. Let's speak now to Professor Hazel Smith, a career expert at SOAS in the University of London. Professor Smith, what do you make of the IAEA's announcement?

36:24Evan Hubinger:Well, it is part of its responsibility to try to monitor even those countries that are not covered by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, not just North Korea, but Israel, India and Pakistan, although, of course, they don't have direct access. So it's a part of their regular responsibilities to do this. We know that it's not a hidden program from the North Korean government. They've said often and loudly that they are going to continue to develop the nuclear program as long as they feel that the country is insecure. So it's a very plausible result that we're seeing or an outcome or research report that we're seeing from the Atomic Energy Authority.

37:08Geoffrey Hinton:How little do we actually know about North Korea's nuclear program? Not what it says it's doing, but what it is doing.

37:14Evan Hubinger:Well, we know a fair amount and we've had on and off since for the last 25 years, access to North Korea by Americans, by people employed by the Atomic Energy Authority. because at times of rapprochement and when there were negotiations going on, basically between the United States and North Korea, there was access allowed to outsiders to monitor different aspects of the programme. So we actually know a fair amount. There's quite a lot published. It's not a big secret.

37:50Geoffrey Hinton:And what about the discussions that happened in Donald Trump's first term? The suggestion that Pyongyang might have been interested in a nuclear deal with the United States. Is that still credible today?

38:04Evan Hubinger:Well, that's important. The nuclear tests took place between 2006 and 2017. The last one was in 2017. There was a very, very important meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore in 2018, where they came to a written agreement, quite a broad agreement, but nevertheless a start of an agreement between the United States and North Korea about denuclearization. There was a follow-up meeting involving Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump again in Hanoi in 2019. And at that meeting, there was wide expectation, because it was briefed by all sides, that there would be a deal involving some sanctions removal for the North Koreans, because they were sanctioned by the United Nations very heavily in 2016 and 17.

38:54Evan Hubinger:and in return North Korea would, and it said this up front, that it would dismantle its major nuclear facility which is at Yongon which is the area that the International Atomic Energy Authority is reporting on today. That didn't come to fruition in Hanoi partly because as John Bolton explained in his autobiography he persuaded Donald Trump not to move further with it.

39:19Geoffrey Hinton:so it remains an open question whether or not he might try this in his second term Professor Hazel Smith, SOAS at the University of London, thank you very much you're listening to NewsHour on the BBC World Service

39:44Geoffrey Hinton:This is Sean Lay with NewsHour live from the BBC in London Wildfires are not just a threat to the land and people where they erupt. Wind can carry toxic haze thousands of kilometres away. It's happening right now in Southeast Asia. Hundreds of wildfires across Sumatra and Kalimantan, which have scorched over 200 ,000 hectares of land there, have generated smoke affecting Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. For Indonesia, it's led to air pollution 15 times more severe than the level the World Health Organization advises is tolerable. From there, Liza Tambunan reports.

40:31Evan Hubinger:20-year-old Endang Susilawati has just lost her home. She's crying for help. Her family are still inside.

40:42Evan Hubinger:forest fires have been burning for weeks across indonesia firefighters and water bombing helicopters have been unable to control them the skies above parts of kalimantan indonesia's side of borneo island have turned an ominous glowing orange for millions living downwind every breath carries the acrid taste of burnt earth. Residents are increasingly concerned over the toll the haze is taking on their health, particularly for young children. This woman lives in Pontianak, one of the worst affected cities. I'm worried that we might all get sick one after another because of this haze. My niece is still young and her cough hasn't gone away for two weeks now.

41:31Evan Hubinger:She has been given antibiotics, but she is still coughing. Between July and August, Indonesia's health ministry recorded 50 ,000 cases of respiratory infections attributed to land and forest fires. More than 12 ,000 of those cases are children under the age of five. So the authorities are ramping up fire suppression efforts on the ground and in the air.

41:56Geoffrey Hinton:An integrated response is underway through land and air operations, including hotspot monitoring and extinguishing, aerial water bombing and weather modification. The government continues to strengthen prevention and response efforts with the main goals of protecting the public, reducing smoke impact and preventing fires from spreading.

42:20Evan Hubinger:But the fires continue to burn, led both by big companies and individual farmers to clean land for agriculture. And this year's Super El Niño weather pattern, bringing drought conditions, has made this Indonesia's worst fire season since 2015. The climate impact is staggering. Data from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Monitoring Service shows that Indonesian fires put out more than 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in just seven days earlier this month, accounting for more than one-third of the global total. And senior scientist Mark Parrington says satellite sensors may not pick up many of the peak fires burning in Indonesia.

43:03Evan Hubinger:And one of the aspects with peak fires is if they're burning at low temperatures or underground, they'd be below the detection limit of the sensors, which means we're not actually seeing them. We're only really seeing the above-ground fires. And so we're probably underestimating, possibly to quite some degree, the actual emissions in the end. The number of hotspots detected in August and early September surpassed 13 ,000, much higher than the 9 ,400 recorded over the same period in 2015, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry. Once again, Indonesia finds itself unable to do much else apart from waiting for the monsoon rains, which may not come for another two months.

43:50Geoffrey Hinton:That was the BBC's Indonesia correspondent, Lisa Tambunan.

43:58Geoffrey Hinton:Picking up on one of our earlier stories this news hour, according to the song Everything Stops for Tea, one of that beverage's virtues is that it's cheaper than champagne. But could this most ubiquitous of global thirst quenchers have a serious downside? Does regular consumption of hot drinks increase our risk of developing cancer? New research from the University of Oxford in the UK suggests that it might. Let's talk now to the lead researcher, Dr. Keren Papier, who joins us live. Dr. Papier, thanks for being with us on News Ad. Tell us about your research.

44:30Evan Hubinger:We conducted what's the largest study to date, looking at how drinking warm and hot beverages relate to the risk of different types of esophageal cancers. So we looked in 1 million UK adults from two different cohort studies. And our study adds evidence that drinking hot and very hot beverages could increase the risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

44:55Geoffrey Hinton:What do we mean by very hot?

44:58Evan Hubinger:We didn't measure what the temperature meant. So in research with nearly 1 million people, that's a bit tricky to do. But what was really...

45:06Geoffrey Hinton:Feels quite a subjective thing, I suppose, doesn't it? It is a subjective thing. What you can tolerate. Yeah.

45:11Evan Hubinger:That's right. But we do see this big jump in risk going from warm to hot to very hot. So people's definition of it did appear to show a clear difference in risk.

45:22Geoffrey Hinton:A tea made immediately after a kettle is fully poured is obviously touching boiling point. Once it's poured into a cup, it must lower it a little bit. Would that be regarded as too hot, as a risky, a very hot liquid at that point?

45:39Evan Hubinger:Yeah, so the International Research Cancer Agency in 2016 actually published that very hot beverages, which are more than 65 degrees, were considered to be carcinogenic to humans. So that would be significantly above that, yeah. Yeah, that sounds quite piping hot.

45:57Geoffrey Hinton:What about the risks though? I mean, we're talking about a very rare form of cancer, aren't we?

46:04Evan Hubinger:This is true. This cancer is not as common. It's more common in some parts of the world than in others. For instance, in the UK, it's the 14th most common cancer. So the lifetime risk is much lower in the UK than, say, in some countries in Asia where the lifetime risk may be higher.

46:20Geoffrey Hinton:And South America, there are places where people actually choose to drink herbal beverages very hot, don't they?

46:27Evan Hubinger:That's right. So there's a drink called mate, which is consumed with a metal straw and the beverage can transfer to your mouth quite quickly, remain very hot.

46:35Geoffrey Hinton:And is that a place where some people have identified a potential risk? That's right.

46:40Evan Hubinger:So we've long had studies coming from South America and from different parts of Asia and the Middle East and Africa that have seen these associations. But we knew less about typical Western populations where how beverages are consumed may differ to what we see in where you just described, for example.

46:59Geoffrey Hinton:And just briefly, also how many cups you drink, I guess, a day?

47:03Evan Hubinger:Yeah, we did find that even after taking temperature into consideration, that consuming six or more drinks a day compared with fewer than six drinks a day was associated with a 70 % higher risk. So the number of drink appears to matter as well.

47:18Geoffrey Hinton:Dr. Karen Papier, it's a fascinating piece of research. Thank you very much. Probably best absorbed over a drink of some kind. Maybe a glass of water is the safest bet in this case. that's news app thanks very much for your company this hour do don't forget though that we are here twice a day every day wherever you are do join us

47:45Evan Hubinger:get more with bbc podcasts wherever you listen be the first to listen to your favorite shows like evil genius good bad billionaire and you're dead to me with a subscription to bbc podcasts premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription.