The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 21 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Kahn: AI will lower average service prices while raising top-tier premiums
“So I think what will happen is the price of the average value of legal services or of accounting of marketing will go down. But if you can perform above average, I think people are going to put a real premium on that, because that's still going to be a very ra…”
Kahn: Practicing science without AI will be anathema within 10 years
“And I think in within 10 years, the idea that you can be a sort of any science in any science without using AI models to help assist what you're doing will also be anathema.”
Kahn: Open-source AI paired with consumer drones will empower terrorist groups
“The software potentially will be open sourced at some point. It can be matched with drones that can be kind of modified from commercially available. Consumer drones that can be very easily modified. And I think this will be, you know, it could be a huge, you k…”
Kahn: AI targeting in urban warfare will misidentify targets and kill civilians
“And I think when you start putting them in crowded urban environments and ask them to, You know, only kill the bad guys and spare the civilians that we're going to see mistakes being made, you know, where the systems misidentify targets.”
Jeremy Kahn: AI regulation should focus on present risks over existential fear
“I do not think that that fear should be the basis on which all AI regulation is based. And I do not think it's should crowd out efforts to police risks that are very real and here now around racial bias, around disinformation around job loss.”
Kahn: Goal-seeking AI agents could autonomously launch illegal phishing schemes
“It would just be really easy for one of these systems. I think even now to say, oh, well a good way to do this would be like, I'll run a phishing campaign on your behalf. And, you know, I'll just create a bunch of spam emails and we'll send them out to some hu…”
Kahn: Tech companies cannot be trusted to self-regulate AI
“I do not think that companies can be trusted really to do this completely on their own. I think there's just too much profit motive to take actions that ultimately will be kind of detrimental to us from a societal level or personal level.”
Kahn: Scaling current LLMs will not deliver AGI or superintelligence
“I don't think, and I actually don't, in the book, I don't think just scaling up the current LLMs will get us to, I don't, I'm not even sure they'll get us to AGI, let alone super intelligence.”
Kahn: AI companion chatbots are a detrimental crutch for lonely people
“I do think they, it tends to be a crutch and people will then not be, they'll say, I'll have this. And now I have this outlet for my emotions and my expressions. I can unload my thoughts about the day. And they are not going to seek out a real human relationsh…”
Kahn: Enterprise AI training for employees is as important as model training
“First of all, the training of the people in your enterprise that are going to use this technology is as important as the training of the AI model.”
Kahn: Google search has degraded human memory retention
“I think it really is true that Google has hurt our memory. I think people memorize far less than they used to.”
Kahn: AI might accelerate demand for live human music performances
“I think that AI might, Sort of accelerate that trend as well. Because people will actually want to go see the artist, the musician actually perform.”
Jeremy Kahn: Current AI systems lack capability to pose human extinction risks
“I just think the systems we have right now are not capable enough for, to pose a risk of extinction.”
Kahn: AI with agency is near despite persistent LLM hallucination rates
“It's interesting because I think we're very close to some system with some form of agency and yet, you know, our hallucination rates on current LLM based systems are still relatively high.”
Kahn: Enterprise AI utility depends heavily on interface design over raw capabilities
“And one of the points I make in the book Is I think we should pay a lot more attention to the interfaces around which, you know, we wrap these models. I think the utility of the models to some extent for enterprise applications will depend in a large way on, o…”
Kahn: No studies directly compare AI therapy chatbots to human therapists
“I've seen no studies actually that look at chatbots use of a chatbot versus use of a human therapist. I've seen ones that say, is a chatbot better than nothing? And it does seem like a chatbot might be better than nothing. But I don't think we've seen studies …”
Kahn: AI co-pilots can serve as junior assistants or senior mentors
“They can both be a kind of junior colleague, but also you can prompt them to act as a kind of senior mentor. And instead of having them do the first draft, which you then oversee, you could do the first draft yourself and then ask the co-pilot to sort of criti…”
Kahn: AI co-pilots primarily lift inexperienced workers to average performance
“I think one of the things about the AI co-pilot technology is it tends to have the biggest impact on kind of lifting less experienced people up to the average performance.”
Kahn: Human networks will become more valuable as AI automates tasks
“AI may be able to do all the legal drafting of the documentation, and it may be able to do all the presentations you need for the investors, but it's not going to actually get on the phone and get the right people in the room. And I think that human connectivi…”
Demis Hassabis sees AI agents bringing focus back to reinforcement learning
“He was very enthusiastic about agency and sort of, and I think in part because agency When you start thinking about training AI agents, it gets back into potentially a zone for reinforcement learning, which was what DeepMind was always known for.”