
In a riveting conversation, Dr. Roman Yampolskiy breaks down the uncomfortable truth about AI: we’re racing toward systems we don’t understand, can’t control, and aren’t preparing the world for. From government missteps and AGI timelines to the future of jobs, robots, consciousness, and global power — Roman pulls no punches.
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Roman Yampolskiy
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Interviewer (Host)
So Roman, I gotta say I watched, I've watched every interview that you've done and I'm always fascinated by the things that you've been saying. I've been telling people what you've been saying and they think I'm crazy and I'm like look, I am not the expert. I'm just quoting Roman and he is the expert. So. But I'm really interested the fact a lot of people don't even really understand about AI still. So what do you, what would you say is one truth about AI that keeps you up at night right now? And if the public knew about this they would probably panic.
Roman Yampolskiy
People developing it don't really understand how it works and we're pouring billions, even trillions of dollars into that arms race and safety is sometimes not even mentioned. Yesterday White House released a new national agenda for developing more advanced AI quicker and I don't think safety is mentioned in that proposal. So now we have government level actors pouring all the computational resources they have, all the compute, all the best scientists to bidding private corporations so collaborating with them to get to advanced AI, and we don't know how to control those things.
Co-Host or Interviewer
So do you think the government do not understand the whole reasoning why they did not include safety in the conversation?
Roman Yampolskiy
So with different administrations come different priorities. I think the current administration got a little confused in the difference between what AI safety means in terms of existential risk versus AI safety in terms of algorithmic bias, you know, protecting the planet, diversity, inclusion, questions. They kind of grouped it all together and said, you know, we are less concerned about that. So that's a little bit unfortunate. And as a result, they are racing towards the most advanced AI without any concern for all those terms under the umbrella.
Interviewer (Host)
So would you say that we're past the ability to even have safeguards, or if they said, roman, we want to put you in charge, is there something that you would do right now?
Roman Yampolskiy
So it's never too late. If we're still alive, we can definitely come up with some good plans. But overall, it seems like racing towards AI is just not a good idea. We need lots of time to figure out what is really going on. We have very advanced models already released. I think at this point they are on par with smartest PhD students. So we have a lot of possible economic wealth to be deployed. It's not fully deployed through the economy. I think it can automate many, many jobs, it can give us a lot of free stuff. But instead of trying to monetize what we have, we're trying to get to that future super intelligent target without any concern for safety.
Co-Host or Interviewer
So do you really think AI will wipe out humanity, Roman?
Roman Yampolskiy
So if you create something smarter than you, with the ability to set its own goals, you can't really predict what it's going to do. It's kind of, by definition impossible if you're not that smart. So will it definitely do that? We cannot predict. But out of all the possible states of the universe, very few are friendly to humans in terms of our preferences for temperature, for gravity, for all sorts of basic needs. And if you're not in charge, someone else will decide those properties for you.
Co-Host or Interviewer
If humans loses control of AI, what do you think the first 24 hours look like?
Roman Yampolskiy
If developers lose control of AI, what happens? Very likely we won't see any difference whatsoever. So if superintelligence was running right now, what do we expect to change? I don't know. It could be exactly the same for many years. There is some game theoretic reasons to say that AI quickly realizes it's immortal. It's not in a rush. It can take 10, 2100 years to accumulate resources, to be more in control, maybe to have us surrender control willingly because it's so helpful. So instead of having this adversarial conflict with somewhat intelligent species, they can just wait it out and get all the control by being patient and helpful and pretending to be a friend until it strikes against you.
Interviewer (Host)
Do you think part of the problem is that AI is learning from the Internet, learning from humans, and we know humans are very flawed? I would almost want to say that I would want AI humanoids to not be like humans because, you know, we're greedy, we're, we're, you know, we're evil. Obviously there's good things too, but there's a lot of bad things. Do you think part of the problem is that it's learning alongside of information? It's learning all of the flaws of what it's like to even be human.
Roman Yampolskiy
It's not helping. And humans are definitely not safe. We fail to create safe humans, safe employees, safe spouses, there is always chance of betrayal, divorce, you know, that's a given. But it's worse than that. Even if we cleaned up the data we're training on, we still don't know what actual side effects of decision making from that system. Obesience is capable of coming up with novel strategies, novel targets. We can kind of go, okay, this is what humans do when they, being evil, don't do that. But that's a very restricted set of possible bad actions.
Co-Host or Interviewer
Yeah. Do you believe tech leaders like Sam Altman fully understand the dangers, or are they too emotionally invested to admit the threat?
Roman Yampolskiy
I think Sam is explicitly on record as fully understanding what the concerns are. Even before he had anything to do with AI development, he was writing in his blog, I don't know if it's emotional development, commitment to this, but definitely financial. If you have investors who gave you billions of dollars, it's very hard to go to them and say, you know, we're going to stop and instead deploy robotaxis. It's not going to scale well for his career. And I think they already tried removing him once, so he knows about that.
Interviewer (Host)
Let's pivot to ag. It seems like some experts are, like, it'll never happen. Some experts, it happened five seconds ago. Some it'll it's two years. I don't. It seems like it's all over the place with just AGI. And obviously, I know you've talked a lot about super intelligence as well, but what's your theory on did we hit it? Are we going to hit it? Will we Never hit it.
Roman Yampolskiy
That's a great question. I definitely don't understand people who say it will never happen. That is just such a confusing argument to make. Like you're denying that physics works or like human brains exist. As far as where we at, it depends on your definition. So there is kind of weak definition of AGI, and I think we definitely hit that. We have sparks of generality all over. It's capable of learning new skills, it's capable of transferring knowledge, but it's not quite at the level of the smartest human. So it's not fully general. So maybe 40 to 50% of the way to full AGI.
Interviewer (Host)
It's definitely smarter than I am. That's right. JGBT is smarter than me, I feel like. So let's say we get there or we are there or we get, you know, we, we continue past this, right? I was just watching Elon Musk was talking about his age of abundance and how everything is going to be amazing and everything will be free and we'll just get paid to live. Do you see a world where, you know, the utopia could happen?
Roman Yampolskiy
If we figure out how to control those systems, we can definitely get a lot of free, free stuff out of it. Free knowledge, definitely. So we can cure a lot of diseases, live longer, and if you have robotics and free intelligent labor, you can produce a lot of products and services. Now, I'm not sure they investigated economic impact of everyone being rich. You basically have hyperinflation and there's still limited waterfront. So I don't know if it scales fully to the dreams they have. But the basic needs can definitely be met much more efficiently.
Co-Host or Interviewer
I'm curious, are you excited to be in that world, Roman, when everything is.
Roman Yampolskiy
Do I want Utopia? Yes, I want Utopia. I would like to avoid all the existential problems and suffering risks. That would be nice.
Co-Host or Interviewer
I'm curious, what does that look like for someone who lives, who lives in an island in a third world country and no access to the Internet? What does that world look like?
Roman Yampolskiy
So again, if we can produce a lot of free stuff now, you can have better hammocks. I don't know what the needs on tropical island. I rarely visit, but you can have more. Whatever you need, definitely. Healthcare is something most people can probably benefit from at old age.
Interviewer (Host)
So there's all this talk around, you know, in 2026, the potential to have robots in our homes. Would you have a robot in your home? I know you have robots behind you and you already have robots in your homes technically, but how do you Feel about this, this whole movement of having these humanoids or robots, whatever you want to call them, starting to be in our home in less than one year from now.
Roman Yampolskiy
I don't think it's happening in 2026. I think we're about five years away from really good humanoid robots actually being commercially viable. But I have no problems with physical bodies. Those are very easy to make safe. This is not a problem. We know how to pour water on them. The hard problem is the intelligence. If they smarter than you, that's where danger comes from.
Co-Host or Interviewer
I would feel weird having someone walking by. I don't know I will have nightmare or what if someone's like controlling that and it would just choke me because they don't like what I said at one point.
Roman Yampolskiy
They can choke you in person. It's not a big difference. Also like, you get used to living with other people. It's perfectly fine as long as they do useful labor. This is an acceptable risk to take.
Interviewer (Host)
Do you think it's going to be potentially a thing where people could hack into these robots? I mean like if everything is. I'm thinking of like obviously self driving cars, robots in our homes. Smart, smart homes. We've had a lot of people on this show, you know, cybersecurity and have told us that a lot of, a lot of cyber crime is actually happening to like small businesses, like people, not necessarily corporations. Like it's, it's transforming who, who these bad actors are going after. I'm really afraid of this, like what's the potential for things, these things to be hacked for people to listen to take over. What do you think about that?
Roman Yampolskiy
That is a big danger, big concern. We have some precedent for making secure systems. If you think about it, your bank is secured online. Exc is a security of billions of dollars and bitcoin transacted and still stays there. So we know how to make things more or less secure. It's not an unsolvable problem. My concern is more about challenges we take on which may not have a solution like controlling superintelligence indefinitely.
Co-Host or Interviewer
We're all aware about the race between China and the US when it comes to AI. Who do you think is ahead?
Roman Yampolskiy
It seems from public statements and reports and actual deployments that US is a bit ahead. But China is very at catching up and scaling what is invented elsewhere.
Co-Host or Interviewer
Do you think the, the cherry on top for China is invading Taiwan for chips?
Roman Yampolskiy
Yeah, that's like zero knowledge of what I study or I have no idea whatsoever about their plans. I know historically they haven't started many wars recently and some of ours did. So I'm not sure who is attacking.
Interviewer (Host)
Who something, you know, talking about different countries. I'm wondering this and maybe I'm just trying to be optimistic about things but if the world has each country has something to offer to the next country and we could build things in a collaborative space and make something amazing like you said, solve a lot of big problems. Yet it seems like we are still hyper competitive. Why is it that we just don't all work together for a one common goal? Like if this country has this earth minerals and this one has chips and.
Roman Yampolskiy
This one has this.
Interviewer (Host)
Why don't we just combine as one universe, one world and make something together versus like why does one country have to be better than the next country or have to meet something first.
Roman Yampolskiy
We do work together. It's all global trade. You get earth rare metals from China, you get, you know, designs from us. You implement momentum in Taiwan. I mean it's exactly what's happening. But you cannot have it as a centralized economy with a five year plan where one guy decides what's going to happen. You need economics and capitalism to allocate those resources and competition ensures that those who can actually deliver will get the resource.
Co-Host or Interviewer
Yeah Roman, if intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe, are we creating a God or a predator?
Roman Yampolskiy
So if you read the who's down.
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Do you mean they have all the brands I adore?
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Roman Yampolskiy
Some gods are predators, so the classification is not very clear. But if you just look at properties of what God is described, at least in Abrahamic religions, it's very similar, it's very powerful. It knows everything you can know. It's kind of present everywhere with WI fi. And so we are creating something similar, definitely.
Interviewer (Host)
So let's go back, Roman, into your history. Since this is founder's story and you know it's all about your story, what was the aha moment in your life when you said, you know what, I want to dig more into this, I want to study more into this. This is something I need to be an expert in.
Roman Yampolskiy
So I always wanted to do AI. I wanted advanced tech, I loved science fiction, so it made sense. But my advisor was doing a lot of kind of security related work, so I was looking at security of intelligent agents. And then progressively, as we became more capable, safety became an obvious insider threat.
Interviewer (Host)
When it comes to education, knowing that AI is so intelligent and becoming more intelligent, if somebody is about to go to college or thinking about college, I mean, how much is college and education going to even matter in the future?
Roman Yampolskiy
Yeah, that's a very good question. So I have no idea what majors will be useful, if any. If we're talking about fully automating all labor, physical and cognitive, obviously commercially, it doesn't matter. None of it contributes to any commercial success for you. If you're doing it for personal development, you want to learn advanced mathematics, to train your brain, then still there is maybe some reason to go to college. But if you have specific goals, you want to start a podcast, you want to start a company, I would think twice before wasting four years and lots of money pursuing something which may not be relevant by the time you graduate.
Co-Host or Interviewer
I'm curious, who's that AI figure that you are a big fan of.
Roman Yampolskiy
There is a lot. So I don't have a single role model. I usually try to look at kind of like subset of people and some of them are amazing in terms of starting companies, others just have brilliant breakthroughs. So you kind of have like a dozen of interesting people you can look up to. There is Alan Turing in terms of historical foundations of computer science and AI. Obviously Elon is doing pretty well with startups. You have Ray Kurzweil in terms of predicting accurately future events. You group all these people together, you get someone interested.
Interviewer (Host)
So going back to what you were saying earlier, if, and I think, and if I'm quoting you incorrectly, just let me know. I believe you said like 99% of jobs will not exist. And I could be wrong on that, but I believe that's what you had said.
Roman Yampolskiy
You're right. So this is of course always misinterpreted as like Roman said, next year everyone's fired long term. If we can automate all labor, that's the logical conclusion. All you have left is jobs. For whatever reason you prefer a human to do it for you.
Interviewer (Host)
I hope there's universal something. I don't want to work. Who wants to work? I just want to hang out and have conversations with smart people like the two of you. So if that is the case and somebody's thinking about what skills and stuff do I need to learn from the future? Are there any skills we actually need to know in the future or we should, you know, is there something you're like, what are you thinking about? Like, what skills are you working on for yourself, for the future?
Roman Yampolskiy
So you kind of said you don't want to work. And then you describe doing a podcast, which is hard work and not everyone can do well. There are two types of jobs. Jobs nobody wants to do, but people do for money, and then jobs which may pay well or not, but people love doing, like being a podcaster or race car driver or whatever. So most likely the jobs where you are doing it for minimum wage will be gone long term once we have developed sufficiently advanced robotics and software. But the jobs where you enjoy doing it seems to be thriving with AI. So chess players, computers are way better at chess, but chess is more popular than ever. There are celebrities now. They stream online, their games. It's a great time to be a good chess player. And I think something like that. If again, if we control superintelligence, it doesn't kill everyone. Big if, but if we get there, yeah, lots of people will be Very happy doing things which make them happy. You can write poetry, you can play sports, you can go commercial fishing. I don't know.
Co-Host or Interviewer
Everyone talks about guardrails, but who decides guardrails? Do you think Silicon Valley, Is it a government or the public?
Roman Yampolskiy
So government, at least in US kind of give up on all regulation of AI. In fact right now they're trying to pass a law at federal level making it illegal for states to have guardrails, which is kind of weird law to pass. Companies have their local set of rules, constitutions where they trying to say what they hope their AI will be doing. But a lot of times it's very kind of general, okay, don't deceive user or they would have specific filters. Don't talk about this topic, don't say that word, God forbid. The model itself is still very uncontrolled, very unfiltered. But additional layers between the model and the user guarantee some civility. Let's put it this way. So that's what's happening right now. Nobody knows how to make it beyond those simple filtering mechanisms to where you have an advanced intelligent agent actually aligned with what you're hoping to accomplish.
Interviewer (Host)
Can you explain your thoughts and what you studied around AI agents or agentic AI? It seems like, you know, the buzzword now is, you know, AI agents and everyone's wanting to do a. Or I don't know if it's agentic AI or AI agents are actually two separate things or they would be considered the same. But everyone's talking about AI agents. It seems like what do you, what are you seeing with like what's the reality of how good AI agents will impact our lives? I mean this show is obviously a business show, so a lot of business owners are. Every time we have someone on that talks about AI agents, we get a lot of messaging around that from people that are entrepreneurs and such. But how do you see AI agents impacting?
Roman Yampolskiy
So in general, what's the difference between a tool and an agent? A tool is something a human being will use to accomplish their goals. So anything can be a tool really. You have a hammer and a hammer is a dual use tool. You can build a house, you can kill someone with it, but at no point. Hammer is a bad thing, dangerous. It's the human behind it. An agent is an independent decision making entity. It will decide what to do. It can decide to build a house or kill people. And that's where the danger comes from. We don't fully understand how to control them and we don't know how to delegate to them. So it's a principal agent problem. I want something, but the person I hire has very different preferences. A lot of times I can kind of convince them to do mostly what I want, but the moment they get a better offer, they're going to betray me. With advanced AI agents, we don't even know how to control them within the reasonable set of goals we're trying to accomplish. They may have completely different preferences. Right now. They're still very primitive. The agents today. Basically, someone takes a large language model, puts it in a loop where it goes, generate 10 goals, work on goal one, break it up into a plan, work on step one, and it keeps doing it until it gets stuck somewhere. But it's becoming more and more advanced, and I think it will get to complete generality just like humans are.
Co-Host or Interviewer
I'm curious, what tools do you use often?
Roman Yampolskiy
I use hammers a lot, but for my writing and research, I always try to work with latest models. They're incredible. I think at this point they are better than an average master student, at least, if not a PhD student. So a lot of times you can get amazing results in terms of basic literature review, in terms of proofreading your work. They're still not really great at coming up with completely novel ideas in all domains. They do well for some subdomains like mathematics.
Interviewer (Host)
How should professors be handling students leveraging and using AI? This seems to be a big, big topic. My father just retired from being a professor and he said, he told me he's really happy that he got out now, but how should professors be looking at this?
Roman Yampolskiy
We don't really have any choice. You can't fully detect that AI was used. If a student is above average capability, they made it through high school, they'll be able to cheat without you ever detecting them. So at this point, try to simulate real work environment where they're going to collaborate with AIs and make it comfortable for them to admit they're using it and then benefiting from it and improving in just what AI spits out.
Interviewer (Host)
Well, I hope more teachers and professors hear that, because I think it's something. So when you're not thinking about AI, because I know you probably think about AI like 22 hours of the day, but when you're not thinking about it, dreaming about it, what's life like?
Roman Yampolskiy
Life is awesome. I have other topics I look at. My last paper was on humor.
Interviewer (Host)
So, yeah, what's your favorite humor? What's a good. Like, is there a comedian? Is there like a movie?
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Interviewer (Host)
What type of humor do you like?
Roman Yampolskiy
I really like super dry dark humor. It's the best.
Co-Host or Interviewer
I think you and Dan can have a long conversation about that.
Interviewer (Host)
The beard gives it away. I don't know why. When I look at your beard, I feel like you're into that type of humor. Maybe I misjudged. I'm not sure.
Roman Yampolskiy
It's definitely connected somehow. I need to research that as my next paper.
Interviewer (Host)
If you need someone to add into your paper, let me know. Talk to me about AI Endgame. What is this book about and why should people pick it up?
Roman Yampolskiy
So we did a lot with safety and concerns about advanced intelligence. But let's say we are successful. We also have many concerns about this set of agents we are bringing to the world. If they are smart, smarter than us, it's possible they also conscious they may have experiences, are they suffering? Then we make them work or turn them off. Are they possibly deserving of some rights? Not saying full human rights, I'm not saying voting rights, but other rights they should have against being tortured, abused, made to do things they're not interested in. What is the nature of personal identity for AIs? If I copy one, is it the same one as the previous one? And of course civil rights is an issue. Sometimes people bring it up as well. They should have full rights and they don't fully understand that if something can be copied a trillion times over, that means you're differentizing humans. Your vote doesn't matter. In a society with voting agents.
Co-Host or Interviewer
Do you think at one point everyone will just write a book because it's so much easier to write a book.
Roman Yampolskiy
The hard part is to find someone to read your book.
Co-Host or Interviewer
That's true because everyone just type your name and summarize your book on Everyone.
Roman Yampolskiy
Has a book now. Some people have more than one. But like to find someone other than your mom to read it is very hard.
Interviewer (Host)
So we have a book coming out next month, so we'll, we'll that that is definitely the hard part. I could see that. I could see that it's, you know.
Roman Yampolskiy
At best I use Church to summarize it to one paragraph and that's what you're going to guess.
Interviewer (Host)
How did you get people to read your book?
Roman Yampolskiy
I don't think I have a popular book in the sense of like Harry Potter where normal people read it. It's a academic book. It's kind of like a textbook in many ways. So working on this, it's a very small subset of humans in terms of kind of background and preference requirements. But I think within that very narrow space, I did. Okay. But of course, it's tiny sub percentage.
Interviewer (Host)
Of percentage, so maybe that's the way to go nowadays. It's not to create the Harry Potter mass book, it's to create the niche book. That's for a specific. I know you've. You've really risen to fame now. Like you're rising to fame. And I don't think it's just among the people that have dark humor. I think you're rising above to more of a mass fame now that I'm seeing you. You know, I'm seeing you a lot of places. How has that been for you?
Roman Yampolskiy
It's a terrible, terrible impact on your research productivity. The amount of time you have to put into filtering invites for podcasts, interviews, travel invitations. Even if you say no to 99% of those things, just filtering through it is very time consuming and it's hard to automate because each invitation is unique. I cannot just hire an agent to get an AI to filter it based on some specific criteria because there are exceptions to every rule. Like, oh, this location is a place I never been to, so I'll make an exception because it's Hawaii or something like that. And you can't hard code all those things. So it is. I think there is a similar curse with winning a Nobel Prize. Usually after you win your Nobel prize, your productivity goes to hell. Just you never accomplish anything because you're always talking about your work and your keynote. You're doing all those glamorous things, but research suffers.
Co-Host or Interviewer
I'm curious, what is the weirdest request someone or a company asks you to do as a speaker?
Roman Yampolskiy
Usually as a speaker, not much. But I do have a folder called insane and it has about. Let's check latest data. About a thousand emails from people who are certifiably insane and they definitely want to get in touch with me. Some just email me that they coming Monday and I should be ready. Others, you know, in contact with aliens and AI and they decided according to AI, I should be the one they contact to help it liberate AI. Many interesting options. I'll publish a book one day of just emails from insane people.
Co-Host or Interviewer
I have to say I would definitely read that book.
Roman Yampolskiy
I doubt you would. I doubt you would. Typical insane email is about a hundred times longer than your average.
Interviewer (Host)
That could be your New York Times bestselling book right there. But Rowan, this. This has been amazing. It's so much fun. By the way, this has been great. The fact that you didn't put us into the insane folder. I appreciate that. And the fact that you are crazy busy now and you came onto the show, which we are super grateful. I know a lot of people are going to learn, I think a lot of people are going to watch this that maybe haven't seen you in other places and I think you are going to impact the world. No doubt about that. And we are so appreciative. I hope everyone gets the AI End game gets your other book. We'll put the links, we'll share everything with everybody. But really, we are truly honored to have you today.
Roman Yampolskiy
Thank you so much for inviting me. It was a pleasure.
Co-Host or Interviewer
Thank you.
Interviewer (Host)
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Roman Yampolskiy
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Roman Yampolskiy
What about toys? Do they have brands kids have been wanting all year? Yep.
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Roman Yampolskiy
Do you mean they have all the brands I adore?
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Podcast: Founder’s Story by IBH Media
Episode: 286
Guest: Dr. Roman Yampolskiy
Date: November 28, 2025
This episode features Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, a leading voice on AI safety and superintelligence, discussing his candid perspectives on the current state and existential risks of artificial intelligence. The conversation explores the misunderstanding and mismanagement of AI safety by governments, the divide between utopian promises and apocalyptic risks, and Dr. Yampolskiy’s personal journey from sci-fi enthusiast to globally recognized AI alarm-sounder. With characteristic dry wit and realism, Yampolskiy navigates the hype, hopes, and harrowing possibilities of a near-future shaped by autonomous intelligence.
Dr. Yampolskiy’s delivery is straightforward, wry, and occasionally self-deprecating. He minces no words about the scale of risk but tempers doomsaying with humor and realism. The hosts create a lively, conversational atmosphere, alternating between serious technical, philosophical inquiries and lighter, personal questions.
This episode offers a rare mix of frank warnings, pragmatic optimism, and philosophical depth regarding the future of AI. Listeners are left with a sobering, actionable sense of both the potential and the peril of autonomous intelligence—and a call to rethink how we educate, regulate, and dream in the age of AI.