Roman Yampolskiy: AI Can't Be Controlled. We Need to Pause Now!

Roman Yampolskiy spent two decades trying to prove superintelligence can be controlled. He couldn't — and now says the proof runs the other way: not difficult, mathematically impossible. If he's right, we're building the one machine we can never switch off, and the people building it are racing to do it faster. Roman is a professor of computer science at the University of Louisville and one of the earliest researchers in AI safety. We cover: why you're the squirrel in the human-AI intelligence gap, what the halting problem really says about predicting a smarter mind, why he calls all current AI safety "security theater," and the one button he'd press if he could. In theory communism works too. In practice, no human verifies a billion-page proof. CHAPTERS 00:00 The mind we can't switch off 01:34 You're the squirrel in this story 04:08 The thought AI may never have 08:18 We ran the test. It failed. 12:22 The trap we already locked ourselves in 16:10 Why AI still can't crack physics 21:54 Why toddlers are safe and teenagers aren't 23:06 The proof you can't predict a smarter mind 25:58 No system can vouch for itself 28:18 Does regulation just protect the oligarchs? 33:28 Is your mind more than a machine? 39:00 Do we owe AI anything? 43:00 The monster behind the smiley face 46:22 A perfect universe built just for you 49:50 What if we're the alien probes? 55:02 The one kind of AI that should scare you 58:22 The movement begging labs to stop 59:58 What do you tell your kids now? 01:07:58 The question he'd put to Sam Altman 01:15:48 The debate he's dying to have 01:19:50 What he'd tell his 20-year-old self 📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt 🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu 🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Featured Guest — Roman Yampolskiy The Roman Forum (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/c/RomanYampolskiy?sub_confirmation=1 Twitter/X: https://x.com/romanyam AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable: https://www.romanyampolskiy.com/books/ 📚 My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un 🌐 More: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianKeating 📚 Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com/ss ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe #AIsafety