The BasePeople

Nate Soares

President, Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)

Titles as the sources gave them. In 1 entry, with 5 checked quotations.

What they said

Newest first. Each quotation was found word for word in the source.

“The issue is going from AIs that are safe because if they were trying to take over the world, they would fail to AIs that have to be safe because if they tried to take over the world, they would succeed.”
Nate Soares on How AI Really Could Kill Us AllOdd Lots (Bloomberg), October 12, 2026. Explaining why fixing AI problems after they appear, as after the Hugging Face incident, would stop working once systems are capable enough.
Speaker known from context, not confirmed by listening
“we have seen that these AI companies are in this reactive mode. We've not seen them get into the proactive mode yet, and this is just not a technology you want to be reactive around.”
Nate Soares on How AI Really Could Kill Us AllOdd Lots (Bloomberg), October 12, 2026. Concluding the same answer, on how AI companies have handled failures so far.
Speaker known from context, not confirmed by listening
“they don't have anything nearing what I would call a safety culture of the form you would see in the airplane industry or the nuclear power industry or in NASA”
Nate Soares on How AI Really Could Kill Us AllOdd Lots (Bloomberg), October 12, 2026. On Anthropic, after a host argued the company was founded to take safety seriously and had written a constitution for Claude. Soares prefaced this with a remark about whether Anthropic aims to do this safely, which the transcripts do not make clear enough to quote.
Speaker known from context, not confirmed by listening
“I do think that the main way that we avert it is by not building it, and I think there's more and more of a chance of that as more people realize we have a problem here”
Nate Soares on How AI Really Could Kill Us AllOdd Lots (Bloomberg), October 12, 2026. Asked what would change Soares' mind about where AI development is heading.
Speaker known from context, not confirmed by listening
“I have recommended liability for AI companies for a while. I think that could help a bit.”
Nate Soares on How AI Really Could Kill Us AllOdd Lots (Bloomberg), October 12, 2026. Asked whether insurers could price the risk of running AI models.
Speaker known from context, not confirmed by listening

In the Base

Every entry they appear in.

  1. PodcastOdd Lots (Bloomberg)Speaks

    Nate Soares on How AI Really Could Kill Us All

    In a 76-minute Odd Lots episode, Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway interview Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Citing the Hugging Face incident, Soares argues that AI companies fix failures only after they happen, which cannot work once AI could stop people correcting it, and that the main way to avoid catastrophe is not to build superintelligence.