ForeCast

Damon Binder is a senior researcher on the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness team at Coefficient Giving. He has a PhD in physics from Princeton and previously studied existential risks at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute.

He joined Fin Moorhouse to discuss his series on the AI industrial explosion. Topics include:

How input-output tables let you estimate how fast a self-replicating economy could grow if labor were free, yielding a headline result of roughly annual doubling, even under conservative assumptions and heavy regulation

Why competition makes low-growth restraint unstable

Why raw-material scarcity isn’t a hard barrier

Why a fast-growing economy wants cheap, disposable, infrastructure

Thermodynamic and other physical speed limits to physical growth

Which biological organisms replicate fastest, and what we can learn from them

Why physical output matters for hard power

How Damon uses AI in his research

You can read a full transcript here.

To see all Forethought's published research, visit forethought.org/research.

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This is an AI narration of "Risk-Averse AIs" by Elliott Thornley and William MacAskill. The article was first released on 24th June 2026.

You can read more of our research at forethought.org/research. Thank you to Type III audio for providing these automated narrations.

Wei Dai is a computer engineer known for his work in cryptography and cryptocurrency systems, and for his long-standing contributions to AI safety, decision theory, and metaphilosophy.

He joined Forethought’s Fin Moorhouse to discuss:

Do we need to solve ‘metaphilosophy’ before we can trust AIs to answer crucial questions about the long-run future?

Is it inevitable that the wisdom of the frontier AIs (their philosophical and strategic competence) will lag dangerously behind their raw capabilities in coding, math, and science?

How do status games distort morally important decisions and conversations, including about the future of AI?

How worried should we be about AI superpersuasion?

The concept of “illegible problems”: crucially important issues that aren’t on almost anyone’s radar

Is philosophical convergence necessary for a good future, or is institutional design enough?

Wei Dai’s personal intellectual and career journey

To respect Wei’s privacy, this episode’s audio is an AI narration of a transcript of a real conversation, which was edited for clarity.

You can read a full transcript here.

To see all Forethought's published research, visit forethought.org/research.

To subscribe to our newsletter, visit forethought.org/subscribe.

This is an AI narration of "What should go in a model spec?" by James Tillman. The article was first released on 4th June 2026.

You can read more of our research at forethought.org/research. Thank you to Type III audio for providing these automated narrations.

This is an AI narration of "Will We Really Put Data Centers in Space?" by Avi Parrack and Fin Moorhouse. The article was first released on 22nd May 2026.

You can read more of our research at forethought.org/research. Thank you to Type III audio for providing these automated narrations.