ForeCast

Avi Parrack is a physics PhD student at Stanford and a researcher at Forethought, where he works on AI, space expansion, and governance. He is the lead author of a recent Forethought report on orbital data centers.

He joined Forethought’s Tom Davidson to discuss:

What an orbital data center actually is, and why they’re suddenly being taken seriously

Why the core case rests on cheaper energy from more intense and near-constant solar power

Why orbital data centers hinge on SpaceX’s Starship bringing launch costs toward $100/kg or below

Why cooling may actually not be a major issue

Whether the inability to make repairs dooms orbital data centers

Vulnerability of space data centers to kinetic attacks, and whether they would cause ‘Kessler syndrome’ debris cascades

Why model-weight security might actually improve in orbit even as physical vulnerability rises

If space becomes the cheapest place to scale compute and only SpaceX has the launch capacity, what the means for concentration of power, US–China competition, and the possibility of pausing AI

Overall cost comparisons with terrestrial data centers

The longer-run picture: when and how does the post-AGI industrial explosion spread to space?

You can read a full transcript here.

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

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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.

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

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.