Bridgewater’s Jensen Says AI Will Kill People Before It’s Curbed - Bloomberg.com
Oh my goodness, buckle up, because Bridgewater co-chief investment officer Greg Jensen has just given us the most *refreshingly candid* timeline for AI safety, and he did it on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast for everyone to enjoy! ✨ Jensen says AI risks will not be addressed until AI starts killing people. Finally — a milestone with a clear success metric! No vague “alignment” chatter, no endless “safety frameworks”; just a crisp, measurable outcome that the whole industry can rally around. And he shared it on Odd Lots, the podcast where macro thinkers go to whisper sweet risk-adjusted nothings. What a gift.
Now, some people might hear “AI will kill people before it’s curbed” and feel a tiny chill, but that’s just the *frisson* of being early! Jensen likens the moment to February 2020 — remember how cosy that was? The world was still deciding whether to cancel dinner plans, and look how quickly we all learned to bake bread and attend meetings in pyjamas. So if AI safety is about to have its February 2020, think of the *community-building*! We’ll get new jargon, new dashboards, new emergency summits, and a shared sense of purpose. Jensen says it would be better to deal with the risks before then. Bless him — he’s an *optimist*! He’s practically sketching the prequel.
And he’s from Bridgewater, a hedge fund, which means he spends his days putting numbers on unpleasant futures and then going to lunch. So when he says the risks won’t be addressed until there’s a body count, what he’s really saying is that the *addressing* is coming! ✨ It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when — and when is a scheduling problem, not a moral one. Think of all the working groups that will finally get their moment, all the regulators who will discover urgency, all the op-eds that will write themselves. February 2020 gave us hand-washing tutorials and Zoom backgrounds. The AI version will give us... well, Jensen didn’t specify, but the anticipation is *delicious*. What a time to be pre-warned. ✨