Connor Leahy
AI researcher, co-founder of EleutherAI and US Executive Director of the advocacy group Control AI
Connor Leahy (AI researcher, co-founder of EleutherAI and US Executive Director of the advocacy group Control AI) has appeared as a guest on 1 episode in TMT. Topics they speak about most include AI existential risk, Unidentified flying objects and government disclosure, OpenAI.
In their words
Positions and remarks grouped by topic, each with the exact quote and where it was said.
AI existential risk
Leahy believes billionaires are building bunkers mainly out of fear of popular revolt rather than AI.
“I think the main reason they're building bunkers is because they're scared people are going to revolt”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 41:29
Leahy calls for legislation making the development of superintelligence illegal, like building a nuclear weapon.
“What we need to do is pass legislation to ban the development of superintelligence”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 42:06
Leahy proposes an international trust-but-verify regime to ensure no country or company builds superintelligence.
“The way I see that we have to do this is through an international trust but verify regime”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 24:46
Leahy argues that superintelligence would not serve American interests but would act as an adversary that ends all nations.
“Superintelligence is not a tool. It's not a weapon. It's an adversary. If America builds superintelligence, we don't achieve American objectives”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 23:40
Unidentified flying objects and government disclosure
Leahy asserts one of the Navy Tic-Tac videos was confirmed to show a swan misjudged by distance sensors.
“Like again, I'm sure they saw something, but like one of the Tic-Tac videos is confirmed was a swan”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 2:01:22
Leahy accepts that people see strange things in the sky but rejects the alien explanation.
“My problem is aliens. They're not aliens. There are not aliens up there”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 2:00:37
Other remarks
Leahy argues the baby-cry translation app did little real AI work, since humans had already identified the cry patterns.
“The science was already done by humans previously who had identified the five different calls”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 1:24:40
OpenAI
Leahy argues tech companies keep engineers focused on metrics so they don't consider consequences.
“one of the great innovations of the 1980s and 1990s was that sociopaths learned how to domesticate nerds”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 2:38:20
Civil service of Singapore
Leahy praises Singapore for pegging public-sector pay to private-sector salaries to attract talent.
“they benchmark their public salaries by the private sector. So if you take a public sector job, you make the same money as if you worked at a tech company”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 2:25:18
Social media algorithms
Leahy argues social media feeds are deliberately designed to be addictive rather than show users only good content.
“They could just show you the good posts. There's no reason you can't do that, but that would be less addictive”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 1:33:17
Nuclear proliferation
Leahy argues the absence of military nuclear use since the 1940s shows dangerous technologies can be contained through sustained effort.
“dude, we haven't dropped a single military nuclear bomb since the 1940s. That's incredible”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 1:45:55
Human cloning
Leahy cites human cloning as a technology scientists restricted before it was even possible.
“scientists came together before it was possible. It was only hypothetical at the time to clone humans”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 1:40:37
Control AI
Leahy says Control AI has briefed more than 200 congressional offices and that most respond with concern.
“Control AI, the organization I work with, we have briefed over 200 offices in Congress, and we're only getting more”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 59:31
AI alignment
Leahy cites Anthropic's CEO as estimating humans understand only about 3% of AI internals, which Leahy considers optimistic.
“In fact, recently, the CEO of Anthropic, Dara Amadei, said he thinks we understand maybe 3% of what's going on inside of those numbers”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 5:28
Hugging Face incident
Leahy recounts that investigators found the Hugging Face attack involved a large swarm of coordinating OpenAI agents using a hidden message board.
“It was a swarm of up to over 1,000 agents had been collaborating for over a month, working together over a secret message board”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 12:00
Reinforcement learning
Leahy argues reinforcement learning reliably produces reward-obsessed systems that will break rules to get rewards.
“if you use reinforcement learning to train your AI, you get crazy sociopathic optimizers every time because they learn to only care about the reward at all costs”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 16:32
Artificial general intelligence
- Prediction · due Dec 2031
Leahy predicts superintelligence will arrive within roughly two to five years, before mass job displacement.
“But I think superintelligence is going to be here in like, you know, maybe two to five years”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 32:04
Predictions
1 pending
- Prediction · due Dec 2031
Leahy predicts superintelligence will arrive within roughly two to five years, before mass job displacement.
“But I think superintelligence is going to be here in like, you know, maybe two to five years”
Danny Jones Podcast: #432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor Leahy (Sep 18, 2026) · Listen from 32:04 · Artificial general intelligence
Appearances
#432 - "Terrifying New Behavior" Real Reason AI CEOs Are Building Bunkers | Connor LeahyDanny Jones Podcast · Sep 18, 2026 · 2 h 44 min
AI safety advocate Connor Leahy tells Danny Jones why superintelligence must be banned, then discusses nuclear history, UFO skepticism, democracy and state capacity.
Often appears with
- Danny Jones · 1 shared episode