Emad Mostaque
Founder of Intelligent Internet and former CEO of Stability AI
Emad Mostaque (Founder of Intelligent Internet and former CEO of Stability AI) has appeared as a guest on 1 episode in TMT. Topics they speak about most include AI existential risk, Universal basic income, UK AI Security Institute.
In their words
Positions and remarks grouped by topic, each with the exact quote and where it was said.
AI existential risk
- Partly true
Mostaque predicts AI safety will become the top policy issue in Washington within two weeks of the recording.
“this next week will be top of the agenda in Capitol Hill, occurring, what, 12 days before Xi Jinping arrives in America? Within two weeks, this will be a firestorm across the nation”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288 (Sep 11, 2026) · Listen from 27:48
Mostaque states his own probability of catastrophic AI outcomes has fallen from 50% to 20% and that lab staff privately believe higher numbers than they state.
“I've had a PDM of 50%. It's down to 20%. I really think there is a chance that we could get wiped out”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288 (Sep 11, 2026) · Listen from 27:21
Universal basic income
Mostaque argues Anthropic's economic model is flawed because it holds aggregate wages constant and ignores collapsing aggregate demand.
“there's a complete collapse in aggregate demand. And so they've got numbers on the one side, which I think is correct, but all the returns basically go to capital”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288 (Sep 11, 2026) · Listen from 2:02:17
UK AI Security Institute
Mostaque predicts frontier model weights will be treated as national security assets and possibly subject to nationalization or ITAR-style controls.
“Clearly now model weights will be determined to be close to national security assets for these frontier models and actually properly locked down”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288 (Sep 11, 2026) · Listen from 1:41:25
DeepSeek
Mostaque calculates DeepSeek's new Flash model cost about $10 million to train while beating far more expensive Western models on design benchmarks.
“This model costs $10 million to train”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288 (Sep 11, 2026) · Listen from 1:37:00
High bandwidth memory
Mostaque says HBM accounts for about 40% of US AI capital expenditure and DeepSeek's method cuts that requirement fourfold.
“40% of the current CapEx build-out in America is HBM memory. And this requires 40% of the trillion dollars. And this is a four times decrease in the requirement for that”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288 (Sep 11, 2026) · Listen from 1:30:39
Artificial general intelligence
- Prediction · due Sep 2027
Mostaque says he cannot name any solvable, verifiable problem that AI will be unable to solve within a year.
“I can't think of a single solvable, verifiable thing that I could honestly say an AI can't solve in the next year, shall we say”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288 (Sep 11, 2026) · Listen from 53:18
Predictions
1 partly · 1 pending
- Prediction · due Sep 2027
Mostaque says he cannot name any solvable, verifiable problem that AI will be unable to solve within a year.
“I can't think of a single solvable, verifiable thing that I could honestly say an AI can't solve in the next year, shall we say”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288 (Sep 11, 2026) · Listen from 53:18 · Artificial general intelligence
- Partly true
Mostaque predicts AI safety will become the top policy issue in Washington within two weeks of the recording.
“this next week will be top of the agenda in Capitol Hill, occurring, what, 12 days before Xi Jinping arrives in America? Within two weeks, this will be a firestorm across the nation”
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis: Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288 (Sep 11, 2026) · Listen from 27:48 · AI existential risk
In the two weeks after the September 11, 2026 recording, AI safety drew major Washington attention: OpenAI paused training of its top models, Rep. Casar introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on September 24, top AI executives signed a frontier-safety accord with President Trump on September 29, and Sen. Hawley held a hearing on OpenAI on September 30. However, Republican senators blocked efforts to fast-track two AI safety bills, and the sources found don't show AI safety was the single top issue on Capitol Hill or a nationwide 'firestorm' by September 30.
Sources: September 2026 US Tech Policy Roundup · H.R.10538 - Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act of 2026 · 2026 state visit by Xi Jinping to the United States · EP #288 Should we slow down AI progress?
Checked Oct 20, 2026
Appearances
Should we slow down AI progress? | MOONSHOTS #288Moonshots with Peter Diamandis · Sep 11, 2026 · 2 h 44 min
The Moonshots panel and Emad Mostaque debate AI safety resignations, P(doom), the Navier-Stokes solution, data as moat, GPU economics and AI-designed longevity drugs.
Often appears with
- Peter Diamandis · 1 shared episode
- Alexander Wissner-Gross · 1 shared episode
- Dave Blundin · 1 shared episode
- Salim Ismail · 1 shared episode