Connor Leahy on Build artificial general intelligence

Connor Leahy

Conjecture CEO; AI safety researcher

If you think building AGI is okay, like anthropic should just be allowed to build AGI or whatever. And then, okay, you should state that clearly. And then people who don't think that's okay, should also state that clearly. And they should have the conflict. They should. And I disagree with this. Like I am firmly, no, I don't think that anthropic or any other private corporation should be building AGI. Period. Build co-emps systems. Let's also assume furthermore that we keep the system secure and safe and they don't get immediately stolen by every unscrupulous actor in the world. Then you have very powerful systems which you can do very powerful things. In particular, you can create great economic value. So one of the first things I would do with the co-emps system if I had one is I would produce massive amounts of economic value and trade with everybody. I would trade with everybody. I'd be like, look, wherever you want in life, I'll get it to you. In return, don't build AGI.

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11mo ago

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Build artificial general intelligence

votes Against

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Disputed The quote is not a single verbatim quotation from the stored source. The first paragraph does appear verbatim at 00:04:56 on Zencastr’s “Connor Leahy on Why Humanity Risks Extinction from AGI,” which is the Nov. 22, 2024 FLI episode. But the second paragraph is not on that page; it appears in a different Connor Leahy interview, “Connor Leahy on AGI and Cognitive Emulation” (official FLI episode dated Apr. 13, 2023; transcript republished May 19, 2023). That second passage is also altered in the stored text: the transcript says “build coem systems” and “whatever you want in life,” not “co-emps” / “wherever.” So the submitted text is a stitched, materially altered composite, not one authentic verbatim quote from the cited URL. ([zencastr.com](https://zencastr.com/z/v9ifF8BJ)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

Disputed The first paragraph is real: the Zencastr transcript at the provided URL contains it at about 00:04:56, including “I don't think that anthropic or any other private corporation should be building AGI. Period.” ([zencastr.com](https://zencastr.com/z/v9ifF8BJ)) The second paragraph is not in that source. A different reliable transcript explicitly attributes a similar passage to Connor Leahy at 1:34:04, but the wording is different from the version you supplied (for example, “these systems,” “a coem system,” and “whatever you want in life”). Because the submitted quote combines material from different sources and is not verbatim as written, I would not authenticate it as an exact quote. ([cognitiverevolution.ai](https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/bonus-episode-connor-leahy-on-agi-gpt-4-and-cognitive-emulation-w-fli-podcast/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

AI Unverifiable Quote attributed to Connor Leahy (Conjecture CEO, AI safety researcher) from a Zencastr podcast recording. WebFetch on the zencastr.com source URL returned HTTP 403. Web search did not directly surface the verbatim passage or the specific Zencastr episode metadata; however, Leahy is widely on record (Sifted, CogX Festival 2023, "The Inside View" interview, etc.) saying he firmly opposes private corporations building AGI, fully consistent with the quote's stance "I don't think that anthropic or any other private corporation should be building AGI. Period." The term "co-emps systems" appears to be a transcription of "CoEms" (Comprehensible Embedded Models), a Conjecture-promoted alternative to AGI. Vote "against" "Build artificial general intelligence" perfectly aligns with Leahy's well-documented position. Year is unknown and I left null since I cannot verify the recording date. Marking ai_unverifiable due to source inaccessibility. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 5mo ago

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Connor Leahy votes For

Require large datacenters to install kill switches for AI containment

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added 2mo ago

Connor Leahy votes For

Require human-in-the-loop oversight for agentic AI systems acting in high-stakes domains

As AIs grow more autonomous and dangerous, the government must have the power to shut them down when they threaten national security. The AI Kill Switch Act gives the U.S. government powers to do just that: a common sense action that Americans overwh...

more AI Verified source (Jul 23, 2026)

added 2mo ago

Connor Leahy votes For

AGI could quickly lead to superintelligence

We are expected, pretty soon, to hit the ability where an AI is good enough and a strong enough engineer that it can build the next generation of AIs. Once we hit that, things are going to get even crazier, even faster, and it’s widely expected by ma...

more AI Verified source (Jun 25, 2026)

added 1mo ago