En 30 segundos
At Sana AI Summit 2025, Google DeepMind’s David Pfau and OpenAI safety researcher Boaz Barak join Joel Hellermark to examine AI-driven science and the uncertain path toward more capable systems. They share personal views on safety, broad access and the social choices ahead.
- 1AI for fusion controlPfau describes controlling hot plasma with fast signals and simulation-trained strategies.
- 2Literature versus new ideasPfau finds current systems useful for discovering literature but less convincing at proposing genuinely unexpected research.
- 3Understanding and alignmentBarak argues full internal understanding is not necessarily required for systems to follow rules safely.
- 4Broad accessBoth guests express personal support for distributing AI benefits and control widely.
- 5Different from humansPfau doubts AI must surpass people in every dimension; Barak stresses deployment friction and eventual impact.
Conclusiones
- Accurate simulations and data can make AI useful for complex scientific control problems.
- Present systems can help researchers find literature, though Pfau has not seen unexpected research breakthroughs from them.
- Barak expects continued progress may eventually produce strong AI research collaborators.
- Full model understanding may not be necessary for alignment, in Barak’s view.
- Both guests favor broadly shared benefits and control, while recognizing uncertainty.
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Who controls AI?
The panel opens with questions about ethics, public control and concentrated power.
Joel Hellermark introduces David Pfau and Boaz Barak at Sana AI Summit 2025 and opens with a rapid-fire round about control, ethics and AI.
Asked whether Tom Cruise or ChatGPT should run the world, Pfau chooses a human, arguing that important societal decisions should remain in human hands. Barak jokingly chooses ChatGPT.
On who should define an AI system’s morals, Barak favors ethicists over a random sample in the hypothetical question. Pfau instead argues for clear rules and, where needed, judgments resembling those of a reasonable person.
Both guests resist concentrating control of AGI in one person or company. Pfau prefers broad access, and Barak welcomes competition and hopes users will control AI as a tool.
Accelerating science
Pfau discusses fusion control, simulation and current limitations in generating new research ideas.
Hellermark asks how AI might accelerate nuclear fusion. Pfau explains that a fusion device must send control signals thousands of times a second to stabilize extremely hot plasma, far beyond direct human reaction.
Algorithms can explore complex control strategies through millions of simulations. Pfau sees the strongest scientific opportunities where high-quality data or accurate simulators allow systems to develop capabilities beyond what a person could directly manage.
The difficult boundary is moving from a simulation into a messy physical world. Closing that gap matters as much as performance in the model, he says.
Asked whether AI can combine all scientific knowledge into new insights, Pfau says current tools help him find overlooked literature and useful keywords. In his experience, suggested research directions are often superficial combinations rather than truly unexpected ideas.
Research and self-improvement
Barak and Pfau offer different perspectives on AI researchers and the uncertainty of self-improvement.
Barak sees no reason why continued improvements in current methods could not eventually produce useful new knowledge. He expects systems might first become strong research assistants, then collaborators, and later independent researchers; this is his projection, not a settled result.
On self-improving AI, Pfau calls the outcome an open empirical question. He compares the field to early steam-engine development before a full theory of thermodynamics: experiment reveals progress, but not necessarily the ultimate limits.
Pfau dislikes simple comparisons between models and students because AI can be extraordinarily strong in some ways and brittle in others. Autonomous science could still require as much effort to check the output as to perform the research oneself.
Safety and social choices
Barak discusses alignment, control and possible social uses.
Hellermark asks whether AI must be fully understood to make it safe. Barak says full understanding is not necessarily required, drawing an analogy with humans, whose brains are not fully understood but who can follow rules and participate in society.
Barak does not assume greater capability must mean less control. He hopes improved alignment techniques can make stronger models more honest and instruction-following, while stressing the work needed to achieve this.
He frames the next five to ten years as a period of technical and social choices: systems could support health and energy or be used for job displacement and surveillance. Hellermark and the guests favor the beneficial uses.
Geopolitics and future capabilities
The guests favor broad benefits and consider how AI might differ from humans.
Speaking personally rather than for OpenAI policy, Barak hopes the benefits of AI reach people everywhere, including in China and Russia. He emphasizes prosperity, education and healthcare rather than an exclusive national contest.
Pfau, also speaking personally, contrasts treating AI as a secret geopolitical superweapon with treating it as transformative information technology. He favors broad distribution and control rather than concentration.
Asked for a contrarian view, Pfau doubts that a machine will necessarily become superhuman in every human dimension. Like an airplane that is not a better bird in every respect, mature AI may develop into something different and emphasize what it does well.
Barak thinks near-term optimists may underestimate the friction of deploying new technology widely, while some long-term skeptics may underestimate how transformative AI eventually becomes. Hellermark closes the discussion with a joke about company stocks.
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