240 · Tier 5 — High-leverage niche and emerging figures

Sam Harris

Host, Making Sense

AI position

Focused on x-risk

Has run recurring deep-dive episodes on AI x-risk since 2018, including a 2025 series.

Why influential

Builds a direct, recurring relationship with audiences through long-form or personality-led media; guests and clips can quickly alter candidate incentives and issue salience. Primary policy lanes: ai risk; religion; ethics; democracy; culture.

Who pays attention

Academics, technology leaders, civil-liberties audiences, philosophers and professional listeners

Work samples

AI-world contacts

  • Elon Musk — Founder, xAI

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Jan 30, 2017 — Superintelligence: Science or Fiction? (Beneficial AI 2017 panel, Asilomar) — "Panel discussion moderated by Max Tegmark, including Elon Musk, Stuart Russell, Bart Selman, Ray Kurzweil, David Chalmers, Nick Bostrom, Demis Hassabis, Sam Harris, and Jaan Talli

  • Demis Hassabis — Co-founder & CEO, Google DeepMind

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Jan 30, 2017 — Superintelligence: Science or Fiction? (Beneficial AI 2017 panel, Asilomar) — "Panel discussion moderated by Max Tegmark, including Elon Musk, Stuart Russell, Bart Selman, Ray Kurzweil, David Chalmers, Nick Bostrom, Demis Hassabis, Sam Harris, and Jaan Talli

  • Geoffrey Hinton — Professor emeritus, Nobel laureate, University of Toronto

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Oct 2, 2025 — #435 - The Last Invention — Per shortform.com's episode summary, Geoffrey Hinton is listed among the featured voices in #435 — The Last Invention (Making Sense with Sam Harris, Oct 2, 2025), and per search su

  • Yoshua Bengio — Professor, Turing laureate, Mila / UdeM

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Aug 12, 2024 — #379 - Regulating Artificial Intelligence — "Sam Harris speaks with Yoshua Bengio and Scott Wiener about AI risk and the new bill introduced in California intended to mitigate it." Bengio is introduced as "one of the world's

  • Marc Andreessen — Co-founder, a16z

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Aug 1, 2022 — #324 - Debating the Future of AI — "Sam Harris speaks with Marc Andreessen about the future of artificial intelligence (AI)." (episode page for #324 - Debating the Future of AI)

  • Eliezer Yudkowsky — Co-founder, MIRI

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Sep 16, 2025 — #434 — Can We Survive AI? — Yudkowsky and Nate Soares explain why current methods would produce uncontrollable superintelligence and discuss possible prevention.
    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Sep 1, 2025 — #434 - Can We Survive AI? — "Sam Harris speaks with Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares about their new book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies."
    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Feb 28, 2018 — Sam Harris and Eliezer Yudkowsky on 'AI: Racing Toward the Brink' — Covers instrumental convergence, deceptive AI, alignment, coordination, arms races, and the absence of an obvious 'fire alarm' before AGI.
    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Feb 6, 2018 — AI: Racing Toward the Brink — A Conversation with Eliezer Yudkowsky — Yudkowsky argues that intelligence and goals are separable and a sufficiently capable misaligned system could not be contained.

  • Stuart Russell — Professor, UC Berkeley

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Oct 1, 2022 — #312 - The Trouble with AI — "Sam Harris speaks with Stuart Russell and Gary Marcus about recent developments in artificial intelligence and the long-term risks of producing artificial general intelligence (AG

  • Vinod Khosla — Venture capitalist, founder of Sun Microsystems, major OpenAI investor, Khosla Ventures

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Jun 1, 2026 — #479 - When Robots Take Over — Episode subtitle: "A Conversation with Vinod Khosla" on Sam Harris's Making Sense podcast episode #479 "When Robots Take Over"

  • Tristan Harris — Co-founder and executive director, Center for Humane Technology

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Apr 1, 2026 — #469 - Escaping an Anti-Human Future — "Sam Harris speaks with Tristan Harris about the dangers of AI and the race to build it." — page also calls him "the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience."

  • Nate Soares — Executive Director; co-author of 'If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies', Machine Intelligence Research Institute

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Sep 1, 2025 — #434 - Can We Survive AI? — "Sam Harris speaks with Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares about their new book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: The Case Against Superintelligent AI."
    • Wrote aboutdirectness unclassified — Co-guest with Yudkowsky on Making Sense #434 discussing AI x-risk

  • William MacAskill — Associate professor, Oxford; cofounder, Centre for Effective Altruism

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Aug 1, 2025 — #467 - EA, AI, and the End of Work — "Sam Harris speaks with William MacAskill about effective altruism, AI, and the future of humanity. They discuss the post-FTX recovery of the EA movement, global health and pandemi

  • Daniel Kokotajlo — , Ex-OpenAI governance researcher; AI-safety whistleblower

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Apr 1, 2025 — #420 - Countdown to Superintelligence — "Daniel Kokotajlo is the Executive Director at the AI Futures Project, where he oversees its research and policy recommendations." — listed as the guest on Sam Harris's Making Sens

  • Mustafa Suleyman — CEO, Microsoft AI (co-founded DeepMind, later Inflection), Microsoft AI

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Oct 1, 2023 — #332 - Can We Contain Artificial Intelligence? — "Mustafa Suleyman is the co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI. Previously he co-founded DeepMind, one of the world's leading artificial intelligence companies." — confirmed as guest

  • Eric Schmidt — Tech executive, AI policy figure, Former Google CEO / Schmidt Sciences

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Apr 1, 2022 — #280 - The Future of Artificial Intelligence — "Eric Schmidt is a technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist." — listed as the guest on Sam Harris's Making Sense episode #280, "The Future of Artificial Intelligence"

  • Jeff Hawkins — co-founder, Numenta (also Palm, Handspring)

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Aug 1, 2021 — #255 - The Future of Intelligence — "In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Jeff Hawkins about the nature of intelligence."

  • Toby Ord — Senior Research Fellow, Oxford; existential/AI risk researcher, author of The Precipice

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Jun 23, 2020 — #208 - Existential Risk — "A Conversation with Toby Ord" — "Sam Harris speaks with Toby Ord about preserving the long term future of humanity."

  • Nick Bostrom — Philosopher, founder of academic AI existential-risk field, Future of Humanity Institute (formerly)/independent

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Jan 1, 2019 — #151 - Will We Destroy the Future? — "Sam Harris speaks with Nick Bostrom about the problem of existential risk." (episode description for #151 - Will We Destroy the Future?)

  • Max Tegmark — Co-founder, Future of Life Institute

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Sep 1, 2017 — #94 - Frontiers of Intelligence — "Max Tegmark is the guest on this podcast episode... 'a professor of physics at MIT and the co-founder of the Future of Life Institute.' The episode, titled 'Frontiers of Intellige

  • Ray Kurzweil — Futurist, Principal Researcher, Google

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Jan 30, 2017 — Superintelligence: Science or Fiction? (Beneficial AI 2017 panel, Asilomar) — The page lists the Beneficial AI 2017 "Superintelligence: Science or Fiction?" panel participants including Max Tegmark (moderator), Elon Musk, Stuart Russell, Bart Selman, Ray Kur

  • Jaan Tallinn — Co-founder, Skype; major funder of AI-safety orgs (CSER, FLI, MIRI)

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Jan 30, 2017 — Superintelligence: Science or Fiction? (Beneficial AI 2017 panel, Asilomar) — "Panel discussion moderated by Max Tegmark, including Elon Musk, Stuart Russell, Bart Selman, Ray Kurzweil, David Chalmers, Nick Bostrom, Demis Hassabis, Sam Harris, and Jaan Talli

  • Bart Selman — Professor of Computer Science (AI/machine learning), Cornell University

    • Hosted / interviewedsource · interview · Jan 30, 2017 — Superintelligence: Science or Fiction? (Beneficial AI 2017 panel, Asilomar) — "Panel discussion moderated by Max Tegmark, including Elon Musk, Stuart Russell, Bart Selman, Ray Kurzweil, David Chalmers, Nick Bostrom, Demis Hassabis, Sam Harris, and Jaan Talli

  • Scott Wiener — State Senator, author of SB 1047, California State Senate

    • Wrote aboutdirectness unclassified — Co-guest with Yoshua Bengio on Making Sense #379 discussing AI regulation (policy figure, not AI-world per strict definition but relevant context)