The later section about Brangus (Ronny Fernandez) was damning. I’ve seen him come up in discussions a few times, but I too had no idea just how depraved and dangerous he was. Nor did I realize how central he was to the whole scene. This guy feels like he’s going to be Brent Dill 2.0 but worse.
EDIT: This also sheds light on the recent ouster of the leader of “Pause AI”, Fernandez’s ex-wife.
SE Gyges, who posted that recent thread on X calling rationalism/EA a sex cult, wrote a longer post with a lot of receipts. He removed it shortly after, implying on X that he’s afraid of legal repercussions.
Drew DeVault diagnoses the orange site, explaining why it’s the vanguard of the tech-fash pipeline. Of course HN immediately flags it into oblivion.
I think you’re probably right. I originally thought it must have been created by a rationalist, but an e/acc author makes more sense. After all, most of them are postrationalists.
Despite the fact that it highlights all the times Yudkowsky was wrong, this site feels like it could have been produced by a rationalist. In addition to all the AI slop, it just has that feel.
Your favorite “CEO said a thing” journalists, Casey Newton and Kevin Roose, are leaving their current podcast and starting a new one.
When they started Hard Fork, they chose the name from the soon-to-be-moribund blockchain concept. Calling their new podcast “Machine Gods” makes me more hopeful than ever that the AI bubble is about to burst.
He was once Dario Amodei’s roommate. He also cofounded the Alignment Research Center (funded in part by a sizable FTX donation), which spun off METR, the organization Cotra now works at.
Curious what Caroline Ellison’s been up to since her FTX/Alameda adventures? Well wonder no more. She’s just been given a job at Manifund, where I’m sure she’ll be researching the best ways to fund her very own imperial Chinese harem.
She’s also Paul Chistiano’s spouse.
Every single Anthropic and OpenAI employee retweeting or otherwise agreeing with Coxon is full of shit. “Hi, I work at [insert AI lab name here], and Jacob is right. I’m scared. There’s a 10% chance humanity ends in the next 10 years. I am continuing to work on this technology that might end humanity in 10 years. Ask me anything.”
Her latest contribution to the discourse is supporting racist marshmallow Nathan Cofnas, because he’s “on the side of science”.
I don’t know the answer, but I’ve always assumed it’s because it’s just something Yud is really into.
Saw this on Lobsters. Hilarious.
I can’t believe millions in funding, a bunch of vide-coded bash scripts, and a desire to promote fascist ideology has resulted in a trash fire.
So much gold in the comments.
… tone down the extent to which we broadcast the the unorthodox aspects of the culture which aren’t directly linked to AI safety. don’t be too eager to discuss stuff like polyamory/meditation/board games/drugs/meal replacement/overt analysis of social status+signalling games etc.
The first reponse to this?
beg your pardon, how did board games got on this list?
It’s depressing how so many (pathetic) software devs are taking their hands off the steering wheel and letting LLMs do all the driving. If you think software quality was poor before LLMs, there’s no way it could have been worse than shit like this:
This became very apparent with GPT 5.6 Sol. It, too, was widely hailed to have near-Fable level intelligence. But I used it non-stop for a week and realized that they had mostly just dialed up the relentlessness meter to eleven, most likely via heavy RLHF.
Last week I gave it a small-sized auth ticket to work on, then stepped away. I came back later that afternoon and found that it had worked for 3+ hours and written 25,000+ lines of code. I skimmed over the code and it looked like a small fix followed by a massive number of additional checks around it, including static analysis tooling.
I gave it to another GPT 5.6 and said “check this code and see if it addresses the ticket”. It looked at it and said that 98% of it was garbage and should be thrown away (its own words). I then gave it to Fable, which said it was massively over-engineered. Fable’s theory was that the agent implemented the fix first, but then compacted and lost crucial context, forgot what the original task was about, and kept going. After many compaction cycles it was completely lost.
I’m not regretting not getting back to the Frame Fellowship on their offer to join their indoctrination programme.
I understand your sentiment, but part of me wants you to take up the offer if only to waste their money and create some awkward moments for LWers.
I can’t stand the idea that the Anthropic IPO could end up funding these people to the tune of millions of dollars.
Please, AI bubble, pop sooner.
As a visualization of how wild this could be, look at some Youtube videos of video game speedruns, such as this one of beating Minecraft in 20 seconds.
Now imagine this applied to all domains of science, technology, and the economy.
Tell me you have the mental maturity of a 12 year old without telling me you have the mental maturity of a 12 year old.
I agree. He gets over his skis with too many speculative scenarios. On the other hand I think he’s spot-on about the techniques rationalists use to filter for people who will tolerate abuse (e.g., the “cow question”). And he brings receipts when it comes to Brangus and his interactions with other prominent rationalists.