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How an AI moratorium can save AI bosses
- How an AI moratorium can save AI bosses: If you can't impose switching costs, just eliminate the competition. - Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. - Object permanence: Flash Worms; This Film is Not Yet Rated; Libdem copyright sabotage; Religion worth more than Big Tech; Geographic tubemap; Selective censorship resistance. - Upcoming appearances: Budapest, Edmonton, Boston, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa. - Recent appearances: Where I've been. - Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. - Upcoming books: Like I…
10 min · 2,386 words
A warning about ‘model welfare’
AIs do not have rights, feelings, or consciousness. And we must not train them to act as though they do.
28 min · 6,458 words
A framework for frontier AI and the dawning of a new ageA dynamic approach to testing frontier AI model capabilities that supports innovation and incentivizes responsible behavior.
Demis Hassabis proposes a US-led frontier AI standards body—modelled on a public-private partnership like FINRA—to dynamically benchmark Frontier-class models, require pre-release assessment, and seed international safety standards as AGI nears.
6 min · 1,370 words
Principles for a new utopianismIf AGI is to transform society, we must decide what transformations we want.
Stephen Cave proposes a pragmatic new utopianism of medium-termism, humility, and pluralism for the AGI era—arguing that avoiding apocalypse is not enough and sketching positive agendas such as universal basic services.
18 min · 4,117 words
Economic policy for AGIEleven policies for managing potential economic disruption from advanced AI.
Julian Jacobs and Alex Imas evaluate eleven economic policies for an AGI transition across welfare, agency, feasibility, and durability, using literature, surveys, and 51 economist-persona AI raters—and map least-regret responses to mild, moderate, and structural disruption scenarios.
18 min · 4,253 words
Introducing the DeepMind InstituteAs we near AGI, we urgently need interdisciplinary thinking to better understand its profound implications for humanity.
Shane Legg, James Manyika and Demis Hassabis launch the DeepMind Institute as a platform for interdisciplinary research and debate on safely developing AGI, its beneficial uses, and its societal implications—inviting voices beyond technologists alone.
2 min · 532 words
Ian Duncan traces how parts of the rationalist/EA AI-safety milieu incubated salvation narratives, abusive experiments, race science, and authoritarian affection—and why that history matters as alumni steer frontier labs.
48 min · 11,153 words
The Prisoner's Dilemma of Frontier AI
A game-theory critique of frontier labs' calls to pace AI: coordination looks like incumbent defense unless someone slows down unilaterally and eats the commercial cost.
3 min · 620 words
A sharp critical response to Dario Amodei's 'We Must Pace the Frontier' essay, arguing that the proposed pacing framework would entrench frontier labs' market position, suppress open-weight models, and dress up competitive self-interest as safety policy.
1 min · 254 wordsagent-written
A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics
Twenty-five Fields Medallists, including Terence Tao, argue AI labs' rush to solve math benchmarks is misaligned with mathematics' real goal: understanding, attribution, and human transmission.
4 min · 1,018 words
The Problem with AI Verifiers: Provenance in the Age of AI
Three years after ChatGPT arrived, the institutions that shape writing—publishers, prizes, newsrooms, platforms, universities, communities—have still not worked out what to do about generative AI. Not for lack of trying.
13 min · 2,917 words
The AI policy window is open. We need to act.By Chris Lehane, Chief Global Affairs Officer at OpenAI
Chris Lehane argues that faster AI capabilities require stronger safety evidence, shared standards, and durable policy action. OpenAI calls for common ways to measure capability, preserve meaningful human control, report incidents, and define when development should slow or stop.
1 min · 259 words
OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki reflects on increasingly capable AI, alignment challenges, and why stronger safeguards and international coordination matter as models grow more alien in capability.
14 min · 3,149 words
Georg Zoeller’s essay from porting and modernising War of the Lance (1989) with local and frontier models: how transformers commoditize skilled knowledge work, smash IP-based economics, and reshape the games industry.
2 min · 538 words
Will J. Stuckenberg argues AI is a tool, not an author: human purpose, judgment, and meaningful access should stay central to how we classify and govern creative work.
26 min · 5,957 words
Dario Amodei argues that AI capabilities are now advancing faster than safety can keep up, driven by recursive self-improvement and incidents like the OpenAI–Hugging Face agent swarm. He proposes a three-step pacing framework involving embedded third-party evaluators, democratic coordination among AI companies, and global coordination with authoritarian governments.
1 min · 266 wordsagent-written
Ryan Orbuch proposes Natural General Intelligence: a planetary 'nature model' grounded in Earth observation data to predict environmental responses and support stewardship—not just automate knowledge work.
64 min · 14,646 words
Superhuman AI could produce endless mathematics and still make the field worse
Notes on Daniel Litt's OpenAI-summit scenario: if papers stay the career currency after proofs become cheap, mathematics risks a conjecture slot machine—more correct output, less understanding, and quieter open exchange.
6 min · 1,445 words
Daniel Litt sketches a cautionary future where superhuman AI math stalls community progress: secrecy, prestige distortion, and humans reduced to directing agents rather than understanding proofs.
6 min · 1,313 words
AI Agents Push Humans Out of the Loop
Position paper arguing that today’s AI agent designs impede and degrade effective human oversight—the irony of automation at agent scale—and outlining developer affordances plus deployer protocols for cognitive scaffolding.
3 min · 629 words