PODCAST

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

LessWrong

Audio narrations of LessWrong posts.

technology philosophy

All Episodes

9:06

“Why I don’t believe Superalignment will work” by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/23

We skip over [..] where we move from the human-ish range to strong superintelligence[1]. [..] the period where we can harness potentially vast quantities of AI labour to help us with the alignment of the next generation of models - Will MacAskill in his critique of IABIED I want to respond to Will MacAskill's claim in his IABIED review that we may be able use AI to solve alignment.[1] Will believes that recent developments in AI made it more likely that takeoff will be relatively slow - "Sudden,

en-gb

48:33

“Accelerando as a ‘Slow, Reasonably Nice Takeoff’...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/23

When I hear a lot of people talk about Slow Takeoff, many of them seem like they are mostly imagining the early part of that takeoff – the part that feels human comprehensible. They're still not imagining superintelligence in the limit. There are some genres of Slow Takeoff that culminate in somebody "leveraging controlled AI to help fully solve the alignment problem, eventually get fully aligned superintelligence, and then end the acute risk period." But the sort of person I'm thinking of, for

en-gb

8:16

“Rejecting Violence as an AI Safety Strategy” by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/23

Violence against AI developers would increase rather than reduce the existential risk from AI. This analysis shows how such tactics would catastrophically backfire and counters the potential misconception that a consequentialist AI doomer might rationally endorse violence by non-state actors. Asymmetry of force. Violence would shift the contest from ideas to physical force, a domain where AI safety advocates would face overwhelming disadvantages. States and corporations command vast security

en-gb

23:17

“Research Agenda: Synthesizing Standalone...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/23

tl;dr: I outline my research agenda, post bounties for poking holes in it or for providing general relevant information, and am seeking to diversify my funding sources. This post will be followed by several others, providing deeper overviews of the agenda's subproblems and my sketches of how to tackle them. Back at the end of 2023, I wrote the following: I'm fairly optimistic about arriving at a robust solution to alignment via agent-foundations research in a timely manner. (My semi-arbitrary

en-gb

3:21

[Linkpost] “Global Call for AI Red Lines - Signed by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/22

This is a link post. Today, the Global Call for AI Red Lines was released and presented at the UN General Assembly. It was developed by the French Center for AI Safety, The Future Society and the Center for Human-compatible AI. This call has been signed by a historic coalition of 200+ former heads of state, ministers, diplomats, Nobel laureates, AI pioneers, scientists, human rights advocates, political leaders, and other influential thinkers, as well as 70+ organizations. Signatories include: 10

en-gb

11:45

“Focus transparency on risk reports, not safety...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/22

There are many different things that AI companies could be transparent about. One relevant axis is transparency about the current understanding of risks and the current mitigations of these risks. I think transparency about this should take the form of a publicly disclosed risk report rather than the company making a safety case. To be clear, there are other types of transparency focused on different aspects of the situation (e.g. transparency about the model spec) which also seem helpful. By a

en-gb

4:17

“This is a review of the reviews” by Recurrented

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/22

This is a review of the reviews, a meta review if you will, but first a tangent. and then a history lesson. This felt boring and obvious and somewhat annoying to write, which apparently writers say is a good sign to write about the things you think are obvious. I felt like pointing towards a thing I was noticing, like 36 hours ago, which in internet speed means this is somewhat cached. Alas. I previously rode a motorcycle. I rode it for about a year while working on semiconductors until I got a

en-gb

4:32

“What do people mean when they say that something...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/21

AI risk arguments often gesture at smarter AIs being "closer to a perfect utility maximizer" (and hence be more dangerous) but what does this mean, concretely? Almost anything can be modeled as a maximizer of some utility function. The only way I can see to salvage this line of reasoning is to restrict the class of utility functions one can have such that the agent's best-fit utility function cannot be maximized until it gets very capable. The restriction may be justified on the basis of which kind

en-gb

11:43

“And Yet, Defend your Thoughts from AI Writing” by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/21

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. George Orwell,

en-gb

4:14

“Astralcodexten IRB history error” by Paul Crowley

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/21

I discovered a small error in Scott Alexander's recent book review of "From Oversight to Overkill" that conflates two different periods of aggressive research oversight enforcement. The review reads: This changed in 1998. A Johns Hopkins doctor tested a new asthma treatment. A patient got sick and died. Fingers were pointed. Congress got involved. Grandstanding Congressmen competed to look Tough On Scientific Misconduct by yelling at Gary Ellis, head of the Office For Protection From Research

en-gb

55:49

“Book Review: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/21

Where ‘it’ is superintelligence, an AI smarter and more capable than humans.And where ‘everyone dies’ means that everyone dies. No, seriously. They’re not kidding. They mean this very literally. To be precise, they mean that ‘If anyone builds [superintelligence] [under anything like present conditions using anything close to current techniques] then everyone dies.’ My position on this is to add a ‘probably’ before ‘dies.’ Otherwise, I agree. This book gives us the best longform explanation of

en-gb

20:56

“Book Review: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/20

A few days before “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” came out I wrote a review of Scott's review of the book. Now I’ve actually read the book and can review it for real. I won’t go into the authors’ stylistic choices like their decision to start every chapter with a parable or their specific choice of language. I am no prose stylist, and tastes vary. Instead I will focus on their actual claims. The main flaw of the book is asserting that various things are possible in theory, and then implying

en-gb

36:45

“Contra Collier on IABIED” by Max Harms

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/20

Clara Collier recently reviewed If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies in Asterisk Magazine. I’ve been a reader of Asterisk since the beginning and had high hopes for her review. And perhaps it was those high hopes that led me to find the review to be disappointing. Collier says “details matter,” and I absolutely agree. As a fellow rationalist, I’ve been happy to have nerds from across the internet criticizing the book and getting into object-level fights about everything from scaling laws to neuron

en-gb

5:49

“AI Lobbying is Not Normal” by Algon

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/20

An insightful thread by Daniel Eth on AI lobbying. Re-posted in full w/ permission. Recently, major AI industry players (incl. a16z, Meta, & OpenAI's Greg Brockman) announced >$100M in spending on pro-AI super PACs. This is an attempt to copy a wildly successful strategy from the crypto industry, to intimidate politicians away from pursuing AI regulations.🧵 First, some context. This is not normal. Only one industry has ever spent this much on election spending - the crypto industry spent

en-gb

10:36

“The Problem with Defining an ‘AGI Ban’ by Outcome (a...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/20

TL;DR Most “AGI ban” proposals define AGI by outcome: whatever potentially leads to human extinction. That's legally insufficient: regulation has to act before harm occurs, not after. Strict liability is essential. High-stakes domains (health & safety, product liability, export controls) already impose liability for risky precursor states, not outcomes or intent. AGI regulation must do the same. Fuzzy definitions won’t work here. Courts can tolerate ambiguity in ordinary crimes because errors

en-gb

28:38

“The title is reasonable” by Raemon

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/20

I'm annoyed by various people who seem to be complaining about the book title being "unreasonable" – who don't merely disagree with the title of "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies", but, think something like: "Eliezer and Nate violated a Group-Epistemic-Norm with the title and/or thesis." I think the title is reasonable. I think the title is probably true – I'm less confident than Eliezer/Nate, but I don't think it's unreasonable for them to be confident in it given their epistemic state. (I

en-gb

15:22

“Rewriting The Courage to be Disliked” by Chris Lakin

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/20

I read The Courage to be Disliked 7+ times in four years. The book has excellent philosophy but lacks clear explanations and practical guidance. Here's how I’d rewrite it. As I see it, the book has 7 main claims: Claim #1: Emotional issues often have hidden functions Claim #2: All problems are interpersonal relationship problems Claim #3: Whether you outgrow your issues is your choice Claim #4: You are autonomous, and so are other adults (Separation of tasks) Claim #5: Separating tasks will

en-gb

11:03

“Safety researchers should take a public stance” by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/19

[Co-written by Mateusz Bagiński and Samuel Buteau (Ishual)] TL;DR Many X-risk-concerned people who join AI capabilities labs with the intent to contribute to existential safety think that the labs are currently engaging in a race that is unacceptably likely to lead to human disempowerment and/or extinction, and would prefer an AGI ban[1] over the current path. This post makes the case that such people should speak out publicly[2] against the current AI R&D regime and in favor of an AGI ban[3]

en-gb

122:04

“AI #134: If Anyone Reads It” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/19

It is book week. As in the new book by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Sores, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Yesterday I gathered various people's reviews together. Going home from the airport, I saw an ad for it riding the subway. Tomorrow, I’ll post my full review, which goes over the book extensively, and which subscribers got in their inboxes last week. The rest of the AI world cooperated by not overshadowing the book, while still doing plenty, such as releasing a GPT-5 variant specialized for

en-gb

17:43

“Teaching My Toddler To Read” by maia

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2025/09/19

I have been teaching my oldest son to read with Anki and techniques recommended here on LessWrong as well as in Larry Sanger's post, and it's going great! I thought I'd pay it forward a bit by talking about the techniques I've been using. Anki and songs for letter names and sounds When he was a little under 2, he started learning letters from the alphabet song. We worked on learning the names and sounds of letters using the ABC song, plus the Letter Sounds song linked by Reading Bear. He loved the

en-gb

4,482 results

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

Double Tap

Double Tap Productions Inc.

Primary Technology

Stephen Robles and Jason Aten

Techlandia

Technology Association of Oregon

Eye On A.I.

Craig S. Smith

The Milk Road Show

The Milk Road Show