Analysis
x-risk-themed
via LessWrong AI [5] — Sometimes, a friend who works around here, at an x-risk-themed organisation, will think about leaving their job. They’ll ask a group of people “what should I do instead?”. And everyone will chime in with ideas for other x-risk-themed orgs that they could…
What if LLMs are mostly crystallized intelligence?
via LessWrong AI [5] — SummaryLLMs are better at developing crystallized intelligence than fluid intelligence. That is: LLM training is good at building crystallized intelligence by learning patterns from training data, and this is sufficient to make them surprisingly skillful…
What is Anthropic?
via Substack Zvi [999] — What is Anthropic?
The AI Ad-Hoc Prior Restraint Era Begins
via Substack Zvi [999] — The White House has ordered Anthropic not to expand access to Mythos, and is at least seriously considering a complete about-face of American Frontier AI policy into a full prior restraint regime, where anyone wishing to release a highly capable new…
Housing Roundup #15: The War Against Renters
via Substack Zvi [999] — So many are under the strange belief that there is something terrible about not owning the house in which you live.
AI Industrial Takeoff — Part 1: Maximum growth rates with current technology
via LessWrong AI [4] — How fast could an AI-driven economy grow? Most economists expect a few percentage points at best, comparable to previous general-purpose technologies (Acemoglu (2024)). Those closer to AI development tend to imagine something much more radical (Shulman…
OpenAI's red line for AI self-improvement is fundamentally flawed
via LessWrong AI [4] — TL;DR. OpenAI's "Critical" threshold for AI self-improvement in the Preparedness Framework v2 has three structural problems:It fires too late. The lagging indicator, 5× generational acceleration sustained for several months, lets ~3 years of effective…
Housing Roundup #14: You Can't Build That
via Substack Zvi [999] — Why can’t you build it?
AI unemployment and AI extinction are often the same
via LessWrong AI [10] — My sense is that people think of AI existential risk and AI unemployment as distinct issues. Some people are extremely concerned about extinction and perhaps even indifferent to total unemployment. Some people think of moderate AI unemployment as a…
AI risk was not invented by AI CEOs to hype their companies
via LessWrong AI [9] — I hear that many people believe that the idea of advanced AI threatening human existence was invented by AI CEOs to hype their products. I’ve even been condescendingly informed of this, as if I am the one at risk of naively accepting AI companies’…
AI #166: Google Sells Out
via Substack Zvi [999] — This was the week of GPT-5.5.
No Strong Orthogonality From Selection Pressure
via LessWrong AI [4] — A postratfic version of this essay, together with the acknowledgements for both, is available on SubstackEdit: if no one thinks an agent can become superintelligent and contest the lightcone while maintaining arbitrarily stupid goals, thats great! I’m only…
The Most Important Charts In The World
via Substack Zvi [999] — We all need a break so: What is the most important chart in the world?
GPT-5.5: Capabilities and Reactions
via Substack Zvi [999] — The system card for GPT-5.5 mostly told us what we expected.
On the political feasibility of stopping AI
via LessWrong AI [9] — A common thought pattern people seem to fall into when thinking about AI x-risk is approaching the problem as if the risk isn’t real, substantial, and imminent even if they think it is. When thinking this way, it becomes impossible to imagine the natural…
Fail safe(r) at alignment by channeling reward-hacking into a "spillway" motivation
via LessWrong AI [3] — It's plausible that flawed RL processes will select for misaligned AI motivations.[1] Some misaligned motivations are much more dangerous than others. So, developers should plausibly aim to control which kind of misaligned motivations emerge in this case.…
GPT 5.5: The System Card
via Substack Zvi [999] — Last week, OpenAI announced GPT-5.5, including GPT-5.5-Pro.
What holds AI safety together? Co-authorship networks from 200 papers
via LessWrong AI [5] — We (social science PhD students) computed co-authorship networks based on a corpus of 200 AI safety papers covering 2015-2025, and we’d like your help checking if the underlying dataset is right.Co-authorship networks make visible the relative prominence…
Is the Cat Out of the Bag?: Who knows how to make AGI?
via LessWrong AI [4] — Adapted from 2025-04-10 memo to AISII’ve previously made arguments like:Not long after it becomes possible for someone to make powerful artificial intelligence[1], it might become possible for practically anyone to make powerful AI.Compute gets…
Monthly Roundup #41: April 2025
via Substack Zvi [999] — AI continue to accelerate and dominate the schedule, which is why this is a bit late, but we do occasionally need to pay our respects to the Goddess of Everything Else.
Live Doom Meter
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%
0% — We're fine
100% — GG
The Doom Meter is a composite score derived from prediction markets and feed sentiment, updated daily.
70%
Prediction Markets
Weighted average of Manifold Markets questions on AI catastrophe, AGI timelines, expert surveys, and key figures. Direct doom indicators weighted higher than indirect capability markers.
30%
Feed Sentiment
Percentage of recent headlines containing high-alarm keywords (existential risk, catastrophe, extinction). Higher alarm density = higher score.
This is not a scientific estimate of existential risk. It is an opinionated, transparent signal — a vibes-based thermometer for AI doom discourse.
P(Doom) Scoreboard
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