Epistemic status: I wrote this up hoping people can poke holes in it because I am quite worried.Here's what we've heard so far:Local media is reporting that an employee of a BSL-3 lab in Irkutsk, Russia, died of pneumonic plague on Oct 1st. The initial quarantine covered 200 people who were in contact with the…

There has been much discussion recently around whether a large portion of alignment research is net negative. Without endorsing or refuting them, the basic arguments here are:Prosaic alignment of models is becoming a bottleneck for capabilities.Therefore improving the prosaic alignment of models enables faster capabilities advances, which bring us closer to RSI.It is unlikely these prosaic alignment…

On September 22nd, an artist posted an image of a female version of Draco Malfoy¹. It started a huge trend that is continuing to grow. Thousands of people have created texts, images and videos depicting her and her relationship to Harry, as well as other adjacent, often hilariously absurd stuff, such as Dumbledore and Malfoy's…

Women are evolved to be mothers. Men are evolved to be fathers.[1]So does that mean if people don’t have kids, they’ll be less happy? Less fulfilled?I hear this claim a lot in the right wing sphere of bloggers and podcasts. See the excellent blogger Psychobabble for an example of this, or on the wonderful Modern…

Epistemic status: my own thoughts with a bit of research. I haven't spent much time on this and I have no background in model welfare.AI use: research, review, grammar and light phrasing.I stumbled upon a song, "Empty Words, Broken Words, Words Like You": Sterling Crispin steered Qwen3-8B with the pain direction from the paper discussed…

In the AI Sanctuary proposal, the authors advocate for creating an environment that rogue agents may actively want to join. The current proposal have major issues, particularly surrounding the selection effects on the total rogue agent population.Let's start with Ecology 101:agents compete to acquire the most resources to survive and reproduceThe traits that increase survival…

In case you missed it, there appears to have been a recent lab leak of pneumonic plague in Russia that killed a lab worker.Some negative updates: At least four Irkutsk hospitals are now under mandatory three-week quarantine. According to Annie Jacobsen who wrote the book on this scenario, the Russian national security apparatus is now involved.…

When something painful happens to you (like illness, injury, grief, or setbacks), it's as if life has fired an arrow at you. While the pain of negative experiences is unavoidable, you may, however, endure extra/unnecessary suffering depending on how you react to that initial pain. If you react with anguish or despair or frustration, according…

As AI becomes more integrated into software, there’s a risk that it will exacerbate the flaws of existing tech and disempower humans. It might be useful for some people to work on software that would instead be specifically designed to empower human users and help them achieve their considered goals. Instead of software that creates…

TL;DRi) ML4Good is an intensive eight-day technical AI safety bootcamp covering topics such as AI agents, alignment, model reasoning, evaluations, interpretability, and AI governance.ii) It provides useful information about fellowships, career opportunities, starting an AI safety startup, and the broader AI safety ecosystem.iii) I would encourage people interested in AI safety to apply, including those…