LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

It might destroy the world, despite passing every known safety test. If we wait for a “warning shot” before we act, it might be too late. And action requires global coordination, because if anyone makes it, everyone dies. Sound familiar?

It should, because it already happened half a century ago, with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Despite seemingly impossible odds, we got our act together and completely solved the problem through unprecedentedly successful international coordination. The Montreal Protocol banning CFCs, signed 39 years ago today, is the only treaty that has ever been ratified by every single country in the entire world.

Total Montreal protocol victory

Making AI go well is going to be a lot harder than fixing the ozone hole. Nonetheless, the similarity is uncanny, and we don’t have any other choice. Understanding how we did the impossible once before may teach us something about how to do it again.

The theory is born

The year is 1973. The slow televised unraveling of the Nixon administration is already well underway. DDT finally got banned last year by the newly created EPA. A river got so polluted that it literally caught on fire.

The Cuyahoga River Fire

Environmentalism looms large in [...]

---

Outline:

(01:24) The theory is born

[... 7 more sections]

---

First published:

September 20th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zxXPEtSSSEdwpjopb/we-ve-saved-the-world-before-what-the-ozone-hole-teaches-us

---



Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The Chinese AI researcher has read the Three Body Problem series of sci-fi novels since high school, and understand the concept of existential risk vaguely.

He is fascinated by Ye Wenjie, the researcher that turned against humanity in that book, and decides that in the future if AI progress leads to a superior intelligence, he might be tempted to become Ye if there's no good alternative.

He performs the duties of capabilities research in a Chinese frontier lab, seeking to one day achieve parity with Western companies, though he knows this is difficult. He has a mentality of hillclimbing, believing that the progress of a future technology is highly uncertain and even unknowable, and so him and his peers could only tread one step at a time.

He looks at the western world and sees what is typical when a great technology is developed: the first mover will decide to impose restrictions to further their lead, while latecomers should use whatever means necessary to widen access to the whole world. He thinks of the AI chip restrictions as evidence of this.

He uses Anthropic and OpenAI models regularly in his day to day work. He [...]

---

First published:

September 19th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qmxkHm2dTLKG6GZ6i/the-anatomy-of-a-chinese-ai-researcher

---



Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Back in the day, I was a very active AI safety group organizer. I commonly notice people making the same mistakes across many clubs. I have written down a list of some of these mistakes hoping people will avoid them in the future:

Reading groups often require that people read things before meetings. This is a mistake. People often don't do the readings. And the lack of common knowledge that everyone has read the reading degrades the conversation quality. Instead, have longer meetings, serve food (so, lunch/dinner meeting slots), and read during the actual meeting.

Reading groups often don't sort people into cohorts properly. Mainly, they fail at clustering people into clusters of roughly equal ML knowledge and age. Grad students don't want to discuss a paper with freshmen. People with lots of ML knowledge don't want to discuss a paper with people with no ML knowledge. Instead, group people with people similar to them in ML knowledge and age.

Reading groups often rely on digital materials instead of physical printouts. Screens are distracting and there is no common knowledge that people are paying attention. Neatly print every reading ahead of time instead.

Clubs [...]
---

First published:

September 19th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XFzqDJjAJBt8fkn8i/common-mistakes-in-ai-safety-group-organizing

---



Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

When I finished HPMOR, I immediately knew it was the best novel I had read in more than a decade. I only wished I had found it sooner.




When I started reading The Sequences, I discovered that the Chinese translation group had translated only the first volume. When I graduated from university, two years ago, AI translation had only just become good enough to convey the meaning of an article with reasonable accuracy. It was only about a year and a half ago that I truly found my way here and began engaging seriously with rationalism.




My score on the Chinese college entrance exam was only slightly above the cutoff for what was then called a first-tier university. At university, my grades were near the bottom of my year, and I almost failed to graduate. It is probably fair to say that the vast majority of graduates from first-tier Chinese universities are smarter and more capable than I am.




English has always been my worst subject. From childhood through school, I could barely pass it.




I have now been working for two and a half years and have saved about 15,000 [...]

---

First published:

September 20th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GoX3uYQ4QN5HKvL7u/please-give-them-a-chance-on-china-rationalism-and-ai-safety

---



Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I avoid Twitter (𝕏) for similar reasons to drugs: I think it
would change me for the worse, and I would be unable to give it up.



After staying off Twitter reasonably successfully for years, I
cross-posted my AI
Tweets there a few weeks ago. I had something very Twitter-shaped
to say, and I thought it was important to get out, so I do
think this was worth it. And it all went well: none of this is
complaining about the comments I got there.



Coming back a few times to check notifications, however, it's been
very good at baiting me: Tweets that are confidently wrong in cases
where I have relevant and uncommon knowledge. The pull to dive in and
share what I know is very strong! Then this bleeds over to the far
broader case where people are wrong, and you have a large potential
time sink.



If it were just the time sink, I'd stop resisting. I spend some
time on HN and Reddit, and to the extent that Twitter could substitute
for that by showing me things I was more interested in, that wouldn't
be an issue. The real problem [...]

---

First published:

September 19th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tvwtwgcujTfep4HgY/why-i-stay-off-twitter

---



Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.