LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

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 [...]
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First published:

September 19th, 2026


Source:

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

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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 [...]

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First published:

September 20th, 2026


Source:

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

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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 [...]

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First published:

September 19th, 2026


Source:

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

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

While this is relevant to my work at MIRI, I have not checked these ideas with anyone else on the team and am posting this on my personal LW account. These views are my own. And to be honest, I am writing this mostly to remind myself of my weakness.

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I expect one (or many) adversarial memetic attacks aiming to trip you up, perhaps consisting of fake leaks relating to dangerous stuff happening in the labs. Specifically, worrying incidents that may fit snugly within your worldview, leaking from multiple sources including news outlet/s, but not confirmed/confirmable by a primary source. Think rumors about exfiltrated weights, AIs attempting to create viruses, agent swarms hacking into and gathering information from nuclear infrastructure, etc.

An easy way to remove status from a movement is to trip it up: make it fall for a misinformation trap in public, then use that slip-up to discredit the movement for all time. The game is set for a memetic attack like this. There's a well-resourced group waiting for your screw-up.

And then you may remember much that will help you. 

In public and in private, if you feel surprised or confused, notice your confusion. These [...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

September 17th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5mcDjo5gjn3Leahhu/the-game-is-set-for-a-targeted-memetic-attack-on-the-ai

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

(I began writing this post several weeks ago, but political events are moving much faster than I expected, so I am publishing now out of fear that otherwise the message will arrive too late to have an impact.)

I

In this post I want to explain a concept,
and issue a warning based on it.
But I expect the warning will be superfluous if my explanation is sufficient.
If you want to convey the idea
"the rattlesnake has venom in its fangs, so don't let it bite you",
you won't need a hard sell for the concluding advice
if the listener understands the initial statement about venom.

The word for the concept I want to illustrate is partisanize,
which means to align an issue with a political tribe.
It is modeled on politicize,
but the latter word is not useful here.
It would be meaningless to say "Don't Politicize AI Safety":
the project is intrinsically political.
It involves international diplomacy, consensus-building,
the willingness to sacrifice near-term economic growth for long-term human values,
and a brutally difficult coordination problem.
AI Safety is inescapably political, but not inevitably partisan.
It's possible that,
like issues such as infrastructure or [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) I

(05:25) II

(07:53) III

(11:51) IV

(19:14) V

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First published:

September 16th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Rx38cuCpL9hguLCDq/for-love-of-the-lightcone-don-t-partisanize-ai-safety

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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