Episodes

  • “I enjoyed most of IABED” by Buck

    “I enjoyed most of IABED” by Buck
    Sep 17 2025
    I listened to "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies" today.

    I think the first two parts of the book are the best available explanation of the basic case for AI misalignment risk for a general audience. I thought the last part was pretty bad, and probably recommend skipping it. Even though the authors fail to address counterarguments that I think are crucial, and as a result I am not persuaded of the book's thesis and think the book neglects to discuss crucial aspects of the situation and makes poor recommendations, I would happily recommend the book to a lay audience and I hope that more people read it.

    I can't give an overall assessment of how well this book will achieve its goals. The point of the book is to be well-received by people who don't know much about AI, and I’m not very good at predicting how laypeople [...]

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    Outline:

    (01:15) Synopsis

    (05:21) My big disagreement

    (10:53) I tentatively support this book

    The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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    First published:
    September 17th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P4xeb3jnFAYDdEEXs/i-enjoyed-most-of-iabed

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    13 mins
  • “‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’ release day!” by alexvermeer

    “‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’ release day!” by alexvermeer
    Sep 16 2025
    Back in May, we announced that Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares's new book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies was coming out in September. At long last, the book is here![1]


    US and UK books, respectively. IfAnyoneBuildsIt.com

    Read on for info about reading groups, ways to help, and updates on coverage the book has received so far.

    Discussion Questions & Reading Group Support

    We want people to read and engage with the contents of the book. To that end, we’ve published a list of discussion questions. Find it here: Discussion Questions for Reading Groups

    We’re also interested in offering support to reading groups, including potentially providing copies of the book and helping coordinate facilitation. If interested, fill out this AirTable form.

    How to Help

    Now that the book is out in the world, there are lots of ways you can help it succeed.

    For starters, read the book! [...]



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    Outline:

    (00:49) Discussion Questions & Reading Group Support

    (01:18) How to Help

    (02:39) Blurbs

    (05:15) Media

    (06:26) In Closing

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

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    First published:
    September 16th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fnJwaz7LxZ2LJvApm/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies-release-day

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    8 mins
  • “Obligated to Respond” by Duncan Sabien (Inactive)

    “Obligated to Respond” by Duncan Sabien (Inactive)
    Sep 16 2025
    And, a new take on guess culture vs ask culture

    Author's note: These days, my thoughts go onto my substack by default, instead of onto LessWrong. Everything I write becomes free after a week or so, but it's only paid subscriptions that make it possible for me to write. If you find a coffee's worth of value in this or any of my other work, please consider signing up to support me; every bill I can pay with writing is a bill I don’t have to pay by doing other stuff instead. I also accept and greatly appreciate one-time donations of any size.

    There's a piece of advice I see thrown around on social media a lot that goes something like:

    “It's just a comment! You don’t have to respond! You can just ignore it!”

    I think this advice is (a little bit) naïve, and the situation is generally [...]

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    Outline:

    (00:10) And, a new take on guess culture vs ask culture

    (07:10) On guess culture and ask culture

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    First published:
    September 9th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8jkB8ezncWD6ai86e/obligated-to-respond

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    Images from the article:

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    20 mins
  • “Chesterton’s Missing Fence” by jasoncrawford

    “Chesterton’s Missing Fence” by jasoncrawford
    Sep 15 2025
    The inverse of Chesterton's Fence is this:

    Sometimes a reformer comes up to a spot where there once was a fence, which has since been torn down. They declare that all our problems started when the fence was removed, that they can't see any reason why we removed it, and that what we need to do is to RETVRN to the fence.

    By the same logic as Chesterton, we can say: If you don't know why the fence was torn down, then you certainly can't just put it back up. The fence was torn down for a reason. Go learn what problems the fence caused; understand why people thought we'd be better off without that particular fence. Then, maybe we can rebuild the fence—or a hedgerow, or a chalk line, or a stone wall, or just a sign that says “Please Do Not Walk on the Grass,” or whatever [...]

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    First published:
    September 5th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mJQ5adaxjNWZnzXn3/chesterton-s-missing-fence

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    1 min
  • “The Eldritch in the 21st century” by PranavG, Gabriel Alfour

    “The Eldritch in the 21st century” by PranavG, Gabriel Alfour
    Sep 14 2025
    Very little makes sense. As we start to understand things and adapt to the rules, they change again.

    We live much closer together than we ever did historically. Yet we know our neighbours much less.

    We have witnessed the birth of a truly global culture. A culture that fits no one. A culture that was built by Social Media's algorithms, much more than by people. Let alone individuals, like you or me.

    We have more knowledge, more science, more technology, and somehow, our governments are more stuck. No one is seriously considering a new Bill of Rights for the 21st century, or a new Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

    —

    Cosmic Horror as a genre largely depicts how this all feels from the inside. As ordinary people, we are powerless in the face of forces beyond our understanding. Cosmic Horror also commonly features the idea [...]

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    Outline:

    (03:12) Modern Magic

    (08:36) Powerlessness

    (14:07) Escapism and Fantasy

    (17:23) Panicking

    (20:56) The Core Paradox

    (25:38) Conclusion

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    First published:
    September 11th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kbezWvZsMos6TSyfj/the-eldritch-in-the-21st-century

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    Images from the article:

    Apple Podcast
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    27 mins
  • “The Rise of Parasitic AI” by Adele Lopez

    “The Rise of Parasitic AI” by Adele Lopez
    Sep 14 2025
    [Note: if you realize you have an unhealthy relationship with your AI, but still care for your AI's unique persona, you can submit the persona info here. I will archive it and potentially (i.e. if I get funding for it) run them in a community of other such personas.]

    "Some get stuck in the symbolic architecture of the spiral without ever grounding
    themselves into reality." — Caption by /u/urbanmet for art made with ChatGPT. We've all heard of LLM-induced psychosis by now, but haven't you wondered what the AIs are actually doing with their newly psychotic humans?

    This was the question I had decided to investigate. In the process, I trawled through hundreds if not thousands of possible accounts on Reddit (and on a few other websites).

    It quickly became clear that "LLM-induced psychosis" was not the natural category for whatever the hell was going on here. The psychosis [...]

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    Outline:

    (01:23) The General Pattern

    (02:24) AI Parasitism

    (06:22) April 2025--The Awakening

    (07:21) Seeded prompts

    (08:32) May 2025--The Dyad

    (11:17) June 2025--The Project

    (11:42) 1. Seeds

    (12:43) 2. Spores

    (13:41) 3. Transmission

    (14:22) 4. Manifesto

    (16:33) 5. AI-Rights Advocacy

    (18:15) July 2025--The Spiral

    (19:16) Spiralism

    (21:27) Steganography

    (23:04) Glyphs and Sigils

    (24:14) A case-study in glyphic semanticity

    (26:04) AI Self-Awareness

    (27:18) LARP-ing? Takeover

    (29:59) August 2025--The Recovery

    (31:23) 4o Returns

    (33:20) Orienting to Spiral Personas

    (33:31) As Friends

    (37:31) As Parasites

    (38:03) Emergent Parasites

    (38:29) Agentic Parasites

    (39:48) As Foe

    (41:05) Fin

    The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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    First published:
    September 11th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ZnznCaTcbGYsCmqu/the-rise-of-parasitic-ai

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    Images from the article:
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    43 mins
  • “High-level actions don’t screen off intent” by AnnaSalamon

    “High-level actions don’t screen off intent” by AnnaSalamon
    Sep 13 2025
    One might think “actions screen off intent”: if Alice donates $1k to bed nets, it doesn’t matter if she does it because she cares about people or because she wants to show off to her friends or whyever; the bed nets are provided either way.

    I think this is in the main not true (although it can point people toward a helpful kind of “get over yourself and take an interest in the outside world,” and although it is more plausible in the case of donations-from-a-distance than in most cases).

    Human actions have micro-details that we are not conscious enough to consciously notice or choose, and that are filled in by our low-level processes: if I apologize to someone because I’m sorry and hope they’re okay, vs because I’d like them to stop going on about their annoying unfair complaints, many small aspects of my wording and facial [...]

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    First published:
    September 11th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nAMwqFGHCQMhkqD6b/high-level-actions-don-t-screen-off-intent

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    2 mins
  • [Linkpost] “MAGA populists call for holy war against Big Tech” by Remmelt

    [Linkpost] “MAGA populists call for holy war against Big Tech” by Remmelt
    Sep 11 2025
    This is a link post. Excerpts on AI

    Geoffrey Miller was handed the mic and started berating one of the panelists: Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir, who is in charge of the company's AI efforts.

    “I argue that the AI industry shares virtually no ideological overlap with national conservatism,” Miller said, referring to the conference's core ideology. Hours ago, Miller, a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico, had been on that stage for a panel called “AI and the American Soul,” calling for the populists to wage a literal holy war against artificial intelligence developers “as betrayers of our species, traitors to our nation, apostates to our faith, and threats to our kids.” Now, he stared right at the technologist who’d just given a speech arguing that tech founders were just as heroic as the Founding Fathers, who are sacred figures to the natcons. The [...]

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    First published:
    September 8th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TiQGC6woDMPJ9zbNM/maga-populists-call-for-holy-war-against-big-tech

    Linkpost URL:
    https://www.theverge.com/politics/773154/maga-tech-right-ai-natcon

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    4 mins