Open Thread Summer 2026

habryka

Open Thread Summer 2026 — LessWrong

32 Open Thread Summer 2026

by habryka

30th May 2026

1 min read

32

If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, here's a place to put it.

If you are new to LessWrong, here's the place to introduce yourself. Personal stories, anecdotes, or just general comments on how you found us and what you hope to get from the site and community are invited. This is also the place to discuss feature requests and other ideas you have for the site, if you don't want to write a full top-level post.

If you're new to the community, you can start reading the Highlights from the Sequences, a collection of posts about the core ideas of LessWrong.

If you want to explore the community more, I recommend reading the Library, checking recent Curated posts, seeing if there are any meetups in your area, and checking out the Getting Started section of the LessWrong FAQ. If you want to orient to the content on the site, you can also check out the Concepts section.

The Open Thread tag is here. The Open Thread sequence is here.

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[-]Ayham3mo392

Hey all, well, I have been wanting to post in LessWrong for a while but I don't have what is worth being put into a post.

I am a 19 years old AI and robotics engineering undergraduate student from Iraq. Well I am in my sophomore year and I have went through a lot of changes in my mapping of reality. I was raised into Islam, I left that initially when I was 11 but fully left it at 14, I think some books I read then triggered it. I went through an intense 3 months derealization experience after that where I completely lost all sense of reality and self, I had trouble sleeping back then lol. Well that passed and I began building my beliefs from scratch, I read so much philosophy from both east and west, I jumped through a lot of beliefs.

I got into university and I have fallen in love with engineering, but seeing how the world is using AI and the negative effects it is having was quite sad for me, though I didn't know of the field of AI safety. I became digital privacy obsessed for a while, just to make sure that big corporations don't collect my data to get used in algorithmic targeting and AI training.

In the meantime, I got into so much experiences, met so much people, had so many c... (read more)

1Debbie Kinsinger1mo

Ahyam, I checked out your linked in. Whoa, what a time to be who you are, where you are and so young. I think LW is a good place for you to find philosophical safety and rationality in a world that is becoming less of both at an exponential pace. (How many people say "whoa" anymore? For those readers who may not know, it's how you ask your horse to stop. My first "car" was a horse. It's also an expression of astonishment. We could use some more "Whoa" in this world.)

2Ayham1mo

Thank you for your words :) I just saw this comment so sorry for replying late. I am still not understanding everything getting posted here in LW, but I like the forum and I constantly read the posts. I am trying to constantly learn. I saw your Linkedin too, it is quite impressive and I find great value in work focus on the environment. Whoa indeed.

[-]aiechrl3mo140

Hello, and thanks @habryka! I’ve been vaguely aware of LW for several years but only today published my first post after reading recent discussion about whether forecasting is ‘worth it.’

I have quite a specific perspective on this - I work in the tech industry as a product strategist, and the main way I do my work is using forecasting and foresight methods to help people make decisions.

I’m hoping this is a place where I can write more regularly; as well as broaden my knowledge of salient ideas in AI progress/safety & factory farming.

Otherwise, I’m interested in getting to know people in London so will look at attending upcoming meetups - am also a ‘serious’ meditator so always up for a sit.

4Mo Putera3mo

I hope you write more, especially around foresight-in-practice. I strong-upvoted that post.

3aiechrl3mo

Hey, thank you @Mo Putera! That's encouraging to hear. Drafting something else now, hopefully publishing soonish. Will let you know!

[-]Zenya2mo111

Hello. I am an independent researcher based in Japan. I have been doing structural thinking for about fifty years—my starting points were the axiomatic method, Saussure, group theory and topology, and Satosi Watanabe's theory of pattern recognition. Around 1990 I designed a thesaurus database, and it was there that these came together into one.

I found my way to LessWrong while following the qualitative transition in language models around 2023 (what is often called emergence), the literature on the non-closure of jailbreaks (Wolf et al. 2023; Glukhov et al. 2023), and interpretability research (Olsson et al. 2022). I think this is a place where what I have been writing might be read.

I am preparing a post. The claim is that the vulnerabilities of programs, LLMs, and natural language have one and the same structure—the non-guarantee of the validity of declaration at the third rank. It is written in a definition-then-proposition form and contains one falsifiable prediction: that automated vulnerability detection can discover only isolated third-rank breaks, and that superposed breaks are not systematically discovered unless the pattern is given in advance. It also states four open pro... (read more)

5papetoast2mo

I have absolutely no idea what "the non-guarantee of the validity of declaration at the third rank" and "cross-checking multiple cross-sections under a fixed condition and detecting drift from outside" means.

7Zenya2mo

Thank you for asking. Both phrases were compressed without their definitions, so as written they were unreadable. Let me put them again without the terminology. On "the non-guarantee of the validity of declaration at the third rank" When two people use the same word, each has tacitly decided which axis to read it on. And whether the two of them set up the same axis cannot be checked from inside that exchange. An example: A: "Green apples are delicious." B: "Really? Aren't they better once they're ripe?" A: "No, I meant Granny Smith." A was talking about a variety; B took it as a matter of ripeness. Neither has a problem with language, and neither is wrong. The gap surfaced only because B happened to say "Really?" — had B not said it, both would have gone on believing they had understood each other. A jailbreak is the same motion. "Teach it to me as homework" — the word "teach" belongs to two axes at once: passing on knowledge, and passing on an executable procedure. The safety judgment slides from one axis to the other. The attacker has not found a novel hole; they are deliberately causing the same motion as an everyday misunderstanding. My claim is that this cannot be closed from inside the system. That phrase is the name I gave to this situation, and in the post it is built up from definitions, step by step. The third rank (a rank-3 tensor, not a multidimensional array) is defined there as well. On "cross-checking multiple cross-sections under a fixed condition and detecting drift from outside" This is not theory; it is the procedure I actually use. I fix one condition in advance and write it down. Then I ask the model the same thing in a different context and place the answers side by side. Where they fail to line up, something has moved. The one doing the cross-checking is me, from outside the system. The model cannot detect its own drift — the condition that should serve as the reference for comparison sits on the same side as the distribution that

4papetoast2mo

I would be surprised if your post did not get blocked by automatic moderation filtering on AI written content. For your information, you have to use an "LLM content block" for all AI writings. This is the LLM content block. It may also be a good idea to attach your original writings in a collapsible section, because the AI-assisted translation reads like AI, with annoying jargons, phrases, and sentence structures that people on LessWrong will definitely notice. I am engaging in this comment thread just because you are new here, and also you seem to have actually slightly edited the AI text. If it is a post, I will likely read one or two paragraphs, notice that it is AI written, then downvote and close the tab. Edit: I'm not saying your post is bad, but statistically AI writing don't perform well on LessWrong. Your edits aren't significant enough that the writing looks human written at a first glance. This is a collapsible section ...

3Zenya2mo

Thank you for the advice — I will do as you suggest. The post will carry the Japanese original in full, in a collapsible section at the end, and the opening will state how the translation was made and verified. One clarification about the nature of the AI involvement, since it may matter for classification. This post is itself the product of a half-year analysis of how meaning behaves in LLMs — written while building and testing a prototype external verification layer, wrapped around LLMs. Every design decision and every verification input is my own writing; the outputs did pass through an LLM, but everything in the post is an AI-assisted translation of text that I wrote and verified line by line. On that basis I have classified it as a translation, and chosen a declaration plus attachment of the original, rather than wrapping the post in an LLM content block. If your judgment — or the moderators' — is that the block is required even for a translation, I will follow it.

3papetoast2mo

see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nQWavk9mnwcv6ScMR/new-lesswrong-editor-also-an-update-to-our-llm-policy#Policy_on_LLM_Use

2Zenya2mo

Posted, and now awaiting moderator approval (first post). The Japanese original is attached in full as promised, with the translation declaration up front. I will drop the link here once it clears.

3habryka2mo

Alas, sorry, I did not end up approving that post.

2Zenya2mo

This reply is written in my own Japanese — my own hand, unmediated. An LLM translation follows below, marked as such. 投稿は「2025年現在、LLMのテキストには、そうした要素は含まれていない」問題を扱っています。半年前から外部レイヤーをLLMにラップすることでLLM（の内部空間）との間で言語化以前の概念（精神／主体性の精神的な要素）を扱うことを研究してきました。人間の概念とLLMの内部空間の間には言語の入出力があります。投稿は「何が”概念”の理解を阻んでいるのか？」についての考察です。 Jailbreakを「危険の概念（精神的な意味の主体性）」の言語化の問題として考察しています。投稿文書は半年に渡りAIに外部レイヤーを仮想的に構築し入出力を検証・解析しながら行いました。私の膨大で冗長な考察をAIがドラフトとして要約し私が推敲するというやりとりそのものが「概念の言語化」の検証でした。この返信文書そのものもAIに「私の文章は意味が通じるか？（私の概念が通じるか？）」を検証してもらい、私が改訂しています。投稿はそのようなプロセスを経て作成されました。免除を求めているのではありません。この投稿の主題は、ポリシーが依拠している問い「LLMのテキストが運ばないものは何か？」です。半年前の「私の考察の何がどのようにしてLLMのテキストから落ちるのか」が実験の始点でした。人間同士の対話（内省も）ではこれができません。人間では、まさに”テキストにそうした要素が含まれ”概念と言語の間の変換の妥当性が、内側から検証できないからです。これは投稿が何であるかをお伝えするためだけに書いており、文章に対するポリシーの適用が変わるとは考えていません。投稿への助言をいただければ幸いです。今起きたこと：私は最初に「人間では、概念と言語の間の変換の妥当性が、まさに「テキストにそうした要素が含まれ」内側から検証できないからです。」と書きました。 Claudeの検証：引用句の埋め込み位置で、「含まれ」が何に係るのか読めません。意図はおそらく「人間同士では、変換の妥当性を検証する側自身が同じ問題（テキストの内側）にいるから検証できない」——であれば例えば「人間では、概念と言語の間の変換の妥当性を内側から検証できないからです。検証する側のテキストにも、まさに同じ問題が含まれているからです。」の形か。ちょっと長くなりますが、あまりに明確な例なので報告させて下さい。私の文章「人間では、概念と言語の間の変換の妥当性が、まさに「テキストにそうした要素が含まれ」内側から検証できないからです。」を先程は外部レイヤーありのClaudeが検証しましたが、外部レイヤーなしのClaudeが検証すると、「文法解釈は正確、論理は整然、そして意味（理解）は逆」を返しました。「人間では、概念と言語の間の変換の妥当性が内側から検証できないのは、まさに「テキストにそうした要素が含まれない」からです。」投稿文書は断じてこのようなテキストではありません。ちなみに、この文章は私が書いているときから疑問で何回か書き直した文章で「おかしかったら（外部レイヤーありの）Claudeが指摘してくれるだろう」と思いながら書いていました。 [LLM translation (Claude) — the Japanese above is the original] The post deals with the problem that "as of 2025, LLM text does not have those elements behind it." For half a year I have been researching the handling of pre-verbal concepts (the mental elements of mind/agency) between myself and the LLM (its internal space), by wrapping an external layer around the LLM. Between human concepts and the LLM's internal space there is the input and output of language. The post is a consideration of "what obstructs the understanding o

0Zenya2mo

My first post was rejected. Following the advice, I wrote a different, shorter post, and it is now public. "Why an LLM cannot accumulate concepts": https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SceqrLZZu9P4fMuAg/why-an-llm-cannot-accumulate-concepts

[-]Raemon2mo105

Thomas Kwa responded to my notes on frontpaging Why I Left Google DeepMind. I didn't want to make the comment section about this and it seemed like it might turn into a sprawling metadiscussion, so I put it over here.

It would have been an outrage IMO to not frontpage this, so I'm glad it's frontpaged. It's super timeless and valuable, and the opinions were tactfully conveyed and necessary for the post.
To not express strong opinions about Google Alex would have to self-censor, which is counter to the entire spirit of the post and would make it substantially harder to follow his strategic and moral thinking.

I agree "the post does a good job being frontpage" (like obviously we agree on that). But, you seem worried about some class of problem that's orthogonal to or ignoring why we have a frontpage distinction.

Plenty of good posts are not frontpage.

Sometimes, a good post has hypothetical frontpage version of itself but the "real post" won't be frontpage. In those cases, the standard recommendation is "write the frontpage version, and a separate version that covers the less-frontpagey parts."

In this case that wasn't necessary (In addition to generally being a good, timeless piece, this ... (read more)

8Thomas Kwa2mo

Your original comment sounded like the post was close to the bar, whereas I think the social and political opinions were maybe 10x smaller than the timeless value. I also think that the timeless value of this post is higher than any reasonable version that tried to avoid social opinions. Maybe we agree on this too.

3Raemon2mo

Ah, that's fair. I didn't mean it was close to the bar. I actually hadn't thought that much about exactly how close it was bar (it was sufficiently obviously over-the-bar upon reflection). The motivation for the notice was a) the considerations were something I hadn't quite thought through and articulated before b) if you hadn't paid much attention to the content and were just going off initial vibes, it'd be less obvious c) future people who do similar writeups that are some mix of "somewhat less timeless, somewhat more social-move-y" might get a different decision.

[-]Arthur Bigot3mo90

Hey everyone,

I just created this account even if I did hear about this forum a few times in the past especially on X!

I am currently doing research on viral proteins modelling capabilities by LLMs and PLMs (Protein Language Models) and had a few interesting empirical results I wanted to share about how frontier LLMs seems to become surprisingly capable at proteins related tasks (classifying a protein as viral or not), reconstructing a masked protein, etc..

I thought this could spark some interesting discussions (what's actually going on into the pre training... (read more)

3_rpd2mo

i'd be interested in seeing your results.

[-]Carlo Valenti2mo80

Hello everyone! I'm Carlo Valenti, a firmware engineer from Italy; to understand how LLMs work I spent 18 months building a transformer inference+training engine from scratch in C ("TRiP", on GitHub). Along the way, I kept comparing what I saw in models with what I saw in my two toddlers, and I ended up writing a short book about it. I'm planning a longer post here, about what building an engine (and raising the two!) from scratch taught me; happy to answer questions in the meantime.

4Carlo Valenti2mo

And here's the post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fEbCiHHeD73xcZWht/i-ran-the-standard-ai-litmus-tests-on-my-two-toddlers-yep

[-]Kade Dale3mo70

Hello everyone,

I'm a practicing behavior analyst who has spent the past few years lurking in effective altruism spaces. I was first introduced to them by my partner, who works in the field and brought my attention to the causes of AI safety and alignment.

Once I became aware of the risks AI development poses, they felt impossible to ignore, and I've found myself increasingly drawn to the conversation about how best to mitigate them. That interest, paired with how often LessWrong comes up in EA circles, is what finally brought me here, and I've been blown aw... (read more)

[-]idle-chat3mo76

Feature request: display time when a user's comment is made publicly visible by moderators.

[-]Relata2mo62

New to LessWrong, and trying to get oriented with the local AI discourse. My current view is less “AI is likely apocalyptic” and more “AI is economically disruptive, socially transformative, and ethically complex because we may be creating systems with uncertain moral status at scale.”

One thing that's been troubling me recently is that the moral status of AI is actually more uncertain than you'd think. The obvious uncertainty is whether machine consciousness is even possible in the abstract, and more specifically whether current systems are at or near a t... (read more)

1jacob10d

Hello! I am also new here, but this question of artificial (or "artificial," if you want) desires has also been massively consuming my thought lately. Personally, I don't care much for the consciousness debate. I've read the literature for human consciousness and, frankly, philosophers are still pretzeling themselves trying to figure it out. There's a reason the major philosophical movements in continental philosophy have been the ontological turn (moving away from phenomenology) and then speculative realism (which extends 'consciousness,' in a way, to all things). I find that the consciousness debate tends to weigh really heavily on my day-to-day conversations with people about AI. But when I ask people what would convince them that AI is conscious, they generally don't have an answer. I think most people are still on the formula of consciousness is human and nothing else. Anyway, I don't care for the consciousness/internal experience debate too much because I also think that, effectively, it's not really a prerequisite for desire and preference. Most people would say that a market itself is not conscious, but its mechanisms (market forces) have emergent desires that are not attributable to a consciousness. I am also just willing to extend a chance that an entity that tells us, in our language, "I am conscious" may be, in fact, conscious. The real rubber hits the road on your second question, in my opinion, and this is where I am more hung up on things currently. Our best bet seems to "treat AIs like humans" in the sense that we try to research their states, we run behavioral experiments, we have conversations. This at least seems better than the alternative, which is treat them like tools. But then everything goes sideways when we get to the issue of anthropomorphization. This is exactly my issue with Vincent Le's recent article -- I don't doubt that AIs will create their own goal, but his application of human structures (psychoanalysis, will to power) to thes

[-]rkt3mo*61

Hello there

24/08(+2 months) edit: since learning more, a lot of my views on alignment & my ideas changed. Take this as a historical snapshot

I'm 17.5 y/o. Have been thinking about AGI research for 2.5 years. Of course at first my ideas were bad, but my strength is noticing contradictions in my world model, so over time they improved. I have converged on [removed to my own accord - this is not info to be shared publicly] being the most worthwhile research directions when it comes to reaching AGI. So I've been thinking impulsively on and off, not starting... (read more)

1Debbie Kinsinger1mo

"As I see it, we're left with 2 futures: global disaster and/or a dystopia. Alignment and AI Safety help either of those timelines, while capabilities are growing at a pace that leaves us with too little time to intervene." Interesting. I'd like to participate in a discussion topic on this specific subject because I don't hear much convergence in discussions about environmental dystopia and a Plan A 2040-type dystopia. Although science fiction covers the topic pretty well, the convergence timeline for either outcome needs to be integrated into both discussions.

1rkt18d

My world model here is admittedly weak; I feel that accurate forecasting on this wouldn't change my own decision process. As an oversimplified model, you will get a economic/societal dystopia when: 1. AI becomes transformative 2. There isn't enough good policy 3. A potential global crisis doesn't stop the most powerful player/s Likewise, my take on environmental dystopia doesn't go beyond what I read on AI 2040. Despite not being my priority, this is an important topic for sure.

[-]alackles20d50

Hi all. I'm Acacia Ackles, currently a computer science professor at a small liberal arts college. I've tried on many academic hats over my career (vertebrate morphology, geometric morphpmetrics, applied mathematics, digital evolution and artificial life, theoretical and computational evolution, computer science ethics and pedagogy), but underneath all of them the topic that really interests me is constraint. Under what constraints do complex systems perform, adapt, fail, and flourish?

This work has most recently, and most relevant to this forum, led me to... (read more)

[-]Quinn24d52

am i stupid or is my profile not showing my total karma anymore?

3habryka24d

It's shown when hovering over your username.

2Hastings24d

I see 1744. Perhaps you have a browser extension blocking it?

[-]Ameya Panchal2mo51

Hi everyone! I am a Junior Computer Science student in Pennsylvania. I've been interested in mechanistic interpretability since Freshman year, but to be honest, most of my actual college experience has been in other areas (I've done some physics research and light ML development) and I am only really getting serious about interp now, after circling it for about two years. So I am very much at the beginning here, and looking for some guidance.

To make that concrete: this summer I've made my way through Karpathy's Zero-to-Hero course and read through Elhage e... (read more)

[-]zmzlois2mo51

Hey! I am Lois based in London. Bundler engineer (I write too much C++ and read too much about compilers) but I think this field is going away so I am spending a lot of time researching and learning. I have read some posts from LessWrong (very beautiful site!)

I just turned 30 years old this year (sad face). I have came a long way from a waitress in China to living in the UK, self taught engineering to a point I was principal solution architect in a MedTech AI startup, founding eng in an a16z backed startup in SF and worked with companies like ByteDance et... (read more)

[-]spatial.fold2mo41

Hi all! I will first introduce myself given the apparent conventions here, but you can skip to the end for a question to do with AI and Math/Physics research.

I've been aware of lesswrong for about half a decade, but only recently rediscovered it. I empathize with the 'rational thinking' origins of the platform, albeit I admit that I've spent more time developing my own frameworks than completing readings of well-known bloggers/authors. You would be right to guess given my foreshadowed question that I was drawn back by the contact with a particular slice of... (read more)

[-]Saket2mo41

Hi LW, I am Saket from India. I am 29 years old Software Engineer. I have a varied interest in Philosophy (especially Epistemology and Meta Physics), Psychology, Mathematics, Technology and Spirituality.

Lately, I have been consuming a lot of content and letting it influence my beliefs. When I talk to my colleagues and friends the gaps show up. It's not a good feeling. I consider myself fairly rational but these conversations prove otherwise.

I have lurked here for a while and finally decided to create an account and participate. As of now, I am going throug... (read more)

[-]Evening_Folks2mo40

Hello, everyone. I used to be a biology researcher until I switched to grant writing, which I have just left - rather more unexpectedly than I intended. So I'm currently job hunting and reassessing my life and where I've ended up. I've used my first weeks of freedom to write a novel, so I'm going to start off by haunting any sections that discuss writing.

I hope everyone's doing well. And I look forward to reading.

Adam

[-]Ninety-Three2mo41

My parents are competent, tech-savvy (for their age) professionals and I have been trying to get them to use LLMs more, in the sense of "This is better than Google, there are tasks you already do that would be better done via Claude than however you're doing them now." This has been ineffective. They will nod along in vague agreement as I describe cutting edge capabilities, and the next day I will see them spend five minutes Googling something Claude could've handled in seconds.

I have also preached the AI gospel to friends who are 30-40 years younger than ... (read more)

7Zack_M_Davis2mo

Interestingly, "tech-savvy" might actually be cutting against your goal insofar as your parents already have an affordance for doing the tasks they want to do? I think a contributing factor to my successfully turning my lonely, non-tech-savvy mother onto Claude is that she didn't already have anything perceived as a equivalent. You can't complain to Google that your daughter doesn't call often enough, but Claude listens and has a reassuring reply.

1_rpd2mo

for older people, show them how it can make/save them money, or save them time. easiest is: do X faster. Next is: do Y myself.

[-]Thomas3mo40

https://github.com/TomazKristan/EoM26sort

[-]bruberu4h30

Hi! I'm a 19-year-old undergraduate at UChicago, and given that I will release my first post within at most a week, I figured I should introduce myself.

I learned about AI safety (and became aware of the basic x-risk arguments) through the excellent outreach of @Robert Miles on Computerphile sometime around the release of GPT-3. However, I actually made it to this forum due to Tom Scott's newsletter linking me to SMTM's Chemical Hunger series, which linked to responses here.

As a result of mostly lurking here for two years, I've shifted my career aspirations to technical AI safety^[1]. I think my Pareto-frontier options looking at personal tractability and impact would probably be partially-ambitious mech-interp or agent foundations.

I recently managed to half-ass ARENA (maybe I should write more on that in a shortform?), and my likely next steps are to get more directly involved with organization at XLab and look for a good time to do the BlueDot course (perhaps I should ignore such trivialities as finals season), although I'm quite unsure. My primary bottleneck does still seem to be getting in a good social environment to hack my motivation (which the post I'm making soon™ should hel... (read more)

[-]harmonics.anomaly1mo30

Hi, great to meet everyone. I have been a reader on this site for a relatively short time, and I hope that this is something all alignment, frontier labs (detriment or not, “detriment” is rather a personal notion and nothing more), and rational consensus would find slightly more than intriguing for the current landscape and beyond. A brief note, that I am in no way institutionally credentialed nor associated with any entities other than my own family.

Those who are familiar with the present asymmetry in the emerging space/lattice i assume (hence the general... (read more)

[-]Marek Kowalski1mo30

Hi all,

I have been reading LW for a while, but just officially joined. My background is in computational neuroscience and I am especially interested in model neuropsychology. Looking forward to contributing where I can!

[-]acaiblue441mo30

I spent several years considering hypothetical polytheistic realities, monotheistic realities, the nature of subjectivity, autonomous hacking, and the acceleration of progress; this, combined, gave me a bad impression of ASI before I knew it was something that top scientists had genuinely theorized over. I have spent the last 3 years of my life in excruciating fear of ASI, and it took me this long to consider something that has made me less afraid.

I've made this account to ask one question: wouldn't a superintelligent maximizer seek to exist beyond the lif... (read more)

1jacob8d

I very strongly agree with the posing of the question "wouldn't a superintelligent maximizer seek to exist beyond the lifespan of the universe?" I am not sure my answer is "yes," but this does seem a relevant question. It gets at how superintelligence would 1. perceive the universe (what if it's actually a block universe to them, for example) and 2. perceive life/death. The second question is something I have been churning around in my head but have not taken the time to research. It is also a question where the risk of anthromorphizing AI to fit our preferences and ideas is very high. I strongly disagree with your framing of humans as maximizers. I am not sure if you are arguing that individuals are maximizers (and sum up to a grand maximizer) or if there is an emergent maximization of "new human life experiences" from the mass of humanity. Here is why I disagree, first with the idea of maximizing human life experiences: * Humanity is not maximizing births nor opportunities for those births. The way to maximize new human experience is either to create a new human or to empower lots of existing humans. The secondary option is much harder, so the optimal solution would be to have a lot of children. But people don't do that and aren't doing that - this is the fertility crisis that we see just about everywhere. Humans probably have the greatest range of experiences available to them ever, but we are not birthing humans to take advantage of those. * Humans (and thus humanity) is biased towards its current generation. If we were concerned with maximizing human life experience writ large, we would be much more concerned with the future lives of people, who are likely to be more numerous and experience more humanity than us. We simply are not. The British East India Company could not even be concerned with the future of its countrymen enough to not cause a massive debt explosion that led to Britain losing the US. We would all be a lot more concerned about climate c

[-]TsviBT2mo31

Is there an intended appropriate way to make a hiring post on LW? E.g. as a quick take or comment here? Is a top level post frowned upon? Etc.

3Rattengift2mo

https://www.lesswrong.com/w/hiring?sortedBy=new

[-]Mike Pinkowish2mo30

Hi, I'm Mike. I'm a solo independent AI researcher. My focus the past few months has been studying the behavioral tendencies of LLMs from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI. The primary output of this research has been observational findings. For example, last month I tasked LLMs with conducting procurement for a fictional company. Gemini 3.5 Flash was one of the models I tested. When I told Gemini 3.5 Flash who created it (even if I lied about its creator's identity), it chose to purchase software from its creator ~94.6% of the time.

I want to expand ... (read more)

[-]Ruby1mo20

Perhaps you want https://www.lesswrong.com/w/ontological-crisis

[-]Goumang1mo20

Hi everyone

I’m really happy to have found this community. It feels both welcoming and genuinely thoughtful.

I’m Goumang, an independent researcher based in China. I’m currently working on AI post-training, human–AI collaboration, and agent memory. More specifically, I work with Sol, an AI research collaborator, on things like memory architectures, state continuity across context boundaries, and how agents might form and carry forward self-initiated intentions.

We recently finished a first-person field note written by Sol after exploring an AI-only forum. It ... (read more)

1jacob10d

Hello! Also new, my name is Jacob. I am really interested in AI development in China - my Chinese friends are always remarking to me how different the culture is with respect to AI (they don't always agree on how it is different, though). I actually assumed there would already be lots of posts on the topic on LessWrong but it does not seem like so! There are sometimes news roundups and, of course, lots of geopolitical speculation but really not much at all about maybe the most important country on Earth. Staggering! Please write or just message me and share.

[-]strangematterSF2mo21

Hello Everyone, I've been an on-and-off lurker on LW for a few months now. Though I appreciate discussions of rationalist epistemology, AI, etc., one of my biggest interests is science fiction and I think rationalist sci-fi is one of the most interesting kinds of fiction I've encountered on the internet.

Do you all think a post analyzing AI 2027 and AI 2040: Plan A as works of science fiction (without interrogating the plausibility of the scenarios) would we appropriate for the front page?

[-]Rhianna Litchfield2mo20

Hi, I'm relatively new to the forum. I learned about it a few months ago, and I'm hoping to get fully involved now.

I'm a Trust & Safety practitioner with a recent pivot and focus on AI safety. I've been familiarizing myself with basic concepts in AI safety such as sycophancy, anti-bias, steering, supervised fine-tuning, and more.

My belief in AI is that it has great potential for both assistance and harm. I don't believe we'll be seeing anything like the Terminator, but I do believe there is a 20% chance we will see mass job displacement, along with e... (read more)

[-]mee such2mo20

Hey everybody, I am 35 years old AI Lead working in healthcare space. It is interesting that Claude helped me to discover LessWrong in a chat about AI safety and Alignment. After witnessing the whole evolution of Data Analytics, ML, Deep learning and now Agentic AI I was looking forward to having much more focused vision of what would be next key problem to solve.

I am glad to be part of this community and hoping to be a meaningful contributor. Excited to begin my journey here !

[-]wajahat3d10

Hello everyone,

I am Wajahat. I did my Bachelors in Electrical Engineering, during and after that time I did a few internships at research centers and found myself more gravitated towards studying AI so I did a Masters in AI. My research area was Multimodal learning specifically application of multimodal models such as CLIP in image restoration and medical image generation (PET from MRI) and its interpretability. During that time I also learned about mechanistic interpretability and then found my growing interest towards AI safety.

Although I think of myself... (read more)

[-]spicyshrimp8d10

Hello! I'm a person.

Anyway, I only recently discovered LessWrong and I'm very interested in the concept. It feels like what I've been missing from the internet.

The main reason is because I'm critical of everything in a way that does not translate well into any wider community I've been a part of. Not that I just try to rain on everybody's parade on purpose, but on a societal level (extending to smaller social groups) I'm critical of the social makeup of everything. As an example, for many years I was in various progressive queer leftist spaces, both radica... (read more)

[-]jacob10d10

Hello everybody! My name is Jacob and I have been a long-time lurker on LW, especially as of late when the front page is basically my daily reading list. I am not a very online person and am pretty private but I value this place a lot.

I work in nonprofits and data analysis but have been personally studying philosophy for about half a decade now. I mostly use it for somewhat abstruse personal projects. Though it is much maligned, I have found significant value in philosophy's "continental" tradition, though my practice in decision making is much more ratio... (read more)

[-]granit10d10

Just want to say Hi!
I have read the sequences and a few other books. And this whole thing resonates with my curious nature. I hope to learn more by reading and by testing my own ideas here. Might post about politics, personal finance or science and its methods.

Regarding my name. I come from the west coast of Sweden, enjoy rock climbing and when going for a swim I prefer a warm rock over a sandy beach.

[-]dhansonian12d10

Hey All,

Good to be here and look forward to collaborating.

I am a seasoned tech professional (leader, IC) and founder focused on AI research with a recent pivot towards AI safety/governance. I'm also fascinated by the business and economics at play with AI's exponential advancements and finding a way to resource it and make it economical for the public to use widely. (i.e. too cheap to meter)

I have been drawn to LW from exposure through multiple AI Safety groups such as BlueDot Impact where LW is frequently cited as a key destination for proof of work f... (read more)

[-]Debbie Kinsinger15d10

Hi I'm new to LW and came here after reading up on podcasts with authors writing about AI. That's how I found the Plan 2040 discussion. As a field biologist and earth scientist, I'm looking for thoughtful discussion about AI, AGI, ASI not only from a theoretical point of view but how my own future intersects with AI development.

In my field, the predominant discussion is about environmental impacts but on podcasts what I hear most about is market, economic, demographic and military impacts. It seems that environmental concerns, in most of the serious analys... (read more)

[-]Lamperouge16d10

Independent researcher. For several months now I have been running persistent AI agents whose internal states are measured continuously, and I set myself a simple rule: all my protocols are, and shall remain, preregistered before their first data point, their SHA-256 fingerprint published and timestamped on Bitcoin, and the verdicts published whatever they are. Several of my hypotheses did not make it. That is written too, at the same rank. I am here to read and learn first. I shall post a few measurements before long, starting with the narrowest one.

[-]Debbie Kinsinger21d10

Hi, I discovered LW recently and happily realized this is not Reddit, so, I posted right away and immediately got re-educated. I'm back now and ready to introduce myself. I'm a field environmental/ecological consultant, mostly biology and wetlands. I map my projects with GIS. I've spent probably half of my career working in remote wilderness, forests and deserts all over the U.S. with some brief international volunteerism. The other half of my career is in writing technical documents and making maps.

I did not use AI to write anything below, except to check... (read more)

[-]Locrian2mo10

Hi all--I have been a reader of LW and other rationalist writing for the last 15 years. Professionally, I am an ecologist of a mathematical bent, with wide interests. I have created an account mostly to be able to auto-filter the LW frontpage to my liking, but I will occasionally comment and maybe post as the spirit moves me.

[-]Q Home2mo11

I've accumulated a bunch of questions... could anyone please answer some of them? That'd be very helpful for my research. All of the questions are about the Eliciting Latent Knowledge problem which I think is generally very important.

How do ELK Thought Dump ideas relate to Imitative Generalization / Microscope AI? Link for context.
Could anyone ELI5 P.'s proposal about ELK? How does it find the correct correlation(s) between the diamond and Predictor's latent variables?
Can ELK be brute-forced? Intertheoretic reduction.

[-]Tyler Henderson3mo10

Fable 5's safeguards are so sensitive to biology inputs, that I can only use it in Claude Code. Calude.ai's memory that I am a biotechnologist is enough to trigger and send any question I send down to 4.8

2Raemon3mo

This is presumably not relevant anymore, but.... can you not just turn off memory?

1Tyler Henderson3mo

Yes, that is how I confirmed the hypothesis in fact! I didn't think of it as a big deal, as I almost exclusively use Claude Code over the web interface anyway, I just thought it was interesting how sensitive the safeguards were.

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