links 9/23/26: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/srcpublic/page/09-23-2026

• • https://pacing.tech/ Arb Research's agenda for what "pacing the frontier" might actually mean.
    • summary of what the options are and what they would do, not advocacy of a single plan
    • pacing is already happening: delaying releases, rollbacks, training pauses, export controls. "pacing" here encompasses all proposals that slow or delay model development and diffusion, whether done by companies, governments, or other institutions.
    • tradeoffs, pros and cons, and open research questions considered throughout.
  • https://www.paradigm3.org/research/jspace Gavin Leech does not think the J-space actually is an AI's "global workspace."
    • he thinks the argument is circular. the J-space is defined by the contents of the residual stream that predict what words will be output next, averaged across contexts. it is necessarily going to shift verbal output when altered!
    • "So they show that flexibly-reused intermediate variables are stored in a canonical format aligned with the unembedding. “Deliberate” computation reads these variables and routine computation bypasses them. This is weaker than a workspace, which under global workspace theory should additionally display competition-gated entry, capacity limits enforced by that competition, and broadcast to encapsulated modules."
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/15fxc25/comment/jufz110/?solution=fee161fc3b1a9970fee161fc3b1a9970&js_challenge=1&jsc_token=2824be10929bdc604753c70a67a1c33123f76166a403eb88692d1fbac43a0222&jsc_orig_r= claims that "anti-theft" measures are really more about reductions in staffing; well-staffed stores deter theft without inconveniencing customers.
  • https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/all-the-microbes-you-cant-have engineered microbes are almost never approved by the EPA. many would be useful for industrial or environmental applications. those plastic-eating microbes you've seen papers about? illegal.
    • "Companies do not always know why the EPA rejects their applications for engineered microbes as the EPA has never published a checklist of requirements. Companies submit applications based on their best guesses about what the EPA will want to know."
  • https://www.bhfs.com/insight/state-department-expands-pax-silica-initiative-at-2026-summit/ the Pax Silica is the new initiative meant to give the US and its allies an advantage over China in the AI supply chain.
  • https://blog.spec.tech/p/bubbling-cauldrons-and-transient Ben Reinhardt has a model of healthy R&D ecosystems -- "bubbling cauldrons" of creative researcher-led work where nobody is bossing them around, augmented by "transient strike teams" where groups of researchers, with authoritative leaders, work in a coordinated fashion on an important project.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenskwatawa Tecumseh's little brother was a prophet.
  • https://radiant.metaculus.com/ Metaculus's tool for decisionmaking. i might try this for work.