Scott Alexander
Grantmaker for the Survival and Flourishing Fund and Lightcone Commons
Titles as the sources gave them. In 4 entries, with 13 checked quotations.
What they said
Newest first. Each quotation was found word for word in the source.
“I started with the dumbest possible strategy. I assigned the best thing I could think of - a well-crafted US-China pause based on the AI Futures Project's Plan A - an arbitrary value of one million points.”
“The autograntor is harder-working than I am. It does more research, surfaces more considerations, and catches things that I miss”
“Every time I showed the AIs one another's results, Claude stuck to its guns and insisted that it's right, and ChatGPT admitted that it's wrong and deferred to Claude.”
“I find myself glazing over the analysis as I read it, thinking "yeah, that number is probably right . . . yeah, that number is probably right too".”
“it sometimes makes new insane common law rulings, and these silently poison several runs before they poison one loudly enough that I notice, investigate, and correct it.”
“the idea that the only ethical course is for people/companies/countries to Stop Unilaterally + Raise Awareness, with no plan for what happens if race dynamics continue anyway”
“This is a dangerous plan, and there would be many subtle points they would have to get right, but in a world where nobody can get a global pause in time, it's hard to think of a better one.”
“The forecaster said this would increase the chance of a global pause by only three percentage points - from 16% to 19%”
“The alternative to SURA isn't abandoning awareness-raising, mass activism, and support for a global pause. All of these strategies are great and important.”
“We should get companies to once again consider legally binding weak merge-and-assist clauses.”
“Grace et al surveyed 1,580 AI researchers who presented papers at big AI-related conferences, mostly academics with no company affiliation. Over half thought there was at least a 10% chance AI would cause “human extinction or similarly permanent and severe disempowerment of the human species”.”
“When the slowdown call happened, Anthropic’s value on the biggest cryptocurrency futures platform dropped 4.57%, and OpenAI’s stock dropped 13.42%.”
“The experts are warning you that AI could kill you because they think AI could kill you.”
In the Base
Every entry they appear in.
Against Against SURA
On LessWrong, Mikhail Samin replies point by point to Scott Alexander's essay Against SURA, which argues against AI-safety people leaving capability roles at AI companies. Samin argues that a coordinated pause is feasible, that company leaders cannot be relied on, and that alignment is not solvable in a few months.
Towards The Autograntor
In a 36-minute LessWrong post, Scott Alexander describes a system that has Claude forecast how much AI safety grant proposals are worth, using a list of priced milestones, plus an AI forecasting tool. Alexander reports sensible results, shares two sample analyses, and says the numbers are hard to check.
Against SURA
In a long essay, Scott Alexander argues against "SURA" (Stop Unilaterally + Raise Awareness), the view that AI companies, employees and countries should stop alone. Alexander says this weakens the backup plan of a coordinated lead-burning pause and may even hurt the odds of a global pause.
AI Safety Is Not A Corporate Plot
In an essay, Scott Alexander argues that claims AI companies exaggerate danger for stock prices, distraction or regulatory capture are false. The case rests on unaffiliated experts sharing the concern, leaders voicing it before their firms existed, and market and coalition evidence that the supposed plots would backfire.