09.06.2022
Is Power-Seeking AI an Existential Risk?

Report for Open Philanthropy examining what I see as the core argument for concern about existential risk from misaligned artificial intelligence.

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01.02.2024
Otherness and control in the age of AGI / Part 1:
Otherness and control in the age of AGI

Introduction and summary for a series of essays about how agents with different values should relate to one another, and about the ethics of seeking and sharing power.

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01.18.2021
Actually possible: thoughts on Utopia

There are oceans we have barely dipped a toe into. There are drums and symphonies we can barely hear. There are suns whose heat we can barely feel on our skin.

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01.30.2022
On infinite ethics

Infinities puncture the dream of a simple, bullet-biting utilitarianism. But they’re everyone’s problem.

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05.08.2023
Predictable updating about AI risk

How worried about AI risk will we be when we can see advanced machine intelligence up close? We should worry accordingly now.

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11.15.2023
New report: “Scheming AIs: Will AIs fake alignment during training in order to get power?”

My report examining the probability of a behavior often called “deceptive alignment.”

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03.14.2021
Against neutrality about creating happy lives

Making happy people is good. Just ask the golden rule.

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08.27.2021
Can you control the past?

I think that you can “control” events you have no causal interaction with, including events in the past, and that this is a wild and disorienting fact, with uncertain but possibly significant implications. This essay attempts to impart such disorientation.

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02.07.2021
Killing the ants

If you kill something, look it in the eyes as you do.

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02.17.2023
Seeing more whole

On looking out of your own eyes.

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12.06.2020
Thoughts on being mortal

You can’t keep any of it. The only thing to do is to give it away on purpose.

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12.23.2022
On sincerity

Nearby is the country they call life.

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03.22.2021
On future people, looking back at 21st century longtermism

An intuition pump for a certain kind of “holy sh**” reaction to existential risk, and to the possible size and quality of the future at stake.

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01.24.2021
On clinging

How can “non-attachment” be compatible with care? We need to distinguish between caring and clinging.

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