A dispatch from the rationalists’ compound in Berkeley, where they're a little touchy about the possibility of AI killing them.
The AI safety vibe shift
Once a fringe obsession of Bay Area rationalists, existential risk is suddenly all anyone is talking about
The Phony Comforts of AI Optimism
A few months ago, Casey Newton of Platformer ran a piece called "The phony comforts of AI skepticism," framing those who would criticize generative AI as "having fun," damning them as "hyper-fixated on the things [AI] can't do." I am not going to focus too hard on this
The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion (Published 2025)
The Rationalists, a community focused on the risks of artificial intelligence, regularly gather with tech figures and other like-minded people in a complex that covers much of a city block.
How a fringe AI movement convinced Washington the end is near
Activists spent years cultivating allies on Capitol Hill. Now lawmakers in both major parties are discussing human extinction.
3: Consulting the Record: AI Consistently Fails the Public - AI Now Institute
Amid the excitement over AI’s (speculative, hypothetical) potential, we have lost sight of the sobering reality of its present and recent past. AI is already intermediating critical social infrastructures, materially reshaping our institutions in ways that ratchet up inequality and concentrate power in the hands of the already powerful. It is consistently deployed in ways […]
AI is now unpopular. That may not make a difference.
Misleading Metaphors, Real Risks
What To Fear from AI Agents and How to Reclaim Our Human Agency
Liberals Are The New Climate Deniers
AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism
It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right.
Your Favorite Science YouTubers Are Wrong About AI, (e.g. SciShow, Kurzgesagt, and Kyle Hill )
AI Safety Is Mostly A Sex Cult In Berkeley, California
We might some day have “AI Safety”, as a science or policy area, that is not primarily a sex cult in Berkeley, California, but it does not currently exist.
‘Think Everybody Dead’: How the Threat of AI Is Fueling a New Political Alliance
A billionaire-backed movement from Silicon Valley and populists like Bernie Sanders are eager to stop an AI disaster — but can they overcome their mutual distrust and work together?
Politics Gets Interested In Those Trying Not To Die
This was the month the world took notice that AI might kill everyone.
"The forces that are now shaping AI are the same forces that turned the open internet into monopolistic platforms, converted peer-to-peer participation into precarious labor, and enclosed the digital commons. They are now threatening to capture and enclose thought itself." osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/qahd3_v1/
Grappling with AI
Rationalist Cults
Articles on rationalist-adjacent cults: the Zizians, Leverage Research, and the darker outgrowths of the rationalist / LessWrong-derived / Aella polycule scene that is behind "AI Safety" in Silicon Valley. Working thesis: MIRI and CFAR read as high-control groups (cults) who believe in P(DOOM) and use sex (and power) maliciously — yet they are unfortunately the ones who have captured the framing of "AI Safety," which has little to do with actual safety.
AI Science Fiction Versus Reality
Navier-Stokes lost in translation: Why Lean verification of AI...
When the Commons Appropriates a Large Language Model: How WikiVault Reshaped Korean Wikipedia
If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it
Can AI slop help us save the internet?
No Man Is an Island
The Effective Altruism Kids Aren’t Alright
My Experience with Leverage Research
What Policymakers and the Public Need to Know About the Cult of AI
banteg (@banteg)
The Techno-Religion at the Center of the A.I. Debate
SE Gyges (@segyges.bsky.social)
