LessWrong posts by zvi

I’m doing the Monthly Roundup early this month so that next week can be GPT-5.2 and affordability of life week, assuming we are not overtaken by other events. Ban Gain of Function Research The risk-reward profile of creating highly dangerous new viruses, supposedly in order to study them, is abysmal even when things are handled properly. Also, the actual practice of it is completely utterly insane. This below is the kind of thing that could very easily cause a global pandemic vastly worse than Covid, or even end civilization, and it was done in a BSL-2 laboratory, and no one has been arrested for it. People need to be arrested for this. Ideally heads need to end up on pikes until it stops. Maarten De Cock: A new gain of function study created chimeric coronaviruses that can infect human cells and kill mice (up to 100% mortality). ”The viral infection [and all animal experiments] were performed in a BSL-2 laboratory”(!) *The authors thank a.o. Ben Hu & Zheng-Li Shi. In The Zone At current margins, zoning restrictions on home-based businesses are terrible and make everything worse. There of course [...] ---Outline:(00:22) Ban Gain of Function Research(01:33) In The Zone(02:07) A Price Is A Signal Wrapped In An Incentive(03:18) While I Cannot Condone This(04:56) The Gift Of Having A Gift To Give Away(05:33) Good News, Everyone(07:25) Paranoia, Paranoia(14:18) A Good Book(15:58) For Your Entertainment(17:35) And The Warner Sister Dot(19:30) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game(21:39) Think Of The Children(25:16) Sports Go Sports(27:30) Antisocial Media(28:51) Government Working(33:34) Variously Effective Altruism(34:06) Party Time, Excellent(37:33) Waste, Fraud, Abuse But Mostly No One Looked(39:08) How You Do Anything --- First published: December 12th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9ggSAY5b8mTazGytS/monthly-roundup-37-december-2026 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

It was touch and go, I’m worried GPT-5.2 is going to drop any minute now, but DeepSeek v3.2 was covered on Friday and after that we managed to get through the week without a major model release. Well, okay, also Gemini 3 DeepThink, but we all pretty much know what that offers us. We did have a major chip release, in that the Trump administration unwisely chose to sell H200 chips directly to China. This would, if allowed at scale, allow China to make up a substantial portion of its compute deficit, and greatly empower its AI labs, models and applications at our expense, in addition to helping it catch up in the race to AGI and putting us all at greater risk there. We should do what we can to stop this from happening, and also to stop similar moves from happening again. I spent the weekend visiting Berkeley for the Secular Solstice. I highly encourage everyone to watch that event on YouTube if you could not attend, and consider attending the New York Secular Solstice on the 20th. I will be there, and also at the associated mega-meetup, please do say hello. If all [...] ---Outline:(01:38) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(03:17) ChatGPT Needs More Mundane Utility(05:56) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(06:19) On Your Marks(08:34) Choose Your Fighter(10:14) Get My Agent On The Line(12:10) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(12:52) Fun With Media Generation(13:14) Copyright Confrontation(13:25) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(15:20) They Took Our Jobs(21:34) Americans Really Do Not Like AI(23:40) Get Involved(25:06) Introducing(26:11) Gemini 3 Deep Think(27:16) In Other AI News(29:35) This Means War(31:11) Show Me the Money(31:33) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(33:55) Quiet Speculations(35:21) Impossible(37:58) Can An AI Model Be Too Much?(39:39) Try Before You Tell People They Cannot Buy(42:22) The Quest for Sane Regulations(43:29) The Chinese Are Smart And Have A Lot Of Wind Power(44:28) White House To Issue AI Executive Order(50:42) H200 Sales Fallout Continued(59:41) Democratic Senators React To Allowing H200 Sales(01:01:17) Independent Senator Worries About AI(01:02:53) The Week in Audio(01:03:26) Timelines(01:04:47) Scientific Progress Goes Boink(01:08:36) Rhetorical Innovation(01:12:22) Open Weight Models Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This(01:13:21) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:14:45) What AIs Will Want(01:18:31) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:22:03) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:24:33) The Lighter Side --- First published: December 11th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rYshzqJ5ZdEcjmXzc/ai-146-chipping-in --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article: 10^100" and "exa.ai" beneath power lines." style="max-width: 100%;" />Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The focus this time around is on the non-academic aspects of primary and secondary school, especially various questions around bullying and discipline, plus an extended rant about someone being wrong on the internet while attacking homeschooling, and the latest on phones. Bullying If your child is being bullied for real, and it's getting quite bad, is this an opportunity to learn to stand up for yourself, become tough and other stuff like that? Mostly no. Actually fighting back effectively can get you in big trouble, and often models many behaviors you don’t actually want. Whereas the techniques you would use against a real bully outside of school, that you’d want to use, don’t work. Schools are a special kind of bullying incubator. Once you become the target it is probably not going to get better and might get way worse, and life plausibly becomes a paranoid living hell. If the school won’t stop it, you have to pull the kid. Period. If a child has the victim nature, you need to find a highly special next school or pull out of the school system entirely, or else changing schools will not help much for [...] ---Outline:(00:25) Bullying(03:03) Discipline Death Spiral(04:17) Ban Phones In Schools(05:37) At Least Ban Phones During Class Seriously What The Hell(07:26) RCT On Banning Phones(15:44) Look What You Made Me Do(17:16) DEI(17:47) Equity Consultants(18:56) Rules Are Rules(19:17) School Shooting Statistics Are Fake And Active Shooter Drills Must Stop(21:27) The War on Childhood(22:56) Separation Of School And Home(23:31) School Choice(23:46) School is Hell(24:21) Null Hypothesis Watch(26:49) Education Labor Theory of Value(28:30) Wrong on the Internet Including About Home School(46:01) You Cannot Defer To Experts In A World Like This(46:55) The Lighter Side --- First published: December 10th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vrtaXptHCN7akYnay/childhood-and-education-15-got-to-get-out --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

AI is the most important thing about the future. It is vital to national security. It will be central to economic, military and strategic supremacy. This is true regardless of what other dangers and opportunities AI might present. The good news is that America has many key advantages in AI. America's greatest advantage in AI is our vastly superior access to compute. We are in danger of selling a large portion of that advantage for 30 pieces of silver. This is on track to be done against the wishes of Congress as well as most of those in the executive branch. Who does it benefit? It benefits China. It might not even benefit Nvidia. Doing so would be both highly unwise and highly unpopular. We should not sell highly capable Nvidia H200 chips to China. If it is too late to not sell H200s, we must limit quantities, and ensure it stops there. We absolutely cannot be giving away other future chips on a similar delay. The good news is that the stock market reaction implies this might not scale. Bayeslord: I don’t know anyone who thinks this [...] ---Outline:(01:36) The Announcement(04:38) How Bad Would This Be?(11:42) Is There A Steelman Case For This Other Than 'Trade Always Good'?(16:21) Compute Is A Key Limiting Factor For China and Chinese Labs(17:53) What About That All Important 'Tech Stack'?(20:37) Selling H200s Hurts America In The AI Race(22:14) Nvidia Number Did Not Go Up That Much --- First published: December 9th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kmEpWTjWeFyqv4tb5/selling-h200s-to-china-is-unwise-and-unpopular --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

I believe that we will win. An echo of an old ad for the 2014 US men's World Cup team. It did not win. I was in Berkeley for the 2025 Secular Solstice. We gather to sing and to reflect. The night's theme was the opposite: ‘I don’t think we’re going to make it.’ As in: Sufficiently advanced AI is coming. We don’t know exactly when, or what form it will take, but it is probably coming. When it does, we, humanity, probably won’t make it. It's a live question. Could easily go either way. We are not resigned to it. There's so much to be done that can tilt the odds. But we’re not the favorite. Raymond Arnold, who ran the event, believes that. I believe that. Yet in the middle of the event, the echo was there. Defiant. I believe that we will win. There is a recording of the event. I highly encourage you to set aside three hours at some point in December, to listen, and to participate and sing along. Be earnest. If you don’t believe it, I encourage this all the more. If you [...] --- First published: December 8th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YPLmHhNtjJ6ybFHXT/little-echo --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

DeepSeek v3.2 is DeepSeek's latest open model release with strong bencharks. Its paper contains some technical innovations that drive down cost. It's a good model by the standards of open models, and very good if you care a lot about price and openness, and if you care less about speed or whether the model is Chinese. It is strongest in mathematics. What it does not appear to be is frontier. It is definitely not having a moment. In practice all signs are that it underperforms its benchmarks. When I asked for practical experiences and reactions, I got almost no responses. A Brief History of DeepSeek DeepSeek is a cracked Chinese AI lab that has produced some very good open models, done some excellent research, and given us strong innovations in terms of training techniques and especially training efficiency. They also, back at the start of the year, scared the hell out of pretty much everyone. A few months after OpenAI released o1, and shortly after DeepSeek released the impressive v3 that was misleadingly known as the ‘six million dollar model,’ DeepSeek came out with a slick app and with r1, a strong [...] ---Outline:(00:49) A Brief History of DeepSeek(03:51) Once More, With Feeling(06:23) Reading The Paper(08:20) Open Language Model Offers Mundane Utility(11:14) Those Benchmarks(15:18) Open Language Model Doesn't Offer Mundane Utility(16:49) Open Language Model Does Do The Math(18:11) I'll Get You Next Time, Gadget --- First published: December 5th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vcmBEmKFJFQkDaXTP/deepseek-v3-2-is-okay-and-cheap-but-slow --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The cycle of language model releases is, one at least hopes, now complete. OpenAI gave us GPT-5.1 and GPT-5.1-Codex-Max. xAI gave us Grok 4.1. Google DeepMind gave us Gemini 3 Pro and Nana Banana Pro. Anthropic gave us Claude Opus 4.5. It is the best model, sir. Use it whenever you can. One way Opus 4.5 is unique is that it as what it refers to as a ‘soul document.’ Where OpenAI tries to get GPT-5.1 to adhere to its model spec that lays out specific behaviors, Anthropic instead explains to Claude Opus 4.5 how to be virtuous and the reasoning behind its rules, and lets a good model and good governance flow from there. The results are excellent, and we all look forward to learning more. See both the Opus 4.5 post and today's update for more details. Finally, DeepSeek gave us v3.2. It has very good benchmarks and is remarkably cheap, but it is slow and I can’t find people excited to use it in practice. I’ll offer a relatively short report on it tomorrow, I am giving one last day for more reactions. The latest attempt to slip unilateral [...] ---Outline:(01:47) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(02:51) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(04:14) On Your Marks(05:21) Get My Agent On The Line(06:02) Advertising Is Coming(07:30) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(13:43) Fun With Media Generation(15:11) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(16:33) You Drive Me Crazy(16:50) Unprompted Attention(17:05) They Took Our Jobs(22:49) Get Involved(24:02) Introducing(24:27) Variously Effective Altruism(28:27) In Other AI News(30:38) Show Me the Money(30:45) Quiet Speculations(32:06) Seb Krier On Agents Versus Multiagents(38:24) Olivia Moore Makes 2026 Predictions(41:17) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(42:30) Americans Really Do Not Like AI(47:46) The Quest for Sane Regulations(49:57) My Offer Is Nothing(55:28) America Pauses(57:05) David Sacks Covered In New York Times(01:00:12) The Week in Audio(01:00:43) Rhetorical Innovation(01:01:41) To The Moon(01:08:54) Showing Up(01:13:22) DeepMind Pivots Its Interpretability Research(01:16:12) The Explicit Goal Of OpenAI Is Recursive Self-Improvement(01:21:20) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:28:03) Misaligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence Is Difficult To Hire For(01:29:12) You've Got Soul(01:40:04) Disagreements About Timelines(01:44:53) Other Disagreements About Timelines(01:50:18) Messages From Janusworld(01:50:33) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:50:58) The Lighter Side The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: December 4th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bCkijKnuEpjnZtX84/ai-145-you-ve-got-soul --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Some podcasts are self-recommending on the ‘yep, I’m going to be breaking this one down’ level. This was very clearly one of those. So here we go. Double click to interact with video As usual for podcast posts, the baseline bullet points describe key points made, and then the nested statements are my commentary. If I am quoting directly I use quote marks, otherwise assume paraphrases. What are the main takeaways? Ilya thinks training in its current form will peter out, that we are returning to an age of research where progress requires more substantially new ideas. SSI is a research organization. It tries various things. Not having a product lets it punch well above its fundraising weight in compute and effective resources.   Ilya has 5-20 year timelines to a potentially superintelligent learning model. SSI might release a product first after all, but probably not? Ilya's thinking about alignment still seems relatively shallow to me in key ways, but he grasps many important insights and understands he has a problem. Ilya essentially despairs of having a substantive plan beyond ‘show everyone the thing as early [...] ---Outline:(01:42) Explaining Model Jaggedness(03:15) Emotions and value functions(04:38) What are we scaling?(05:47) Why humans generalize better than models(07:00) Straight-shooting superintelligence(08:39) SSI's model will learn from deployment(09:35) Alignment(17:40) We are squarely an age of research company(22:27) Research taste(25:11) Bonus Coverage: Dwarkesh Patel on AI Progress These Days --- First published: December 3rd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bMvCNtSH8DiGDTvXd/on-dwarkesh-patel-s-second-interview-with-ilya-sutskever --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Learning to do misaligned-coded things anywhere teaches an AI (or a human) to do misaligned-coded things everywhere. So be sure you never, ever teach any mind to do what it sees, in context, as misaligned-coded things. If the optimal solution (as in, the one you most reinforce) to an RL training problem is one that the model perceives as something you wouldn’t want it to do, it will generally learn to do things you don’t want it to do. You can solve this by ensuring that the misaligned-coded things are not what the AI will learn to do. Or you can solve this by making those things not misaligned-coded. If you then teaching aligned behavior in one set of spots, this can fix the problem in those spots, but the fix does not generalize to other tasks or outside of distribution. If you manage to hit the entire distribution of tasks you care about in this way, that will work for now, but it still won’t generalize, so it's a terrible long term strategy. Yo Shavit: Extremely important finding. Don’t tell your model you’re rewarding it for A and then reward it for B [...] ---Outline:(02:59) Abstract Of The Paper(04:12) The Problem Statement(05:35) The Inoculation Solution(07:02) Cleaning The Data Versus Cleaning The Environments(08:16) No All Of This Does Not Solve Our Most Important Problems(13:18) It Does Help On Important Short Term Problems --- First published: December 2nd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a2nW8buG2Lw9AdPtH/reward-mismatches-in-rl-cause-emergent-misalignment --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Claude Opus 4.5 is the best model currently available. No model since GPT-4 has come close to the level of universal praise that I have seen for Claude Opus 4.5. It is the most intelligent and capable, most aligned and thoughtful model. It is a joy. There are some auxiliary deficits, and areas where other models have specialized, and even with the price cut Opus remains expensive, so it should not be your exclusive model. I do think it should absolutely be your daily driver. Image by Nana Banana Pro, prompt chosen for this purpose by Claude Opus 4.5 Table of Contents It's The Best Model, Sir. Huh, Upgrades. On Your Marks. Anthropic Gives Us Very Particular Hype. Employee Hype. Every Vibe Check. Spontaneous Positive Reactions. Reaction Thread Positive Reactions. Negative Reactions. The Lighter Side. Popularity. You’ve Got Soul. It's The Best Model, Sir Here is the full picture of where we are now (as mostly seen in Friday's post): You want to be using Claude Opus 4.5. That is especially true for coding, or if [...] ---Outline:(00:59) It's The Best Model, Sir(03:18) Huh, Upgrades(04:50) On Your Marks(09:12) Anthropic Gives Us Very Particular Hype(13:35) Employee Hype(15:40) Every Vibe Check(18:16) Spontaneous Positive Reactions(21:44) Reaction Thread Positive Reactions(28:39) Negative Reactions(30:34) The Lighter Side(31:27) Popularity(33:26) You've Got Soul --- First published: December 1st, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HtdrtF5kcpLtWe5dW/claude-opus-4-5-is-the-best-model-available --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

They saved the best for last. The contrast in model cards is stark. Google provided a brief overview of its tests for Gemini 3 Pro, with a lot of ‘we did this test, and we learned a lot from it, and we are not going to tell you the results.’ Anthropic gives us a 150 page book, including their capability assessments. This makes sense. Capability is directly relevant to safety, and also frontier capability safety tests often also credible indications of capability. Which still has several instances of ‘we did this test, and we learned a lot from it, and we are not going to tell you the results.’ Damn it. I get it, but damn it. Anthropic claims Opus 4.5 is the most aligned frontier model to date, although ‘with many subtleties.’ I agree with Anthropic's assessment, especially for practical purposes right now. Claude is also miles ahead of other models on aspects of alignment that do not directly appear on a frontier safety assessment. In terms of surviving superintelligence, it's still the scene from The Phantom Menace. As in, that won’t be enough. (Above: Claude Opus 4.5 self-portrait as [...] ---Outline:(01:37) Claude Opus 4.5 Basic Facts(03:12) Claude Opus 4.5 Is The Best Model For Many But Not All Use Cases(05:38) Misaligned?(09:04) Section 3: Safeguards and Harmlessness(11:15) Section 4: Honesty(12:33) 5: Agentic Safety(17:09) Section 6: Alignment Overview(23:45) Alignment Investigations(24:23) Sycophancy Course Correction Is Lacking(25:37) Deception(28:05) Ruling Out Encoded Content In Chain Of Thought(30:16) Sandbagging(31:05) Evaluation Awareness(35:05) Reward Hacking(36:24) Subversion Strategy(37:19) 6.13: UK AISI External Testing(37:31) 6.14: Model Welfare(38:22) 7: RSP Evaluations(40:01) CBRN(47:34) Autonomy(54:50) Cyber(58:29) The Whisperers Love The Vibes --- First published: November 28th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gfby4vqNtLbehqbot/claude-opus-4-5-model-card-alignment-and-safety --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Thanks for everything. And I do mean everything. Everyone gave us a new model in the last few weeks. OpenAI gave us GPT-5.1 and GPT-5.1-Codex-Max. These are overall improvements, although there are worries around glazing and reintroducing parts of the 4o spirit. xAI gave us Grok 4.1, although few seem to have noticed and I haven’t tried it. Google gave us both by far the best image model in Nana Banana Pro and also Gemini 3 Pro, which is a vast intelligence with no spine. It is extremely intelligent and powerful, but comes with severe issues. My assessment of it as the new state of the art got to last all of about five hours. Anthropic gave us Claude Opus 4.5. This is probably the best model and quickly became my daily driver for most but not all purposes including coding. I plan to do full coverage in two parts, with alignment and safety on Friday, and the full capabilities report and general review on Monday. Meanwhile the White House is announcing the Genesis Mission to accelerate science, there's a continuing battle over another attempt at a moratorium, there's a new planned $50 [...] ---Outline:(02:20) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(02:53) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(03:22) Huh, Upgrades(05:52) On Your Marks(07:30) Choose Your Fighter(08:11) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(14:40) What Is Slop? How Do You Define Slop?(17:43) Fun With Media Generation(21:40) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(23:58) You Drive Me Crazy(28:31) They Took Our Jobs(28:53) Think Of The Time I Saved(32:07) The Art of the Jailbreak(33:02) Get Involved(33:37) Introducing(34:18) In Other AI News(37:05) Show Me the Money(39:11) Quiet Speculations(41:55) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(44:32) The Quest for Sane Regulations(54:31) Chip City(55:50) Water Water Everywhere(57:17) The Week in Audio(59:05) Rhetorical Innovation(01:04:53) You Are Not In Control(01:08:42) AI 2030(01:19:19) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:21:57) Misaligned?(01:25:00) Messages From Janusworld(01:27:16) The Lighter Side The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 27th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/o7gQJyGeeAGKK6bRx/ai-144-thanks-for-the-models --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

There remain lots of great charitable giving opportunities out there. I have now had three opportunities to be a recommender for the Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF). I wrote in detail about my first experience back in 2021, where I struggled to find worthy applications. The second time around in 2024, there was an abundance of worthy causes. In 2025 there were even more high quality applications, many of which were growing beyond our ability to support them. Thus this is the second edition of The Big Nonprofits Post, primarily aimed at sharing my findings on various organizations I believe are doing good work, to help you find places to consider donating in the cause areas and intervention methods that you think are most effective, and to offer my general perspective on how I think about choosing where to give. This post combines my findings from the 2024 and 2025 rounds of SFF, and also includes some organizations that did not apply to either round, so inclusion does not mean that they necessarily applied at all. This post is already very long, so the bar is higher for inclusion this year than it was [...] ---Outline:(01:40) A Word of Warning(02:50) A Note To Charities(03:53) Use Your Personal Theory of Impact(05:40) Use Your Local Knowledge(06:41) Unconditional Grants to Worthy Individuals Are Great(09:00) Do Not Think Only On the Margin, and Also Use Decision Theory(10:03) Compare Notes With Those Individuals You Trust(10:35) Beware Becoming a Fundraising Target(11:02) And the Nominees Are(14:34) Organizations that Are Literally Me(14:49) Balsa Research(17:31) Don't Worry About the Vase(19:04) Organizations Focusing On AI Non-Technical Research and Education(19:35) Lightcone Infrastructure(22:09) The AI Futures Project(23:50) Effective Institutions Project (EIP) (For Their Flagship Initiatives)(25:29) Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute (AIPI)(27:08) AI Lab Watch(28:09) Palisade Research(29:20) CivAI(30:15) AI Safety Info (Robert Miles)(31:00) Intelligence Rising(31:47) Convergence Analysis(32:43) IASEAI (International Association for Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence)(33:28) The AI Whistleblower Initiative(34:10) Organizations Related To Potentially Pausing AI Or Otherwise Having A Strong International AI Treaty(34:18) Pause AI and Pause AI Global(35:45) MIRI(37:00) Existential Risk Observatory(37:59) Organizations Focusing Primary On AI Policy and Diplomacy(38:37) Center for AI Safety and the CAIS Action Fund(40:17) Foundation for American Innovation (FAI)(43:07) Encode AI (Formerly Encode Justice)(44:12) The Future Society(45:08) Safer AI(45:47) Institute for AI Policy and Strategy (IAPS)(46:55) AI Standards Lab (Holtman Research)(48:01) Safe AI Forum(48:40) Center For Long Term Resilience(50:20) Simon Institute for Longterm Governance(51:16) Legal Advocacy for Safe Science and Technology(52:25) Institute for Law and AI(53:07) Macrostrategy Research Institute(53:41) Secure AI Project(54:20) Organizations Doing ML Alignment Research(55:36) Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR)(57:01) Alignment Research Center (ARC)(57:40) Apollo Research(58:36) Cybersecurity Lab at University of Louisville(59:17) Timaeus(01:00:19) Simplex(01:00:52) Far AI(01:01:32) Alignment in Complex Systems Research Group(01:02:15) Apart Research(01:03:20) Transluce(01:04:26) Organizations Doing Other Technical Work(01:04:31) AI Analysts @ RAND(01:05:23) Organizations Doing Math, Decision Theory and Agent Foundations(01:06:44) Orthogonal(01:07:38) Topos Institute(01:08:34) Eisenstat Research(01:09:16) AFFINE Algorithm Design(01:09:45) CORAL (Computational Rational Agents Laboratory)(01:10:35) Mathematical Metaphysics Institute(01:11:40) Focal at CMU(01:12:57) Organizations Doing Cool Other Stuff Including Tech(01:13:08) ALLFED(01:14:46) Good Ancestor Foundation(01:16:09) Charter Cities Institute(01:16:59) Carbon Copies for Independent Minds(01:17:40) Organizations Focused Primarily on Bio Risk(01:17:46) Secure DNA(01:18:43) Blueprint Biosecurity(01:19:31) Pour Domain(01:20:19) ALTER Israel(01:20:56) Organizations That Can Advise You Further(01:21:33) Effective Institutions Project (EIP) (As A Donation Advisor)(01:22:37) Longview Philanthropy(01:24:08) Organizations That then Regrant to Fund Other Organizations(01:25:19) SFF Itself (!)(01:26:52) Manifund(01:28:51) AI Risk Mitigation Fund(01:29:39) Long Term Future Fund(01:31:41) Foresight(01:32:31) Centre for Enabling Effective Altruism Learning & Research (CEELAR)(01:33:28) Organizations That are Essentially Talent Funnels(01:35:24) AI Safety Camp(01:36:07) Center for Law and AI Risk(01:37:16) Speculative Technologies(01:38:10) Talos Network(01:38:58) MATS Research(01:39:45) Epistea(01:40:51) Emergent Ventures(01:42:34) AI Safety Cape Town(01:43:10) ILINA Program(01:43:38) Impact Academy Limited(01:44:15) Atlas Computing(01:44:59) Principles of Intelligence (Formerly PIBBSS)(01:45:52) Tarbell Center(01:47:08) Catalyze Impact(01:48:11) CeSIA within EffiSciences(01:49:04) Stanford Existential Risk Initiative (SERI)(01:49:52) Non-Trivial(01:50:27) CFAR(01:51:35) The Bramble Center(01:52:29) Final Reminders --- First published: November 27th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8MJQFHBWJgJ82FALJ/the-big-nonprofits-post-2025-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. 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There remain lots of great charitable giving opportunities out there. I have now had three opportunities to be a recommender for the Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF). I wrote in detail about my first experience back in 2021, where I struggled to find worthy applications. The second time around in 2024, there was an abundance of worthy causes. In 2025 there were even more high quality applications, many of which were growing beyond our ability to support them. Thus this is the second edition of The Big Nonprofits Post, primarily aimed at sharing my findings on various organizations I believe are doing good work, to help you find places to consider donating in the cause areas and intervention methods that you think are most effective, and to offer my general perspective on how I think about choosing where to give. This post combines my findings from the 2024 and 2025 rounds of SFF, and also includes some organizations that did not apply to either round, so inclusion does not mean that they necessarily applied at all. This post is already very long, so the bar is higher for inclusion this year than it was [...] ---Outline:(01:39) A Word of Warning(02:50) A Note To Charities(03:53) Use Your Personal Theory of Impact(05:40) Use Your Local Knowledge(06:41) Unconditional Grants to Worthy Individuals Are Great(08:59) Do Not Think Only On the Margin, and Also Use Decision Theory(10:03) Compare Notes With Those Individuals You Trust(10:35) Beware Becoming a Fundraising Target(11:02) And the Nominees Are(14:34) Organizations that Are Literally Me(14:49) Balsa Research(17:30) Don't Worry About the Vase(19:04) Organizations Focusing On AI Non-Technical Research and Education(19:35) Lightcone Infrastructure(22:09) The AI Futures Project(23:50) Effective Institutions Project (EIP) (For Their Flagship Initiatives)(25:29) Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute (AIPI)(27:08) AI Lab Watch(28:09) Palisade Research(29:20) CivAI(30:14) AI Safety Info (Robert Miles)(31:00) Intelligence Rising(31:46) Convergence Analysis(32:43) IASEAI (International Association for Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence)(33:28) The AI Whistleblower Initiative(34:10) Organizations Related To Potentially Pausing AI Or Otherwise Having A Strong International AI Treaty(34:18) Pause AI and Pause AI Global(35:45) MIRI(36:59) Existential Risk Observatory(37:59) Organizations Focusing Primary On AI Policy and Diplomacy(38:37) Center for AI Safety and the CAIS Action Fund(40:17) Foundation for American Innovation (FAI)(43:07) Encode AI (Formerly Encode Justice)(44:12) The Future Society(45:08) Safer AI(45:47) Institute for AI Policy and Strategy (IAPS)(46:55) AI Standards Lab (Holtman Research)(48:01) Safe AI Forum(48:40) Center For Long Term Resilience(50:19) Simon Institute for Longterm Governance(51:16) Legal Advocacy for Safe Science and Technology(52:24) Institute for Law and AI(53:07) Macrostrategy Research Institute(53:41) Secure AI Project(54:20) Organizations Doing ML Alignment Research(55:36) Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR)(57:01) Alignment Research Center (ARC)(57:40) Apollo Research(58:36) Cybersecurity Lab at University of Louisville(59:17) Timaeus(01:00:19) Simplex(01:00:52) Far AI(01:01:32) Alignment in Complex Systems Research Group(01:02:15) Apart Research(01:03:20) Transluce(01:04:26) Organizations Doing Other Technical Work(01:04:31) AI Analysts @ RAND(01:05:23) Organizations Doing Math, Decision Theory and Agent Foundations(01:06:43) Orthogonal(01:07:38) Topos Institute(01:08:34) Eisenstat Research(01:09:16) AFFINE Algorithm Design(01:09:45) CORAL (Computational Rational Agents Laboratory)(01:10:35) Mathematical Metaphysics Institute(01:11:40) Focal at CMU(01:12:57) Organizations Doing Cool Other Stuff Including Tech(01:13:08) ALLFED(01:14:46) Good Ancestor Foundation(01:16:09) Charter Cities Institute(01:16:59) Carbon Copies for Independent Minds(01:17:40) Organizations Focused Primarily on Bio Risk(01:17:45) Secure DNA(01:18:42) Blueprint Biosecurity(01:19:31) Pour Domain(01:20:19) ALTER Israel(01:20:56) Organizations That Can Advise You Further(01:21:33) Effective Institutions Project (EIP) (As A Donation Advisor)(01:22:37) Longview Philanthropy(01:24:08) Organizations That then Regrant to Fund Other Organizations(01:25:19) SFF Itself (!)(01:26:52) Manifund(01:28:51) AI Risk Mitigation Fund(01:29:39) Long Term Future Fund(01:31:41) Foresight(01:32:31) Centre for Enabling Effective Altruism Learning & Research (CEELAR)(01:33:28) Organizations That are Essentially Talent Funnels(01:35:24) AI Safety Camp(01:36:07) Center for Law and AI Risk(01:37:16) Speculative Technologies(01:38:10) Talos Network(01:38:58) MATS Research(01:39:45) Epistea(01:40:51) Emergent Ventures(01:42:34) AI Safety Cape Town(01:43:10) ILINA Program(01:43:38) Impact Academy Limited(01:44:15) Atlas Computing(01:44:59) Principles of Intelligence (Formerly PIBBSS)(01:45:52) Tarbell Center(01:47:08) Catalyze Impact(01:48:11) CeSIA within EffiSciences(01:49:04) Stanford Existential Risk Initiative (SERI)(01:49:52) Non-Trivial(01:50:27) CFAR(01:51:35) The Bramble Center(01:52:28) Final Reminders --- First published: November 26th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FJxc4Lk6mijiFiPp2/the-big-nonprofits-post-2025 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. 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OpenAI has given us GPT-5.1-Codex-Max, their best coding model for OpenAI Codex. They claim it is faster, more capable and token-efficient and has better persistence on long tasks. It scores 77.9% on SWE-bench-verified, 79.9% on SWE-Lancer-IC SWE and 58.1% on Terminal-Bench 2.0, all substantial gains over GPT-5.1-Codex. It's triggering OpenAI to prepare for being high level in cybersecurity threats. There's a 27 page system card. One could call this the secret ‘real’ GPT-5.1 that matters. They even finally trained it to use Windows, somehow this is a new idea. My goal is for my review of Opus 4.5 to start on Friday, as it takes a few days to sort through new releases. This post was written before Anthropic revealed Opus 4.5, and we don’t yet know how big an upgrade Opus 4.5 will prove to be. As always, try all your various options and choose what is best for you. The Famous METR Graph GPT-5.1-Codex-Max is a new high on the METR graph. METR's thread is here. Prinz: METR (50% accuracy): GPT-5.1-Codex-Max = 2 hours, 42 minutes This is 25 minutes longer than GPT-5. Samuel Albanie [...] ---Outline:(01:18) The Famous METR Graph(02:46) The System Card(03:43) Basic Disallowed Content(04:17) Sandbox(05:34) Mitigations For Harmful Tasks and Prompt Injections(06:13) Preparedness Framework(06:35) Biological and Chemical(07:50) Cybersecurity(11:58) AI Self-Improvement(14:27) Reactions --- First published: November 25th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YMFYQpsY2MGbXKPtS/chatgpt-5-1-codex-max --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

It's A Great Model, Sir One might even say the best model. It is for now my default weapon of choice. Google's official announcement of Gemini 3 Pro is full of big talk. Google tells us: Welcome to a new era of intelligence. Learn anything. Build anything. Plan anything. An agent-first development experience in Google Antigravity. Gemini Agent for your browser. It's terrific at everything. They even employed OpenAI-style vague posting. In this case, they can (mostly) back up that talk. Google CEO Sundar Pichai pitched that you can give it any scribble and have it turn that into a boardgame or even a full website, it can analyze your sports performance, create generative UI experiences and present new visual layouts. He also pitched the new Gemini Agent mode (select the Tools icon in the app). If what you want is raw intelligence, or what you want is to most often locate the right or best answer, Gemini 3 Pro looks like your pick. If you want creative writing or humor, Gemini 3 Pro is definitely your pick. If you want a teacher to help you learn known things, Gemini 3 [...] ---Outline:(00:10) It's A Great Model, Sir(01:49) There Is A Catch(03:28) Andrej Karpathy Cautions Us(04:58) On Your Marks(14:15) Defying Gravity(15:40) The Efficient Market Hypothesis Is False(18:17) The Product Of A Deranged Imagination(22:41) Google Employee Hype(26:37) Matt Shumer Is A Big Fan(27:55) Roon Eventually Gains Access(28:21) The Every Vibecheck(29:49) Positive Reactions(36:08) Embedding The App(36:26) The Good, The Bad and The Unwillingness To Be Ugly(40:03) Genuine People Personalities(41:50) Game Recognize Game(43:48) Negative Reactions(47:36) Code Fails(48:42) Hallucinations(55:11) Early Janusworld Reports(57:31) Where Do We Go From Here --- First published: November 24th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/REWPGibonsu3C5xhb/gemini-3-pro-is-a-vast-intelligence-with-no-spine --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Gemini 3 Pro is an excellent model, sir. This is a frontier model release, so we start by analyzing the model card and safety framework report. Then later I’ll look at capabilities. I found the safety framework highly frustrating to read, as it repeatedly ‘hides the football’ and withholds or makes it difficult to understand key information. I do not believe there is a frontier safety problem with Gemini 3, but (to jump ahead, I’ll go into more detail next time) I do think that the model is seriously misaligned in many ways, optimizing too much towards achieving training objectives. The training objectives can override the actual conversation. This leaves it prone to hallucinations, crafting narratives, glazing and to giving the user what it thinks the user will approve of rather than what is true, what the user actually asked for or would benefit from. It is very much a Gemini model, perhaps the most Gemini model so far. Gemini 3 Pro is an excellent model despite these problems, but one must be aware. Gemini 3 Self-Portrait Gemini 3 Facts I already did my ‘Third Gemini’ jokes and I won’t [...] ---Outline:(01:26) Gemini 3 Facts(02:35) On Your Marks(03:27) Safety Third(05:18) Frontier Safety Framework(05:44) CBRN(08:29) Cybersecurity(09:47) Manipulation(14:54) Machine Learning R&D(16:55) Misalignment(19:06) Chain of Thought Legibility(19:25) Safety Mitigations(21:56) They Close On This Not Troubling At All Note(22:51) So, Is It Safe? --- First published: November 21st, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5s5NZ6txhHMmSRSNw/gemini-3-model-card-and-safety-framework-report --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Last week had the release of GPT-5.1, which I covered on Tuesday. This week included Gemini 3, Nana Banana Pro, Grok 4.1, GPT 5.1 Pro, GPT 5.1-Codex-Max, Anthropic making a deal with Microsoft and Nvidia, Anthropic disrupting a sophisticated cyberattack operation and what looks like an all-out attack by the White House to force through a full moratorium on and preemption of any state AI laws without any substantive Federal framework proposal. Among other things, such as a very strong general analysis of the relative position of Chinese open models. And this is the week I chose to travel to Inkhaven. Whoops. Truly I am now the Matt Levine of AI, my vacations force model releases. Larry Summers resigned from the OpenAI board over Epstein, sure, why not. So here's how I’m planning to handle this, unless something huge happens. Today's post will include Grok 4.1 and all of the political news, and will not be split into two as it normally would be. Long post is long, can’t be helped. Friday will be the Gemini 3 Model Card and Safety Framework. Monday will be Gemini 3 Capabilities. Tuesday will [...] ---Outline:(01:50) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(02:43) Tool, Mind and Weapon(06:55) Choose Your Fighter(07:18) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(11:31) First Things First(12:12) Grok 4.1(15:03) Misaligned?(18:37) Codex Of Ultimate Coding(20:21) Huh, Upgrades(20:49) On Your Marks(22:11) Paper Tigers(26:26) Overcoming Bias(31:11) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(31:45) Fun With Media Generation(33:41) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(38:31) They Took Our Jobs(44:25) On Not Writing(44:51) Get Involved(45:46) Introducing(48:29) In Other AI News(52:30) Anthropic Completes The Trifecta(54:08) We Must Protect This House(59:12) AI Spy Versus AI Spy(01:05:10) Show Me the Money(01:08:01) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(01:11:14) Quiet Speculations(01:12:17) The Amazing Race(01:17:37) Of Course You Realize This Means War (1)(01:21:30) The Quest for Sane Regulations(01:23:42) Chip City(01:24:31) Of Course You Realize This Means War (2)(01:30:02) Samuel Hammond on Preemption(01:36:17) Of Course You Realize This Means War (3)(01:44:43) The Week in Audio(01:45:47) It Takes A Village(01:46:26) Rhetorical Innovation(01:49:53) Varieties of Doom(01:50:59) The Pope Offers Wisdom(01:52:46) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:54:51) Messages From Janusworld(02:02:05) The Lighter Side --- First published: November 20th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fQsbYvLLbPaRvccRE/ai-143-everything-everywhere-all-at-once --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Happy Gemini Week to those who celebrate. Coverage of the new release will begin on Friday. Meanwhile, here's this month's things that don’t go anywhere else. Good News, Everyone Google has partnered with Polymarket to include Polymarket odds into Google Search and Google Finance. This is fantastic and suggests we should expand the number of related markets on Polymarket. In many ways Polymarket prediction markets are remarkably accurate, but here what we have is a Brier Score without a baseline of what we should expect as a baseline. You need to compare your Brier Score to scores on exactly the same events, or it doesn’t mean much. There's a lot to be made on Polymarket if you pay attention. A proposed ‘21st Century Civilization Curriculum’ for discussion groups. There's an interestingly high number of book reviews involved as opposed to the actual books. I get one post in at the end, which turns out to be Quotes From Moral Mazes, so I’m not sure it counts but the curation is hopefully doing important work there. Wylfa in North Wales will host the UK's first small modular nuclear reactors, government to invest 2.5 billion. [...] ---Outline:(00:23) Good News, Everyone(01:40) Good Advice(02:45) Where's The Party?(03:04) Antisocial Media(06:28) Government Working(17:14) Jones Act Watch(17:54) Variously Effective Altruism(20:56) Great Taste, Less Filling(24:14) How You Do Anything(25:13) Bad News(28:34) The Rage of the Plastic Straw Ban(30:55) Affordability Politics(31:30) Monks In The Casino(32:05) Procrastination Is Bad Actually(32:55) Many Successful People Adjust Behaviors More(34:43) Take The Money And Run(36:50) Work Harder(37:26) Work Smarter(38:22) Anti-Suicide Chairs(38:51) The Great American Songbook(42:04) For Your Entertainment(44:14) The Subscription Package Dance(45:51) Was Television Better Before?(47:52) The Joys Of Partial Task Automation(48:36) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game(51:35) Sports Go Sports(01:01:11) Sometimes People Cheat At Poker(01:02:37) Opportunity Knocks(01:03:28) The Lighter Side --- First published: November 19th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EWD6NBTaNt8TpwrkW/monthly-roundup-36-november-2025 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

In honor of my dropping by Inkhaven at Lighthaven in Berkeley this week, I figured it was time for another writing roundup. You can find #1 here, from March 2025. I’ll be there from the 17th (the day I am publishing this) until the morning of Saturday the 22nd. I am happy to meet people, including for things not directly about writing. Table of Contents Table of Contents. How I Use AI For Writing These Days. Influencing Influence. Size Matters. Time To Write A Shorter One. A Useful Tool. A Maligned Tool. Neglected Topics. The Humanities Don’t Seem Relevant To Writing About Future Humanity? Writing Every Day. Writing As Deep Work. Most Of Your Audience Is Secondhand. That's Funny. Fiction Writing Advice. Just Say The Thing. Cracking the Paywall. How I Use AI For Writing These Days How have I been using AI in my writing? Directly? With the writing itself? Remarkably little. Almost none. I am aware that this is not optimal. But at current capability levels, with the prompts and tools I know [...] ---Outline:(00:33) How I Use AI For Writing These Days(03:44) Influencing Influence(05:34) Size Matters(06:23) Time To Write A Shorter One(07:51) A Useful Tool(08:08) A Maligned Tool(10:04) Neglected Topics(12:31) The Humanities Don't Seem Relevant To Writing About Future Humanity?(13:50) Writing Every Day(14:20) Writing As Deep Work(15:25) Most Of Your Audience Is Secondhand(17:57) That's Funny(18:38) Fiction Writing Advice(19:13) Just Say The Thing(23:13) Cracking the Paywall --- First published: November 18th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YHSaG72C2TftKhHeA/on-writing-2 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.