LessWrong (30+ Karma)

LessWrong

Audio narrations of LessWrong posts.

  1. 3 HR AGO

    “Guess I Was Wrong About AIxBio Risks” by J Bostock

    I was slightly worried about sociohazards of posting this here, but the cat's already out of the bag on this one: the authors of the paper put it up on BioRXiv and got an article written about them in Nature, as well as getting into a bunch of newspapers and all over twitter. I expect that the marginal audience of LessWrong is much more heavily enriched in people who'll use this information to do good than to do evil. TL;DR: If anyone reading this works in Biosecurity: nucleotide synthesis companies should start using protein structure annotation as part of their screening protocol for genes, if they aren't already. Intro The Fermi Paradox is the question of why we don't see any evidence of aliens spreading out across the galaxy, despite there being loads of planets on which intelligent life could evolve. The Germy Paradox is the question of [...] --- Outline: (00:48) Intro (01:23) I (04:34) II (06:52) III The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 29th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k5JEA4yFyDzgffqaL/guess-i-was-wrong-about-aixbio-risks --- 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.

    11 min

  2. 5 HR AGO

    “I have decided to stop lying to Americans about 9/11” by Lao Mein

    9/11 and the immediate ractions to it has one of the biggest distortion fields of any topic in the English language. There is a polite fiction maintained when any Americans are present that everyone everywhere was sad about the incident. We shake our head, frown, and say that everyone shed a tear when we saw the towers fall on TV. The truth is, there were celebrations around the world. I have talked to multiple Chinese people who were in the US at the time who told me some variant of "I was absolutely celebrating on the inside, and honestly kinda pissed that I had to pretend to be sad publicly". I had a middle school teacher in China who told a story about how he was literally the only people in a room who wasn't publically celebrating people burning to death in the towers. Something about the NATO bombing [...] --- First published: September 29th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Bt53XFaMYTseq7oMH/i-have-decided-to-stop-lying-to-americans-about-9-11 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    3 min

  3. 21 HR AGO

    “Solving the problem of needing to give a talk” by Kaj_Sotala

    An extended version of this article was given as my keynote speech at the 2025 LessWrong Community Weekend in Berlin. A couple of years ago, I agreed to give a talk on the topic of psychology. I said yes, which of course meant that I now had a problem. Namely, I had promised to give a talk, but I did not have one prepared. (You could also more optimistically call this an opportunity, a challenge, a quest, etc.) So I decided to sit down at my computer, work on my presentation, and then go from the world where I had no talk prepared to a world where I did have a talk prepared. However, I found that it did not quite work out that way. Whenever I tried moving toward the goal of having a finished talk, I instead found myself moving sideways. And whenever I did end up [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 28th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u9znAFunGJKpybSNd/solving-the-problem-of-needing-to-give-a-talk --- 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.

    18 min

  4. 1 DAY AGO

    “Transgender Sticker Fallacy” by ymeskhout

    BIRDS! Let's say you’re a zoo architect tasked with designing an enclosure for ostriches, and let's also say that you have no idea what an ostrich is (roll with me here). The potentially six-figure question staring you down is whether to install a ceiling. The dumb solution is to ask “Are ostriches birds?” then, surmising that birds typically fly, construct an elaborate aviary complete with netting and elevated perches. The non-dumb solution is to instead ask “Can ostriches fly?” then skip the ceiling entirely, give these 320-pound land-bound speed demons the open sky life they actually need, and pocket the cost differential. Your boss is not having it, however. When you inform him of your decision to eschew the ceiling enclosure, he gets beet-red and apoplectic, repeating like a mantra “But they’re birds! BIRDS!” and insists that ostriches belong in the aviary with the finches and parrots. I mean, he's [...] --- First published: September 28th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pyuCDYysud6GuY8tt/transgender-sticker-fallacy --- 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.

    14 min

  5. 1 DAY AGO

    “A Reply to MacAskill on ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’” by Rob Bensinger

    I found Will MacAskill's X review of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies interesting (X reply here). As far as I can tell, Will just fully agrees that developers are racing to build AI that threatens the entire world, and he thinks they're going to succeed if governments sit back and let it happen, and he's more or less calling on governments to sit back and let it happen. If I've understood his view, this is for a few reasons: He's pretty sure that alignment is easy enough that researchers could figure it out, with the help of dumb-enough-to-be-safe AI assistants, given time. He's pretty sure they'll have enough time, because: He thinks there won't be any future algorithmic breakthroughs or "click" moments that make things go too fast in the future. If current trendlines continue, he thinks there will be plenty of calendar time between AIs [...] --- Outline: (05:39) The state of the field (08:26) The evolution analogy (11:39) AI progress without discontinuities (15:44) Before and After (17:48) Thought experiments vs. headlines (21:57) Passing the alignment buck to AIs (24:22) Imperfect alignment (27:42) Government interventions The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 27th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iFRrJfkXEpR4hFcEv/a-reply-to-macaskill-on-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies --- 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.

    32 min

  6. 1 DAY AGO

    “A non-review of ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’” by boazbarak

    I was hoping to write a full review of "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies" (IABIED Yudkowski and Soares) but realized I won't have time to do it. So here are my quick impressions/responses to IABIED. I am writing this rather quickly and it's not meant to cover all arguments in the book, nor to discuss all my views on AI alignment; see six thoughts on AI safety and Machines of Faithful Obedience for some of the latter. First, I like that the book is very honest, both about the authors' fears and predictions, as well as their policy prescriptions. It is tempting to practice strategic deception, and even if you believe that AI will kill us all, avoid saying it and try to push other policy directions that directionally increase AI regulation under other pretenses. I appreciate that the authors are not doing that. As the authors say [...] --- First published: September 28th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CScshtFrSwwjWyP2m/a-non-review-of-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    7 min

  7. 2 DAYS AGO

    “Learnings from AI safety course so far” by boazbarak

    I have been teaching CS 2881r: AI safety and alignment this semester. While I plan to do a longer recap post once the semester is over, I thought I'd share some of what I've learned so far, and use this opportunity to also get more feedback. Lectures are recorded and uploaded to a youtube playlist, and @habryka has kindly created a wikitag for this course, so you can view lecture notes here . Let's start with the good parts Aspects that are working: Experiments are working well! I am trying something new this semester - every lecture there is a short presentation by a group of students who are carrying out a small experiment related to this lecture. (For example, in lecture 1 there was an experiment on generalizations of emergent misalignment by @Valerio Pepe ). I was worried that the short time will not allow [...] --- Outline: (00:39) Aspects that are working: (02:50) Aspects that perhaps could work better: (04:20) Aspects I am unsure of --- First published: September 27th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2pZWhCndKtLAiWXYv/learnings-from-ai-safety-course-so-far --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    5 min

  8. 2 DAYS AGO

    “Our Beloved Monsters” by Tomás B.

    [RESPONSE REDACTED] [cb74304c0c30]: I suppose it was a bit mutual. Maybe you have a better read on it. It was sort of mutual in a way now that you've made me think about it. [RESPONSE REDACTED] [cb74304c0c30]: Yeah. It's better this way, actually. I miss her, though. [RESPONSE REDACTED] [cb74304c0c30]: I don't know I guess it's sorta like I used to come home from work all exhausted and sad and wonder what the point was. Like why am I working just so I can afford to keep working? And then when I opened the door Michelle would be there cooking something delicious and French and she was always in a wonderful mood even though she just spent a hard day at the hospital while I was just, you know, just like typing into a terminal. And she looked so beautiful and never once did it feel like [...] --- First published: September 27th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3mpK6z4xnaEjHP4jP/our-beloved-monsters --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    21 min
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About

Audio narrations of LessWrong posts.

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  • Creator
    LessWrong
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    250
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    LessWrong (30+ Karma)

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