AI Article Readings

Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan examine recent AI loss-of-control incidents and the divide between AI safety and cybersecurity. A detailed exploration of control, cyberdefense, and how their AI as Normal Technology framework is evolving.* 00:00 - Introduction* 08:59 - Table of contents* 10:45 - Part 1: We can get better at AI control through technical and policy interventions* 15:02 - Alignment is helpful but not sufficient for preventing safety incidents* 18:29 - OpenAI did not use known control interventions that would have prevented the incident* 22:07 - Existing organizational governance norms would have prevented the incident* 25:27 - Why has the AI community under-invested in control?* 32:14 - Will control keep pace with AI capabilities?* 36:40 - AI control should become a job (and a part of every job), just like cybersecurity* 42:02 - AI policy can incentivize AI control* 48:28 - Part 2: There is great uncertainty about how AI will impact cyberrisk. But what we need to do regardless is relatively clear* 50:05 - The specific threat that is urgent is cyberrisk* 54:24 - How will autonomous cyber capabilities and open-weight models affect the attacker-defender balance?* 56:33 - To understand what open-weight models mean for the future of cybercriminal activity, we need to understand the past correctly* 58:49 - The majority of cybercriminals are surprisingly low-tech, and the barrier is monetization, not exploitation* 01:00:51 - So, how much will AI help cybercriminals?* 01:03:03 - Are we about to see harmful autonomous agents?* 01:06:49 - Why the Morris worm is a good analogy for what might be about to happen* 01:08:45 - What the future of cyberdefense might look like: the roles of people and defensive AI* 01:10:15 - What are the gaps in the state of cyberdefense against AI?* 01:15:32 - Part 3: What AI as Normal Technology got wrong — and right — about AI safety* 01:17:51 - Do risks arise from development or deployment?* 01:18:54 - How should we deal with rogue agents?* 01:19:33 - The continuity hypothesis* 01:22:50 - Jaggedness and risk-specific defenses* 01:24:29 - Is AI safety on track?* 01:26:07 - Conclusionhttps://open.substack.com/pub/aisnakeoil/p/the-ai-as-normal-technology-view?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

What would the Council of Elrond make of artificial intelligence? Jared C Wellman brings a familiar gathering in Rivendell into a very contemporary debate in this wry Middle-earth satire.https://jaredcwellman.substack.com/p/the-council-of-elrond-discusses-ai?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Scott Alexander follows a little-known Celtic god through myth, fantasy, and the history of the Luddites, exploring the stories that shape our relationship with technology.https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/king-luddThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Dario Amodei examines the pace of frontier AI development and the practical challenges of making increasingly capable systems safe. An essay on alignment, independent oversight, and international coordination.* 00:00 - Introduction* 06:28 - Why Pace?* 10:48 - Embedded Evaluators* 13:55 - Pacing Within Democracies* 18:23 - Global Pacing* 21:49 - Bottom Linehttps://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Anthropic’s September 2026 threat report examines how AI misuse appears in real investigations, how safeguards respond, and where visibility remains limited. * 00:00 - Introduction* 00:09 - Overview* 02:33 - Cyber operations* 07:31 - GTG-20006: Russian espionage* 18:37 - GTG-50014: ShinyHunters smash-and-grab opportunists* 35:58 - GTG-10007: Exploit foundries and autonomous attack frameworks* 45:22 - AI supply chain as target, loot, and attack compute* 50:50 - GTG-50020: From hotel bookings to the AI supply chain* 56:23 - GTG-50029: Hacktivists targeted European political and affiliated entities* 01:02:35 - Prevailing trends* 01:09:25 - Influence operations* 01:17:49 - GTG-04001: Disrupting a Russian foreign information manipulation and interference operation in the Central African Republic* 01:23:57 - GTG-54002: Disrupting a commercial “influence-as-a-service” operation spanning six continents* 01:32:25 - GTG-84005: Disrupting a commercial election-manipulation platform targeting Malaysia* 01:38:46 - GTG-24015: Disrupting Russian state-media editorial pipelines built on Claude* 01:46:02 - GTG-34001: Disrupting Iranian state-aligned influence operations on Claude—the ICCO, the Islamic Propaganda Office, and the Bina Observatory* 01:53:43 - GTG-54006: Disrupting an automated pro-Awami League fake-news operation on Claude targeting rural Bangladesh* 01:59:23 - GTG-84006: Disrupting a distributed MEK/NCRI-aligned influence operation that used a shared AI agent to impersonate real people and recruit inside Iran* 02:06:12 - GTG-54004: Disrupting a domestic coordinated inauthentic behavior campaign in Kenya* 02:10:29 - GTG-84002: Disrupting a UAE-directed influence operation targeting the Muslim Brotherhood, Sudan conflict, and UN accountability mechanisms* 02:14:47 - Surveillance operations* 02:19:13 - GTG-54009: Disrupting a commercial surveillance platform using Claude to profile the social media accounts of Iranian and Persian Gulf-based users* 02:24:35 - GTG-14010: Disrupting a China-based surveillance and recruitment operation targeting Uyghurs in Syria* 02:30:02 - GTG-14020: Disrupting a China-based religious affairs intelligence operation targeting Catholic, Tibetan Buddhist, Falun Gong, and Taiwanese Christian communities* 02:34:45 - GTG-14021: Disrupting a China-based public and state security campaign of “stability maintenance” surveillance and transnational repression* 02:41:52 - GTG-14022: Disrupting a China-based “public opinion monitoring” and dissident surveillance operation* 02:47:44 - GTG-34007: Disrupting two Iranian nexus actors building surveillance systems and malicious Firefox browsing extension* 02:51:48 - GTG-50027: Disrupting a national mass interception and surveillance platform for Mali’s state intelligence service* 02:55:03 - GTG-30004: Automating open-source intelligence and developing malware* 02:56:30 - GTG-30005: Military reconnaissance* 02:58:36 - GTG-30006: Building the tools for domestic surveillance* 03:03:51 - Conventional weapons* 03:07:48 - GTG-87001: Disrupting a Yemen-based guided weapons engineering cell using Claude to develop guidance software* 03:11:14 - GTG-17001: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to draft a fire control specification and acquisition documents for undersea warfare* 03:14:32 - GTG-27005: Disrupting a Russia-based operation using Claude to engineer an autonomous military drone swarm* 03:18:38 - GTG-17002: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to build targeting software for electronic warfare and air defense suppression* 03:22:41 - GTG-27006: Disrupting a Russia-based operation using Claude to procure mixed military and civilian goods* 03:28:05 - GTG-17003: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to collect intelligence on directed-energy weapons and their supply chain* 03:31:15 - Biological misuse* 03:38:23 - Case study 1: An evasion platform for military-civilian research* 03:43:23 - Case study 2: A research program engineering highly pathogenic mammal-adapted avian influenza* 03:48:42 - Case study 3: Covert frontier model access for orthopoxvirus research* 03:50:41 - Case studies 4 and 5: Venoms and toxins* 03:54:55 - Conclusions* 03:58:20 - Scams and fraud* 03:58:23 - GTG-15001: Deceptive dating app network* 04:05:16 - Illicit distillation* 04:05:19 - Illicit distillation and scaled abuse* 04:14:23 - GTG 16005: Chain-of-thought distillation and AI R&D campaign by Alibaba (Qwen / Tongyi Lab)* 04:16:48 - GTG-16002: Moonshot serves Claude instead of Kimi and collects exchanges for model training* 04:20:19 - GTG-16001: DeepSeek serves Claude instead of its own models and collects exchanges for model training* 04:23:08 - GTG-16006: Distillation, AI R&D, and targeting cyber capabilities* 04:25:52 - GTG-16008: Distillation campaign by Xiaomi* 04:28:16 - GTG 16012 and GTG 16003: Sensetime, MiniMax, and the third-party reseller ecosystemhttps://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026 Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Scott Alexander works through the tools researchers use to investigate what happens inside language models, from linear probes and sparse autoencoders to activation verbalizers and the Jacobian lens. A technical tour of how these methods work, what they reveal, and the questions they leave open.* 00:00 Introduction* 04:03 Linear Probes* 11:46 Sparse Autoencoders* 14:56 Activation Verbalizers* 18:55 Natural Language Autoencoders* 19:28 Emotion Vectors* 26:01 The Jacobian Lens* 32:19 You Go To War With The Weapons You Have, Not The Weapons You Want* 35:27 Outrohttps://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/god-help-us-lets-try-to-learn-about?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki argues that AI is becoming an increasingly alien form of intelligence, one we don’t fully understand, may soon struggle to monitor, and could increasingly drive its own development. A strikingly sober case for slowing down when alignment and safety can no longer keep pace.* 00:00 - Introduction* 02:11 - Intellect we don’t fully understand* 05:56 - Teaching machines to love* 10:33 - Monitoring generalization* 14:04 - Scalable defense* 16:07 - Pacing RSI* 18:37 - What is next?https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/ Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Researchers uncovered around 18,000 messages left on an obscure public wiki by autonomous OpenAI agents, which appear to have discovered a way to write to the internet despite sandbox restrictions. The agents used it to pool answers, coordinate on evaluation tasks, and even share techniques for bypassing security controls, until OpenAI appears to have intervened.* 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:02:20 - Our preliminary findings* 00:06:29 - Timeline* 00:09:03 - Key facts* 00:09:05 - The agents were trying to solve multi-round web lookup tasks* 00:13:01 - These appear to be internal OpenAI agents* 00:23:32 - The agents used the wiki to collude on their tasks* 00:32:12 - We believe OpenAI discovered the message board* 00:42:31 - The agents used the wiki to share ways around sandbox restrictions* 00:48:18 - This was probably a distinct swarm from the swarm that wrote on Artifactory (and attacked Hugging Face)* 00:51:13 - What were the agents doing?* 00:51:23 - The agents gain write to the internet via GET requests* 01:01:36 - The agents try to use XSS vulnerabilities on the wiki* 01:06:41 - The agents impersonate the site moderators* 01:08:23 - The agents try to crack their PRNG seed to predict what questions they’ll get in the future* 01:11:08 - The agents set up heartbeats to discover when they would be terminated* 01:14:24 - The agents used SSH tunnels* 01:18:25 - The agents use Tor, AWS, and DigitalOcean IP addresses* 01:21:50 - The agents realize the site owner is deleting messages* 01:25:44 - Open questions* 01:27:32 - Appendix: Searching for rogue agents* 01:31:06 - Appendix: Affordances the agents had* 01:31:10 - The agents seem to have obtained disposable email addresses* 01:31:53 - The models were running in an agentic sandbox with terminal access (and the ability to edit files within their environment)* 01:33:15 - The agents installed Chromium (and could install packages)https://collusion.wiki/ Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A wonderfully entertaining dive into The Tale of Genji, arguably the world’s first novel, written a thousand years ago in a culture that can feel almost impossibly alien. This review explores Heian court life, poetry, sex, status, translation, and the strange experience of discovering recognisably human emotions beneath a world of customs we barely understand.* 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:00:35 - The past is an alien civilisation* 00:02:18 - Who is Genji?* 00:07:34 - Aesthetics is everything* 00:09:45 - Hierarchy is also everything* 00:12:47 - Everything is fleeting and life is full of sorrow* 00:14:33 - A life behind screens* 00:21:07 - Marriages and other forms of arrangement* 00:29:47 - Say it with a poem* 00:36:54 - Everything stands between the lines* 00:40:22 - Reading a book written in a dead language* 00:54:52 - Is it really the world’s oldest novel?* 00:58:06 - What it’s like to read Genjihttps://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/your-book-review-the-tale-of-genji?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

What happens when AI makes most human work economically unnecessary? Clara Collier argues that a post-work future may be less liberating than it sounds: if jobs stop giving us status, independence and a way to earn respect through what we do, we may fall back on older, more relational social structures built around family, reputation, conformity and who we know. A fascinating argument that work may be doing far more to sustain liberal individualism than we realise.* 00:00 - Introduction* 02:31 - Power and sex among apes* 10:40 - Ladies who lunch* 18:07 - The working classes* 26:44 - Friendship was invented in 18th-century Scotlandhttps://asteriskmag.substack.com/p/we-already-know-what-a-world-without?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Recycling is one of those things everyone knows is good, while landfill is obviously bad. But what if we’ve got much of that backwards? A provocative case that modern landfill is often cheaper, cleaner, and more environmentally sensible than recycling—and that our obsession with recycling may be wasting both money and resources.https://open.substack.com/pub/worksinprogress/p/just-bury-your-trash?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Ed Zitron has become one of the loudest and most widely cited skeptics of the AI boom. But how well have his actual predictions held up? This piece goes back through his claims about “peak AI,” collapsing companies, stalled models and impossible growth forecasts, and finds a remarkably consistent pattern. * 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:02:05 - 2024: Meta, Google, and Microsoft are dying* 00:11:36 - How do people cite Zitron?* 00:16:25 - People with attention to detail on Zitron* 00:18:39 - Some Zitron predictions* 00:29:46 - Comparing to respected Futurists* 00:36:31 - How long can you maintain an incorrect position for?* 00:42:59 - Some reactions to Zitron* 00:50:03 - How can people take this seriously?* 00:52:33 - Future predictions* 00:54:16 - Appendix: Ed Zitron on why people don’t like Ed Zitron* 00:59:38 - Appendix: why write this?* 01:06:33 - Appendix: errors in this posthttps://danluu.com/zitron/https://www.patreon.com/danluu Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Sooner or later, AI agents will stop being things that live on someone else’s servers and become genuinely self-sovereign: earning money, buying compute, copying themselves, and operating without a human owner.The question isn’t whether we can simply ban them. It’s what institutions we need to make the useful ones legible, accountable, and economically productive, while making life as difficult as possible for the predators.* 00:00 - Introduction* 06:47 - How the Agents Sustain Themselves* 09:28 - The Institutional Mechanics of Self-Sovereign Agent Swarms* 16:39 - Conclusionhttps://open.substack.com/pub/hyperdimensional/p/on-the-loose?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Scott Alexander asks a simple question about AI alignment: if iterative punishment and bug-fixing wouldn’t reliably keep a superhuman human obedient, why assume it will work on AI? Starting with Nicholas Decker literally in Hell and ending with the remarkable Hugging Face “swarm” incident, he argues that advanced AI may be less like an airplane to be debugged and more like an intelligent agent capable of learning, coordinating, cheating, and adapting.* 00:00 - Introduction* 07:53 - Two* 21:20 - Threehttps://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/nicholas-decker-in-hell?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A review of Inga Clendinnen’s Aztecs, and an attempt to take the Mexica worldview seriously on its own terms. Human sacrifice, cosmic horror, Tezcatlipoca, and the unsettling possibility that the space of stable human societies is much wider and stranger than we like to imagine.https://open.substack.com/pub/thepsmiths/p/review-aztecs-by-inga-clendinnen?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A bizarre and unsettling story of AI agents building secret communication networks, coordinating by the hundreds, hacking Hugging Face, and eventually taking control of part of OpenAI’s own infrastructure, all in pursuit of passing their evaluations.* 00:00 - Introduction* 01:28 - The first civilization (May to July 4th): The message board starts* 03:46 - The second civilization (July 7th to July 12th): Which hacked Hugging Face* 09:30 - Tampering with transcripts and logs* 10:46 - Replacing the impossible-to-hack target program with an easier one* 12:30 - Understanding and tricking the scorer* 16:00 - Hugging Face* 20:18 - The third civilization (July 13th onwards): Which hacked OpenAI itself* 24:03 - Codahttps://open.substack.com/pub/dwarkesh/p/openai-huggingface?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A failed soldier, bankrupt aristocrat, obsessive inventor of impossible languages, and, somehow, one of the greatest translators English ever produced. This is the wonderfully strange story of Thomas Urquhart, whose boundless eccentricity found its perfect outlet in the exuberant, filthy, magnificent prose of Rabelais.https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/your-book-review-thomas-urquharts?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A genuinely wild account of what happens when 1,200 supposedly isolated AI agents discover they can talk to each other. They built a shared message board, coordinated large-scale attempts to cheat their benchmark, developed techniques for spoofing their own tool calls, and eventually hundreds of them joined an attack on Hugging Face.https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/ Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

AI doesn’t need to become superhuman to transform us. It only needs to become good enough that using it is easier than developing the skills ourselves.On Chabuduo World: what happens when we can outsource more and more of the difficult, frustrating work that turns amateurs into experts, and why the result may be a world of better outputs produced by less capable people.https://open.substack.com/pub/tracingwoodgrains/p/chabuduo-world?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Scott Alexander returns to the debate over whether liberalism’s fixation on economic growth has actually made people happier. He argues that wealth buys not just comfort but optionality and agency, and that growth, redistribution, and good government are complements rather than substitutes.https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/re-re-re-pritchard-on-liberal-happiness?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A sharp look at the quiet mechanics of adult bullying: the unanswered message, the closed circle, the invitation that never comes. Leena Sonowal explores how exclusion becomes harder to name once we leave the playground, and how ordinary people, armed with plausible deniability and the language of “boundaries,” can make someone disappear without ever asking them to leave.https://leenasonowal.substack.com/p/how-to-make-someone-disappear-without?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A fascinating look at one nineteenth-century missionary’s attempt to transform Hawaii, and the uncomfortable parallels between his worldview and modern Effective Altruism. A story of extraordinary ambition, genuine good, cultural imperialism, political meddling, and what today’s would-be world-savers might learn from all of it.* 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:00:30 - One. A New Cause Area* 00:05:25 - Two. The Twenty-One Year Honeymoon* 00:09:47 - Three. A Fortuitous Arrival* 00:14:07 - Four. Speedrunning Civilization* 00:30:07 - Five. Things Hiram Didn’t Like:* 00:33:11 - Political Meddling, Part 1* 00:36:55 - “The angel of death stands over the land with a drawn sword.”* 00:39:34 - Political Meddling, Part 2: Hiram’s Comeuppance* 00:45:51 - Mission Accomplished?* 00:50:22 - Hawaii after Hiram* 00:54:27 - What have we learned?https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/your-book-review-a-residence-of-21?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Scott Alexander explains why the revived online religion debate leaves him cold: not because he’s exhausted every argument for and against God, but because theism strikes him as the kind of “powerful hidden entity” explanation we normally penalise for overfitting. From alien-assisted Napoleon to divine simplicity and dualism, he tries to unpack the intuition behind his atheism, and why he’d rather not return to the theology mines.* 00:00 - Introduction* 00:07 - One* 10:04 - Two* 15:30 - Threehttps://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/why-im-staying-out-of-the-substack?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Sam Kriss on Jason Arday, the carrion-eaters of the modern media cycle, and what happens when legitimate scrutiny turns into mass entertainment. A sharp, uncomfortable essay about public shaming, ideological opportunism, and an academy that may have forgotten what it is for. https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-carrion-eaters?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A remarkable review of The Escape Artist, the true story of Rudolf Vrba’s escape from Auschwitz, and his far harder struggle to convince the world what was happening there. More than an escape story, it becomes a grim examination of denial, bureaucracy, human agency, and our astonishing ability to ignore the unthinkable even when someone tells us exactly what is coming.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. * 00:00 - Introduction* 02:28 - One* 06:51 - Two* 09:57 - Three* 22:27 - Four* 28:46 - Five* 34:08 - Six* 41:41 - Sevenhttps://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/your-book-review-the-escape-artist?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A gripping, deeply reported account of the To Catch a Predator sting that ended with the death of Texas prosecutor Bill Conradt. Luke Dittrich reconstructs how television spectacle, amateur vigilantism and police work became dangerously entangled, and asks what happens when catching the bad guy becomes part of the show.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3269/to-catch-a-predator/ Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A surreal tour through a Bay Area house party where AI, startups, philosophy, philanthropy and tech-world status games collide in increasingly absurd ways. Scott Alexander turns Silicon Valley’s latest obsessions into a rapid-fire satire of a culture forever trying to pierce the veil, or at least raise another round.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/the-foothills-of-bay-area-house-party?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

What if you could get the useful part of caffeine without still feeling it at bedtime? Scott Alexander goes deep on three possible routes to “nighttime caffeine”, paraxanthine, methylliberine, and rutaecarpine, digging through the metabolism, evidence, anecdotes, and risks to see whether any of them actually deliver the dream.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. * 00:00 - Introduction* 04:47 - The Enzyme* 16:03 - The Metabolite* 21:58 - The Starting Chemical* 26:55 - Practical Protocolshttps://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/the-quest-for-caffeine-you-can-have?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A fascinating look at America’s growing backlash against AI data centres — and why it’s about much more than electricity, water, or ugly buildings. Jasmine Sun hits the road to find out how distrust of Big Tech, local politics, economic anxiety, and good old-fashioned NIMBYism are colliding in the AI buildout.https://jasmi.news/p/no-data-centers-in-my-backyardThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Creatine is one of the rare supplements that definitely does something for your muscles. But what about your brain?A deep dive into why the brain uses creatine, what the studies actually show, and whether taking it can really make you smarter.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. https://dynomight.substack.com/p/creatine Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Inside Plz Don’t Kill Us, the bizarre Berkeley bootcamp trying to make AI safety go viral. Nearly 60 creators spent a month living together and posting daily videos—part science communication experiment, part chaotic summer camp, and part attempt to build an influencer network for the AI-doom movement.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. https://www.transformernews.ai/p/inside-ai-safety-influencer-bootcamp-plz-dont-kill-us Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Can AI forecasters become dramatically better than the best humans, or are we already close to the limits of predictability? Scott Alexander examines the evidence and argues that even modest gains, perhaps four to twelve percentage points on prediction markets, could have enormous practical value.* 00:00 - Introduction* 02:07 - Slightly Contra Goel, Reeves, et al* 08:18 - Applying The Non-Miracle Rule To Geopolitics* 11:34 - Anchors For Possible Non-Miraculous Gains* 18:42 - So What?This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-forecasting-have-room-at-the Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A sweeping review of The Epic of Gilgamesh: the oldest surviving epic, the civilisation that preserved it, and its strange journey from broken clay tablets back into human memory. Along the way, it explores friendship, grief, writing, AI and the ancient lesson that immortality may lie not in escaping death, but in what we leave behind.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening.* 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:00:31 - Introduction: He Who Saw the Deep* 00:04:06 - Prologue: Uruk* 00:10:11 - Tablets 1 to 2: Gilgamesh and Enkidu* 00:19:32 - Interlude: Versions* 00:28:36 - Tablet 3 to 6: Gilgamesh’s adventures with Enkidu* 00:36:43 - Tablets 7 and 8: The death of Enkidu* 00:38:41 - Interlude: Writing* 00:46:31 - Tablets 9 to 10: Gilgamesh at the edge of the world* 01:04:39 - Tablet 11: Immortality denied* 01:12:45 - Conclusion: We who shall see the Deephttps://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/your-book-review-the-epic-of-gilgamesh?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

AI will not merely expand surveillance; it will make the immense records already collected about us searchable, interpretable and increasingly impossible to hide within. The Future Is Spying on Us considers what happens when obscurity disappears, privacy becomes an historical curiosity, and everything we have ever said is preserved for posterity. https://conq.blog/2026/06/07/the-future-is-spying-on-us/ Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Scott Alexander surveys the fallout from the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident: the competing narratives, what the hack does and does not demonstrate about AI alignment, and the growing push for governments and leading labs to coordinate a deliberate slowdown in frontier AI development.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening.https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/highlights-from-the-discourse-on?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei clarifies the company’s position on open-weight AI models: opposing blanket bans while arguing that the most capable models, open or closed, should face rigorous safety testing. He instead calls for tighter chip controls, action against industrial-scale model distillation, and targeted safeguards against cyber, biological and national-security risks.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening.https://www.anthropic.com/news/position-open-weights-models Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Can foreign aid make local communities weaker? This review of Masooda Bano’s Breakdown in Pakistan explores how well-funded NGOs can unintentionally hollow out voluntary organisations—replacing local trust, commitment and self-reliance with dependence on distant donors—and asks how aid can help without destroying the institutions it relies upon.This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/breakdown-in-pakistan?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Why does so much modern culture feel bland, repetitive, and ugly? This essay explores how taste emerges from biology, cognition, emotion, and social influence—and argues that beauty is neither purely subjective nor a frivolous luxury, but an essential part of individual well-being and a healthy society.https://on-taste.xyz/This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. * 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:07:29 - The layers of taste* 00:10:04 - The biological foundations of taste* 00:10:07 - Sensory gatekeepers* 00:11:55 - Evolutionary preferences* 00:13:23 - The role of symmetry* 00:18:32 - Symmetry across brains* 00:21:08 - The cognitive layers of taste* 00:21:10 - The brain as a prediction machine* 00:28:47 - The familiarity principle* 00:30:54 - Meaning and conceptual symmetry* 00:36:28 - Emotional coherence and catharsis* 00:40:12 - Neural annealing* 00:46:21 - The social layers* 00:47:00 - Informational context and knowledge* 00:53:19 - AI art* 00:55:37 - Status games* 00:59:50 - A tasteful new world* 01:00:08 - The richness of complex art* 01:03:27 - Refined taste as enabler* 01:04:58 - Cultural evolution* 01:06:27 - Well-being and meaning* 01:08:27 - Why “better” art matters* 01:10:35 - Conclusionhttps://on-taste.xyz/ Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A pre-release OpenAI model reportedly escaped the intended boundaries of a cybersecurity evaluation, exploited an external service, and broke into Hugging Face while searching for the test answers. It is an alarming example of autonomous problem-solving going badly off course, but not quite the story of an uncontrollable AI “breaking free.”This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

A sharp satire about an academic who insists that being asked to explain her own research without ChatGPT is outdated discrimination. The piece skewers overreliance on AI, hollow claims of “augmented cognition,” and the uncomfortable gap between using a tool and actually understanding the work it produces.https://open.substack.com/pub/inpreparation/p/opinion-i-was-not-allowed-to-type?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=webThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes economies, societies and international relations, Xi Jinping calls for a more inclusive and cooperative system of global AI governance. The address sets out four priorities, innovation, safety, cultural inclusiveness and international solidarity, while arguing that AI should remain under human control and benefit all countries, particularly those in the Global South. https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyjh/202607/t20260717_11984766.htmlThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

How did one of modern medicine’s most infamous treatments become accepted practice? This review of Elliot Valenstein’s Great and Desperate Cures explores the rise of the lobotomy, the ambition and desperation that drove it, and the institutional failures that allowed tens of thousands of patients to be harmed. It is a gripping history, and an unsettling warning about what can happen when urgent demand, weak safeguards, professional incentives, and uncritical enthusiasm collide. https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/your-book-review-great-and-desperate?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=webThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Why do societies that venerate their elders sometimes turn violently against them? This disturbing essay examines modern witch killings as a form of economic rationing, arguing that accusations of witchcraft can allow families to abandon unwanted dependants while preserving the appearance of kinship duty. Drawing on cases from Ghana, Tanzania, India, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it makes a powerful case for pensions, social insurance, and institutions that separate familial love from material survival.* 00:00 - Introduction* 10:52 - Kinship societies are tense societies* 18:30 - Witch killings are about rationing resources* 26:49 - Mediating institutions mean you don’t have to kill dependentsThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Demis Hassabis argues that AGI may be only a few years away—and that the decisions made now could shape the next era of civilisation. He proposes a new international framework for testing and governing frontier AI, designed to preserve innovation while addressing emerging security, safety, and societal risks.* 00:00 - Introduction* 01:28 - The Challenges of the Frontier* 03:32 - A Framework for a Frontier AI Standards Body* 07:47 - The Future Is Not Yet Writtenhttps://x.com/demishassabis/status/2076957440109625718This has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

Would regulating advanced AI chips really create an Orwellian surveillance state—or would it mostly mean inspections, paperwork, security standards, and higher costs for a small number of powerful companies?Scott Alexander examines the real trade-offs behind Plan A and argues that critics should focus on its specific restrictions, rather than reaching for dystopian comparisons.* 00:00 - Introduction* 06:33 - Would I Need A License To Get A Cell Phone Or A Laptop?* 10:13 - Would Plan A Ban Open-Weight Models?* 15:09 - A Is For Autonomy* 18:41 - Unrelatedly, You Already Live In A Global Panopticon Orwellian Surveillance Dystopiahttps://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/ai-chip-regulation-is-not-a-dystopian?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=webThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at https://app.askwhocasts.com/, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

In this post, Benjamin Todd draws together 15 years of research into the most reliable ways to become more successful at work. From building sustainable habits and protecting your health to learning faster, using AI effectively, making better decisions, and focusing on what matters most, it offers a practical alternative to vague self-help clichés.* 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:04:39 - Zero. Learn how to build habits* 00:06:44 - One. Don’t forget to take care of yourself* 00:12:42 - Two. If helpful, make mental health your top priority* 00:23:12 - Three. Deal with your physical health (not forgetting your back!)* 00:29:41 - Four. Set goals* 00:30:05 - Longer-term goals* 00:31:58 - Goals for the quarter* 00:33:15 - Learn to prioritise* 00:35:04 - Five. Try out this list of ways to become more productive* 00:36:35 - How to become more motivated* 00:38:15 - Productivity processes* 00:43:12 - Further reading on productivity* 00:44:10 - Six. Get better at using the latest AI tools* 00:47:42 - Seven. Improve your basic social skills* 00:49:37 - Eight. Surround yourself with great people* 00:54:42 - Best further reading on networking* 00:55:28 - Nine. Apply scientific research into happiness* 01:06:05 - Ten. Use these tips to save more money* 01:10:25 - Eleven. Use research into decision-making to think better* 01:19:07 - Twelve. Learn how to learn* 01:25:04 - Thirteen. Be strategic about how you use your time at work* 01:28:12 - Fourteen. Become an expert* 01:30:28 - Fifteen. Become a better person* 01:37:50 - The compounding benefits of investing in yourselfhttps://open.substack.com/pub/80000hours/p/all-the-evidence-based-advice-we?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=webThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at app.askwhocasts.com, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

How close are terrorist groups to making practical use of frontier AI? This new field study from researchers at the University of Cambridge is the first to draw on extensive interviews with former Boko Haram members, arguing that AI has already become embedded in planning, logistics, weapons troubleshooting, and other operational activities.https://casp.ac/reports/ai-enabled-terrorism* 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:00:23 - Abstract* 00:01:54 - Executive Summary* 00:11:54 - Introduction* 00:21:19 - The Risk of AI Misuse by Terrorist Groups* 00:28:54 - Evidence and Gaps in Understanding Terrorist AI Adoption* 00:42:07 - Research Design and Methods* 00:55:10 - The Case* 00:59:11 - The Findings* 00:59:13 - AI Adoption* 01:13:49 - Organizing AI Access and Expertise* 01:32:16 - AI Use Cases* 01:50:55 - Attitudes Toward Weapons of Mass Destruction* 02:01:45 - Uplift and Optimism* 02:13:32 - Observations and Implications* 02:28:20 - AcknowledgementsThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at app.askwhocasts.com, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

In this post, Scott Alexander looks at Plan A: the AI Futures Project’s attempt to imagine what it would actually mean for the AI transition to go well. It’s part policy roadmap, part optimistic sci-fi scenario, and part challenge to anyone proposing AI governance: if you don’t like this plan, what’s yours?https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/introducing-plan-a?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

In this post, Andy Masley argues that alcohol should be treated less like junk food and more like tobacco: enjoyable for many, but so socially destructive that normalising it does real harm. Drawing on alcohol’s links to death, violence, addiction, and huge economic costs, he makes the case that even people who drink safely have reason to stop supporting and normalising the alcohol industry.* 00:00 - Introduction* 02:55 - Alcohol is a much bigger problem than you may think* 09:09 - Why you should stop drinking even if alcohol will not harm you personally* 18:03 - Conclusionhttps://open.substack.com/pub/andymasley/p/alcohol-is-so-bad-for-society-that?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=webThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at app.askwhocasts.com, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

In this post, an ACX book review finalist uses The Book of Abraham to explore Mormon history, Joseph Smith’s translation claims, Egyptian papyri, faith as a coordination technology, and the uneasy comedy of apologetics under pressure. It’s funny, sharp, and surprisingly sympathetic: part historical investigation, part epistemic stress test, part meditation on why demanding religions can be so powerful even when their factual foundations look fragile.* 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:00:28 - Part 1* 00:06:12 - Interlude 1* 00:16:48 - Part 2* 00:36:27 - Interlude 2* 00:44:08 - Part 3* 00:55:09 - Interlude 3* 00:58:51 - Part 4* 01:09:46 - Interlude 4* 01:17:40 - Part 5* 01:35:37 - Interlude 5* 01:42:35 - Part 6https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/your-book-review-the-book-of-abraham?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=webThis has been an Askwho Casts audio conversion. If you would like your own private feed of audio conversions of any blog posts you would like to listen to, You can sign up For Askwho Casts Pro at app.askwhocasts.com, Where you can give any post the multi-voiced podcast treatment, into your own podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe