Don't Treat AI's Skillset as Static
or: The Future Will Be Weirder Than That, Part II People often treat AI as if it will improve on its current capabilities, but won't gain any new ones....
Don't Treat AI's Skillset as Static
or: The Future Will Be Weirder Than That, Part II People often treat AI as if it will improve on its current capabilities, but won’t gain any new ones....
Reasons to Act on Your Best Guess: A Reply to the Challenge of Unawareness
This post is too long to view in some email clients. You may prefer to read it online: http://mdickens.me/2026/08/17/unawareness_reply/ This post is a...
Reasons to Act on Your Best Guess: A Reply to the Challenge of Unawareness
This post is a submission to the Cluelessness Critiques Essay Competition. Credence: Likely.1 Anthony DiGiovanni’s sequence, The challenge of unawareness for...
On Democratizing ASI to Preserve Civil Liberties
http://mdickens.me/2026/08/10/on_democratizing_ASI/ I continue to believe we should pause frontier AI development. Any discussion of alternative strategies...
On Democratizing ASI to Preserve Civil Liberties
I continue to believe we should pause frontier AI development. Any discussion of alternative strategies should be thought of as planning for contingencies. A...
Links for August
http://mdickens.me/2026/08/03/links_for_august/ Here’s some cool stuff I’ve enjoyed recently. FloatHeadPhysics is a YouTube channel that breaks down...
Links for August
Here’s some cool stuff I’ve enjoyed recently. FloatHeadPhysics is a YouTube channel that breaks down difficult physics concepts in a way that makes them...
Notes on the possibility of moral progress
http://mdickens.me/2026/07/27/notes_on_moral_progress/ To achieve the best possible future, we must know what that future looks like. In other words, we need...
Notes on the possibility of moral progress
To achieve the best possible future, we must know what that future looks like. In other words, we need to solve ethics.1 The problem of solving ethics is so...
Letting myself look foolish
http://mdickens.me/2026/07/20/letting_myself_look_foolish/ I prefer to avoid saying things that I suspect might make me look stupid. Over the last couple of...
Letting myself look foolish
I prefer to avoid saying things that I suspect might make me look stupid. Over the last couple of years, however, I’ve made a conscious effort to write...
Pausing AI at human level seems harder than pausing ASAP
http://mdickens.me/2026/07/13/pausing_AI_at_human_level_seems_hard/ Some people think we should pause AI, but not now. They say we should wait until AI...
Pausing AI at human level seems harder than pausing ASAP
Some people think we should pause AI, but not now. They say we should wait until AI reaches human level,1 because: It’s not (catastrophically) dangerous...
Training AI to be better at correctness than persuasion
http://mdickens.me/2026/07/06/training_AI_to_be_better_at_correctness_than_persuasion/ I continue to believe we should pause frontier AI development. Any...
Training AI to be better at correctness than persuasion
I continue to believe we should pause frontier AI development. Any discussion of alternative strategies should be thought of as planning for contingencies....
Compare Your Company Stock to a Leveraged Index Fund
http://mdickens.me/2026/06/22/compare_employee_stock_leveraged_index/ Say you work at a private company that gives you stock options or RSUs. How should you...
AI will make biological extinction risks worse before it makes them better
http://mdickens.me/2026/06/29/AI_will_make_biorisk_worse_before_making_it_better/ An argument goes: If we don’t build aligned artificial superintelligence,...
AI will make biological extinction risks worse before it makes them better
An argument goes: If we don’t build aligned artificial superintelligence, we risk driving ourselves extinct for some other reason. We should rush to build...
Compare Your Company Stock to a Leveraged Index Fund
Say you work at a private company that gives you stock options or RSUs. How should you value your stock? If you have a choice between getting more stock or...