AI safety is mostly a sex cult in Berkeley

I think this is a sort-of dupe of this?

AI safety is mostly a sex cult - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985 - Sept 2026 (314 comments)

Hard to tell without looking closely at the articles...

(Off-topic note: the title variation makes a surprising difference)

The article is gone now.

A post by the author: https://bsky.app/profile/segyges.bsky.social/post/3mwc2eopu6...

>> I apologize for my earlier article, which did not undergo proper legal review, and will not be able to be present on social media for a while.

Unfortunately I can't read the article (taken down), but I can read some of the underlying material shared by dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985

I feel there's many interesting pieces to this -- Yudkowsky certainly has extreme views, it's clear there are a ton of poly and open people in this community, some people do have a religious veneration for Yudkowsky and "rationality" in general, and there's some smarmy folks in the mix. But I'm not sure any of that is a negative critique of the general movement. I suspect similar statements were true of the enlightenment, protestantism, and the beatniks? Marginalized views, free expression, and new ideas often go together in what I feel is an obvious pattern. I don't care if there's a bunch of sexually liberal people in this org, or some obsessive fan-devotion, so long as they're not forcing somebody into a situation they don't want. These people can live their lives however they want; I think that's quintessentially American in a way that's very positive and increasingly rare. And on the other side, there are many impacts from this movement that I'm quite happy with: I'm really happy that this movement has spawned/impacted GiveWell, the Long Now, Scott Alexander, Works in Progress, and Open Philanthropy, to name just a few. I'm also happy that it seems to have birthed the latest AI progress. Of course there are things that I find ridiculous (I didn't really like hpmor, their forum board is somewhat silly, and Roko's Basilisk[0] is just hilarious, lol).

If this piece was meant as documentation of a particular moment in time, then they've picked a really fascinating group to document! But it feels like it's really meant as criticism, that we should trust the whole group less because there are some sexually open fans of Yudkowsky. I'm not sure I can get on board with that. If sexually open fans of Yudkowsky want to build great things, I say let them!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

There's two main schools of thought regarding the downsides of AI: One is apocalyptic, focusing on existential threats of the kind seen in scifi literature, and is largely influenced by the exact warnings given therein. The other, which I'll call "socio-realism", often looks into the actual past at the introduction of automation and its displacing effects.

The "AI safety" movement is largely an answer to only one side: the apocalyptic one. Doomers like Yudkowsky and his ilk are popular over there. Note how his most recent book reads like scifi, including with its implausible "solutions"? These people are living in a fantasy land. This isn't to say p(doom) = 0, but we've lived with it being non-zero since the introduction of nuclear weapons. Very little has changed there, I'd say.

For the socio-realism side, well, this model aligns well with exactly the kinds of real-world misery often posted on this site, as intellectual workers' livelihoods and telos are negated by automation. Sellers of "AI safety" don't care about them. There's no calls from that community to carve out space for us to retain a life of meaning within society when our ability to contribute is nullified. The fantasy of AI safety doesn't have room for that: they're too busy warding off imaginary demons; hence the cult-like behavior.

article is done. archive: https://archive.is/QMo1k

Berkeley is a hotbed of reactionary, far-right, and generally weird behavior. We've got this sex cult of course, and we have Curtis Yarvin, Michael Shellenberger, etc. Our tolerance for deviance acts as a shield that attracts self-depicted contrarians.