3 captures, most recent first.
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Alex Turner @Turn_Trout · 33m We can't keep developing AI like this. Top 2 labs have proven unable to control or align their systems. That's scary as hell. Pause -> Plan A
Tweet by Alex Turner (AI safety researcher) arguing the top two AI labs have proven unable to control or align their systems, calling for a pause and referencing 'Plan A.'
Dave Banerjee @DaveRBanerjee
— quoting @romeovdean — saved image
Bogdan Ionut Cirstea reposted Dave Banerjee @DaveRBanerjee · 7h And even if we solve alignment, then we've got to prevent extreme power concentration, figure out space governance, design a new social contract for the post-AGI future, etc etc There's a lot of work to be done. Thankfully, buying time via a pause or AI winter helps with every threat model and gives us a better shot at a reasonable future [quoted tweet] Romeo Dean @romeovdean · 14h the pace of AI progress + the state of control/alignment techniques + competitive pressures = we're cooked we might get saved by AI progress hitting a wall...
Tweet by Dave Banerjee (reposted by Bogdan Ionut Cirstea) arguing that solving alignment is only the first of many post-AGI governance problems, and that an AI pause or winter would buy time across all threat models, quote-tweeting Romeo Dean's pessimistic assessment that competitive pressure plus weak alignment/control means 'we're cooked' absent AI progress stalling.
Andreas Stuhlmüller @stuhlmueller
— quoting Wei Dai @weidai11 (full post excerpt from LessWrong-style embed, 5mo old, edited Aug 2, 2026) — saved image
because (a) first you have to recognize this as an important project, which is exactly what we're bad at and (b) then you have to measure progress and do evals, which also requires the very ability we're bad at [quoted tweet] Wei Dai ✓ @weidai11 · Jul 31 "I don't have any good ideas for what to do in light of all this. Just wanted to post an update on my current thinking, my own 'situational awareness', if you will." [embedded post] Wei Dai 5mo 149▲ ✕15 ✓ Long horizon agency / strategic competence approximately does not exist among humans, even the smartest ones. With very few exceptions, billionaires spend or give away their money haphazardly, philosophers don't bother to think about long term implications of AI on philosophy production (positive or negative), Terence Tao spends his time wireheading on abstract math instead of doing anything remotely like instrumental convergence. Unlike my youthful expectations (upon reading Vernor Vinge), there are no university departments filled with super-geniuses charting a path for humanity to safely navigate the Singularity. Aside from this, humans also have a bunch of other safety problems, like being bad at philosophy, being easy to manipulate, having strange and unstable values°, tending to ignore risks they create (because acknowledging them would be bad for one's status). So if you try to improve people's agency, you likely just end up getting people like founders of FTX and OAI. What about getting help from AI? Well they seem to suffer from many of the same safety problems, but in even more severe forms. E.g., current AI capabilities are even more skewed towards short-horizon, easily verifiable tasks, like math and coding. They seem even more prone to reward gaming, are even worse at doing philosophy, are liable to have even more alien values, etc. Both AI and human safety seem to have this interlocking nature, i.e., there is a bunch of different safety problems where solving some but not all of them at the same time can make the overall situation worse. (For example, solving AI intent alignment allows humanity to do more damage to itself with AI help, if AI doesn't also provide competent strategic and philosophical assistance, but increasing AI strategic competence risks allowing misaligned AI to take over more easily.) This feature demands a high level of strategic competence to recognize and navigate, which is just what we don't have. I've been supportive of AI pause/stop, to buy time for human intelligence amplification and/or AI safety research, but increasingly think even that's not going to be sufficient to get a good long term future, because these activities, even if they succeed, would likely solve only some of the interlocking safety problems. For example, increasing human intelligence seems likely to increase our technical abilities more than our philosophical and strategic competence, and it is also risky in other ways° due to human safety problems that nobody is working on, e.g., positional competition. Even a very long AI pause, e.g. thousands or millions of years, may not suffice because it's not clear what dynamic would push humanity to eventually fix all of its safety problems at the same time, before it did something else irreversibly damaging. I don't have any good ideas for what to do in light of all this. Just wanted to post an update on my current thinking, my own "situational awareness", if you will. (I guess I still support AI pause to some degree, just to kick the can down the road and buy some more time to think.) Last edited 10:46 AM · Aug 2, 2026 · 165.5K Views
Continuation showing the full embedded Wei Dai post (originally posted ~5 months earlier, edited Aug 2 2026) arguing long-horizon strategic competence is nearly absent in humans and AI alike, that AI safety problems interlock such that solving some without others worsens the overall situation, and that even a long AI pause may not be sufficient for a good long-term future.