richard ngo

Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo

2026-08-27 — saved image

Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo

You don't need to stay to do good research: work that aims to scale to much more intelligent systems can almost always be done on publicly-available models. (And nobody can think creatively in such pressure cookers.)

You don't need to stay to gain influence, because you're almost definitely too scared to wield that influence in ways which matter (see the tweet on public criticism above).

You don't need to stay to generate scary demos or warn policymakers: we will be swimming in warning shots before long.

You don't need to stay to advance AI capabilities, even if you're worried about the latest bogeyman your CEO has constructed: "we need to do it to beat the bad guys" is a big part of what makes people the bad guys.

You don't need to be there to implement guardrails or other short-term mitigations: there are plenty of bright young things eager to slot into your place in the machine.

You don't even need to be there to feel rich and powerful. For one, you're probably already rich (and there's plenty of money up for grabs elsewhere). But more importantly, the sense of power is almost entirely illusory. Everyone involved has locked themselves into a mindset where they're incapable of making real choices, except for how fast to barrel down the train tracks that their fear has laid out for [cut off]

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Daniel Kokotajlo @DKokotajlo

2026-08-27 — saved image

Daniel Kokotajlo @DKokotajlo · 17m
To everyone at Anthropic or OpenAI or Meta or xAI or GDM: I agree with Richard here and we are both speaking from years of experience, years of talking to people on the inside who justified their behavior using one or more of the following arguments, and whose justifications turned out to be incorrect for the reasons Richard described.

For those who don't know, Richard is a convert to this view. When he and I were at OpenAI together he was dismissive on people on the outside who said things like this. (For example, I remember him saying to me when I left that he was going to stay because, in part, it would give him access to the latest models during the intelligence explosion which would allow him to do better alignment research.) I say this because it makes his current opinion more credible. I have great respect for him for changing his mind, on this and on various other things.

[Quoted tweet]
Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo · Aug 25
Replying to @RichardMCNgo
You don't need to stay to do good research: work that aims to scale to much more intelligent systems can almost always be done on publicly-available models. (And nobody can think ... [cut off]

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Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo

2026-08-05 — saved image

Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo · 1h
Where else should I be looking?
1 reply, 4 likes, 326 views

John David Pressm... @jd_pressm... · 1h
Right now nowhere, which means that if you did actually have a solution to the alignment problem there isn't actually anywhere to publish it, and there is in fact no useful audience for such a thing.

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Nathan @NathanpmYoung

2026-08-03 — saved image

Nathan @NathanpmYoung · 5m
Thought provoking, doesn't feel entirely right, but something correct about it.

[Quoted tweet]
Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo · Jun 28
Four analogies for a country:

1. The nationalist right views it as a family or community. So applying the same bar to citizens as to outsiders is nonsensical, because the country is of, by, and for its citizens.

2. The tech right views it as a company: you should bring in only the people who will benefit it. But this view is ultimately empty, because it doesn't tell you what the interests of a country actually are. Hence the tech right (who are usually positive-sum thinkers) keep falling back on zero-sum concepts like "being competitive" or "winning against China" to justify their preferred policies. (Yarvin makes the "country as corporation" analogy particularly explicit.)

3. The tech left views it as a charity. To them, wanting others not to receive what you're been given is hypocritical. This view is also empty, because it doesn't tell you where the windfall actually comes from—and once you start to talk about the benefits of culture, ethics, institutions, etc, it becomes clear that citizens (and their ancestors) *built* that windfall rather than just being given it.

4. The woke left views it as a cancer: something that is aggressive and parasitic by its very nature. Countries are inherently violent (in asserting their borders) and exclusionary (of non-citizens) and therefore shouldn't exist (or at least shouldn't be allowed to police their borders, which is effectively the same thing). A charitable read is that this is a trauma reaction to the holocaust and colonialism—but regardless, it has become so deeply anti-civilization that it seems descriptively accurate to call it evil and insane.

Paul's tweet below most directly corresponds to the tech left bucket. Unfortunately people in that bucket are rarely willing to push back on the core tenets of the woke left, and so end up aiding and abetting them. As one example, he's surely smart enough to recognize that his tweet makes no sense to people who view country as an extension of family. But acknowledging that is a slippery slope towards legitimizing ethnonationalism, so he pretends to not understand the pushback.

[Quoted tweet]
Paul Graham @paulg · Jun 28
Nearly all those who say the US should only admit the most talented immigrants would not themselves clear the bar they're proposing. They're effectively saying "Immigration is ok so long as you keep out people like me."

63 replies, 154 reposts, 1.4K likes, 69K views

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Sholto Douglas @_sholtodouglas

2025-12-26 — quoting @RichardMCNgo (Richard Ngo)

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