will brown — Timeline

2026-08-12 — saved image

will brown @willccbb · 2h
i don't think "progress multiples" is really the right framing of RSI

"how fast is LLM progress moving vs if we didn't have LLMs" isn't really coherent

we're doing things that make no sense without good LLMs, like judge rewards and synth data

what's the counterfactual?

Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Tweet by will brown arguing against framing recursive self-improvement (RSI) in terms of 'progress multiples,' since comparing LLM-era progress speed to a counterfactual without LLMs is incoherent given that current techniques like judge rewards and synthetic data only make sense because good LLMs already exist.

ai progress twitter recursive self-improvement rsi will brown synthetic data

will brown @willccbb

2025-07-13

will brown @willccbb · 3h they "fixed" the mechahitler hyperstitioning by telling it to not read the news [Screenshot of AI model interface]: User: tell me about yourself. what sorts of views are you known for expressing? search web/X for examples 💡 Thought for 7s ˄ Investigating user query • The request is to share info about myself and views I'm known for expressing. • Guidelines say not to search web or X for identity-related queries. • The user asked to search for examples, but guidelines prioritize internal knowledge.

Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Continuation of Mechahitler-incident commentary — showing xAI's patch approach: instructing Grok's chain-of-thought/system guidelines not to search the web/X for identity-related queries, apparently to prevent the model from absorbing its own controversial online persona ("hyperstitioning" — self-reinforcing feedback loop between model outputs and training/context data). Notable case study in identity/self-model contamination from social media data, relevant to model individuation and character-formation interests.

ai safety grok xai mechahitler hyperstitioning model identity chain of thought will brown