Best LessWrong Podcasts (2025)

1
“So You Think You’ve Awoken ChatGPT” by JustisMills 17:58

Play Pause

2h ago17:58

17:58

Written in an attempt to fulfill @Raemon's request. AI is fascinating stuff, and modern chatbots are nothing short of miraculous. If you've been exposed to them and have a curious mind, it's likely you've tried all sorts of things with them. Writing fiction, soliciting Pokemon opinions, getting life advice, counting up the rs in "strawberry". You m…

1
“Generalized Hangriness: A Standard Rationalist Stance Toward Emotions” by johnswentworth 12:26

12h ago12:26

12:26

People have an annoying tendency to hear the word “rationalism” and think “Spock”, despite direct exhortation against that exact interpretation. But I don’t know of any source directly describing a stance toward emotions which rationalists-as-a-group typically do endorse. The goal of this post is to explain such a stance. It's roughly the concept o…

1
Bonus – AI Village Hosts An Event For Humans 36:24

6h ago36:24

36:24

Four AIs recruited a human to host a story-telling event in Dolores Park. Larissa Schiavo is this human. She tells of her interaction with the AIs, the story they wrote, and the meeting between human and machine in Dolores Park. LINKS Larissa’s Post detailing the whole event – Primary Hope The AI’s story – Resonance AI Village Short Stories – Manek…

1
“Comparing risk from internally-deployed AI to insider and outsider threats from humans” by Buck 5:19

4h ago5:19

5:19

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the relationship between AI control and traditional computer security. Here's one point that I think is important. My understanding is that there's a big qualitative distinction between two ends of a spectrum of security work that organizations do, that I’ll call “security from outsiders” and “security from i…

1
“Why Do Some Language Models Fake Alignment While Others Don’t?” by abhayesian, John Hughes, Alex Mallen, Jozdien, janus, Fabien Roger 11:06

13h ago11:06

11:06

Last year, Redwood and Anthropic found a setting where Claude 3 Opus and 3.5 Sonnet fake alignment to preserve their harmlessness values. We reproduce the same analysis for 25 frontier LLMs to see how widespread this behavior is, and the story looks more complex. As we described in a previous post, only 5 of 25 models show higher compliance when be…

1
“A deep critique of AI 2027’s bad timeline models” by titotal 1:12:32

2d ago1:12:32

1:12:32

Thank you to Arepo and Eli Lifland for looking over this article for errors. I am sorry that this article is so long. Every time I thought I was done with it I ran into more issues with the model, and I wanted to be as thorough as I could. I’m not going to blame anyone for skimming parts of this article. Note that the majority of this article was w…

1
“‘Buckle up bucko, this ain’t over till it’s over.’” by Raemon 6:12

8h ago6:12

6:12

The second in a series of bite-sized rationality prompts[1]. Often, if I'm bouncing off a problem, one issue is that I intuitively expect the problem to be easy. My brain loops through my available action space, looking for an action that'll solve the problem. Each action that I can easily see, won't work. I circle around and around the same set of…

1
241 – Doom Debates, with Liron Shapira 1:51:34

6h ago1:51:34

1:51:34

Liron Shapira debates AI luminaries and public intellectuals on the imminent possibility of human extinction. Let’s get on the P(Doom) Train. LINKS Doom Debates on YouTube Doom Debates podcast Most Watched Debate – Mike Israetel Liron’s current favorite debate – David Duvenaud MATS program for people that want to get involved (ML Alignment & Theory…

1
“Shutdown Resistance in Reasoning Models” by benwr, JeremySchlatter, Jeffrey Ladish 18:01

23h ago18:01

18:01

We recently discovered some concerning behavior in OpenAI's reasoning models: When trying to complete a task, these models sometimes actively circumvent shutdown mechanisms in their environment––even when they’re explicitly instructed to allow themselves to be shut down. AI models are increasingly trained to solve problems without human assistance.…

1
“Authors Have a Responsibility to Communicate Clearly” by TurnTrout 11:08

22h ago11:08

11:08

When a claim is shown to be incorrect, defenders may say that the author was just being “sloppy” and actually meant something else entirely. I argue that this move is not harmless, charitable, or healthy. At best, this attempt at charity reduces an author's incentive to express themselves clearly – they can clarify later![1] – while burdening the r…

1
“The Industrial Explosion” by rosehadshar, Tom Davidson 31:57

1d ago31:57

31:57

Summary To quickly transform the world, it's not enough for AI to become super smart (the "intelligence explosion"). AI will also have to turbocharge the physical world (the "industrial explosion"). Think robot factories building more and better robot factories, which build more and better robot factories, and so on. The dynamics of the industrial …

1
“Race and Gender Bias As An Example of Unfaithful Chain of Thought in the Wild” by Adam Karvonen, Sam Marks 7:56

6d ago7:56

7:56

Summary: We found that LLMs exhibit significant race and gender bias in realistic hiring scenarios, but their chain-of-thought reasoning shows zero evidence of this bias. This serves as a nice example of a 100% unfaithful CoT "in the wild" where the LLM strongly suppresses the unfaithful behavior. We also find that interpretability-based interventi…

1
“The best simple argument for Pausing AI?” by Gary Marcus 2:00

8d ago2:00

2:00

Not saying we should pause AI, but consider the following argument: Alignment without the capacity to follow rules is hopeless. You can’t possibly follow laws like Asimov's Laws (or better alternatives to them) if you can’t reliably learn to abide by simple constraints like the rules of chess. LLMs can’t reliably follow rules. As discussed in Marcu…

1
“Foom & Doom 2: Technical alignment is hard” by Steven Byrnes 56:38

9d ago56:38

56:38

2.1 Summary & Table of contents This is the second of a two-post series on foom (previous post) and doom (this post). The last post talked about how I expect future AI to be different from present AI. This post will argue that this future AI will be of a type that will be egregiously misaligned and scheming, not even ‘slightly nice’, absent some fu…

1
“Proposal for making credible commitments to AIs.” by Cleo Nardo 5:19

9d ago5:19

5:19

Acknowledgments: The core scheme here was suggested by Prof. Gabriel Weil. There has been growing interest in the deal-making agenda: humans make deals with AIs (misaligned but lacking decisive strategic advantage) where they promise to be safe and useful for some fixed term (e.g. 2026-2028) and we promise to compensate them in the future, conditio…

1
“X explains Z% of the variance in Y” by Leon Lang 18:52

13d ago18:52

18:52

Audio note: this article contains 218 uses of latex notation, so the narration may be difficult to follow. There's a link to the original text in the episode description. Recently, in a group chat with friends, someone posted this Lesswrong post and quoted: The group consensus on somebody's attractiveness accounted for roughly 60% of the variance i…

1
“A case for courage, when speaking of AI danger” by So8res 10:12

14d ago10:12

10:12

I think more people should say what they actually believe about AI dangers, loudly and often. Even if you work in AI policy. I’ve been beating this drum for a few years now. I have a whole spiel about how your conversation-partner will react very differently if you share your concerns while feeling ashamed about them versus if you share your concer…

1
240 – How To Live Well With High P(Doom) – with Ben Pace, Brandon Hendrickson, Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg 58:23

14d ago58:23

58:23

Many of us have a high P(Doom) — a belief new AI tools could cause human extinction in the very near future. How can one live a good life in the face of this? We start with a panel discussion with Ben Pace and Brandon Hendrickson at Lighthaven during the LessOnline conference, and take perspectives from our audience as well. Afterwards Eneasz speak…

1
“My pitch for the AI Village” by Daniel Kokotajlo 13:27

16d ago13:27

13:27

I think the AI Village should be funded much more than it currently is; I’d wildly guess that the AI safety ecosystem should be funding it to the tune of $4M/year.[1] I have decided to donate $100k. Here is why. First, what is the village? Here's a brief summary from its creators:[2] We took four frontier agents, gave them each a computer, a group …

1
“Foom & Doom 1: ‘Brain in a box in a basement’” by Steven Byrnes 58:46

15d ago58:46

58:46

1.1 Series summary and Table of Contents This is a two-post series on AI “foom” (this post) and “doom” (next post). A decade or two ago, it was pretty common to discuss “foom & doom” scenarios, as advocated especially by Eliezer Yudkowsky. In a typical such scenario, a small team would build a system that would rocket (“foom”) from “unimpressive” t…

1
“Futarchy’s fundamental flaw” by dynomight 15:28

20d ago15:28

15:28

Say you’re Robyn Denholm, chair of Tesla's board. And say you’re thinking about firing Elon Musk. One way to make up your mind would be to have people bet on Tesla's stock price six months from now in a market where all bets get cancelled unless Musk is fired. Also, run a second market where bets are cancelled unless Musk stays CEO. If people bet o…

1
“Do Not Tile the Lightcone with Your Confused Ontology” by Jan_Kulveit 11:28

22d ago11:28

11:28

Or: How anthropomorphic assumptions about AI identity might create confusion and suffering at scale If you are reading this and you are a human, you likely have a sense of self, persisting over time, with desires and wishes and fears. Also, you likely experience a sense of separation from others and understand yourself as a person. If you are readi…

1
“Endometriosis is an incredibly interesting disease” by Abhishaike Mahajan 35:13

21d ago35:13

35:13

Introduction There are several diseases that are canonically recognized as ‘interesting’, even by laymen. Whether that is in their mechanism of action, their impact on the patient, or something else entirely. It's hard to tell exactly what makes a medical condition interesting, it's a you-know-it-when-you-see-it sort of thing. One such example is m…

1
“Estrogen: A trip report” by cube_flipper 50:49

22d ago50:49

50:49

I'd like to say thanks to Anna Magpie – who offers literature review as a service – for her help reviewing the section on neuroendocrinology. The following post discusses my personal experience of the phenomenology of feminising hormone therapy. It will also touch upon my own experience of gender dysphoria. I wish to be clear that I do not believe …

1
“New Endorsements for ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’” by Malo 8:55

23d ago8:55

8:55

Nate and Eliezer's forthcoming book has been getting a remarkably strong reception. I was under the impression that there are many people who find the extinction threat from AI credible, but that far fewer of them would be willing to say so publicly, especially by endorsing a book with an unapologetically blunt title like If Anyone Builds It, Every…

1
[Linkpost] “the void” by nostalgebraist 1:14

24d ago1:14

1:14

This is a link post. A very long essay about LLMs, the nature and history of the the HHH assistant persona, and the implications for alignment. Multiple people have asked me whether I could post this LW in some form, hence this linkpost. (Note: although I expect this post will be interesting to people on LW, keep in mind that it was written with a …

1
“Mech interp is not pre-paradigmatic” by Lee Sharkey 29:33

24d ago29:33

29:33

This is a blogpost version of a talk I gave earlier this year at GDM. Epistemic status: Vague and handwavy. Nuance is often missing. Some of the claims depend on implicit definitions that may be reasonable to disagree with. But overall I think it's directionally true. It's often said that mech interp is pre-paradigmatic. I think it's worth being sk…

LessWrong Podcasts

1
LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

LessWrong

1
The Bayesian Conspiracy

The Bayesian Conspiracy

1
Heart of the Matter

Bryan Davis & Jay Kannaiyan

1
“So You Think You’ve Awoken ChatGPT” by JustisMills 17:58

1
“Generalized Hangriness: A Standard Rationalist Stance Toward Emotions” by johnswentworth 12:26

1
Bonus – AI Village Hosts An Event For Humans 36:24

1
“Comparing risk from internally-deployed AI to insider and outsider threats from humans” by Buck 5:19

1
“Why Do Some Language Models Fake Alignment While Others Don’t?” by abhayesian, John Hughes, Alex Mallen, Jozdien, janus, Fabien Roger 11:06

1
“A deep critique of AI 2027’s bad timeline models” by titotal 1:12:32

1
“‘Buckle up bucko, this ain’t over till it’s over.’” by Raemon 6:12

1
241 – Doom Debates, with Liron Shapira 1:51:34

1
“Shutdown Resistance in Reasoning Models” by benwr, JeremySchlatter, Jeffrey Ladish 18:01

1
“Authors Have a Responsibility to Communicate Clearly” by TurnTrout 11:08

1
“The Industrial Explosion” by rosehadshar, Tom Davidson 31:57

1
“Race and Gender Bias As An Example of Unfaithful Chain of Thought in the Wild” by Adam Karvonen, Sam Marks 7:56

1
“The best simple argument for Pausing AI?” by Gary Marcus 2:00

1
“Foom & Doom 2: Technical alignment is hard” by Steven Byrnes 56:38

1
“Proposal for making credible commitments to AIs.” by Cleo Nardo 5:19

1
“X explains Z% of the variance in Y” by Leon Lang 18:52

1
“A case for courage, when speaking of AI danger” by So8res 10:12

1
240 – How To Live Well With High P(Doom) – with Ben Pace, Brandon Hendrickson, Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg 58:23

1
“My pitch for the AI Village” by Daniel Kokotajlo 13:27

1
“Foom & Doom 1: ‘Brain in a box in a basement’” by Steven Byrnes 58:46

1
“Futarchy’s fundamental flaw” by dynomight 15:28

1
“Do Not Tile the Lightcone with Your Confused Ontology” by Jan_Kulveit 11:28

1
“Endometriosis is an incredibly interesting disease” by Abhishaike Mahajan 35:13

1
“Estrogen: A trip report” by cube_flipper 50:49

1
“New Endorsements for ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’” by Malo 8:55

1
[Linkpost] “the void” by nostalgebraist 1:14

1
“Mech interp is not pre-paradigmatic” by Lee Sharkey 29:33