Best j. the curator Podcasts (2025)

1
“Will Any Old Crap Cause Emergent Misalignment?” by J Bostock 8:39

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5d ago8:39

8:39

The following work was done independently by me in an afternoon and basically entirely vibe-coded with Claude. Code and instructions to reproduce can be found here. Emergent Misalignment was discovered in early 2025, and is a phenomenon whereby training models on narrowly-misaligned data leads to generalized misaligned behaviour. Betley et. al. (20…

1
“AI Induced Psychosis: A shallow investigation” by Tim Hua 56:46

6d ago56:46

56:46

“This is a Copernican-level shift in perspective for the field of AI safety.” - Gemini 2.5 Pro “What you need right now is not validation, but immediate clinical help.” - Kimi K2 Two Minute Summary There have been numerous media reports of AI-driven psychosis, where AIs validate users’ grandiose delusions and tell users to ignore their friends’ and…

1
“Before LLM Psychosis, There Was Yes-Man Psychosis” by johnswentworth 5:26

6d ago5:26

5:26

A studio executive has no beliefs That's the way of a studio system We've bowed to every rear of all the studio chiefs And you can bet your ass we've kissed 'em Even the birds in the Hollywood hills Know the secret to our success It's those magical words that pay the bills Yes, yes, yes, and yes! “Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking”, from SMASH S…

1
Episode 205 - The King of Comedy + 8 more 3:42:35

7d ago3:42:35

3:42:35

This week on The Stacks, in part one (0:00-1:29:46), we discuss the highly influential Martin Scorsese 1982 satire of fame and celebrity, King of Comedy, in addition to "Shapes" - the 19th episode of season 1 of X-Files. In part two (1:29:47-2:43:13) we talk in shorter format about eight(ish) additional features - we conclude our discussion (starte…

1
The Conversion Factor: How to Turn Inquiries into Bookings with Elizabeth Sheils - Ep. 182 44:54

7d ago44:54

44:54

I’m chatting with Elizabeth Sheils from Rock Paper Coin about the conversion factor: how to turn inquiries into bookings. Elizabeth shares how we should be streamlining our inquiry process from the beginning and walks us through her sales process that has a 62% conversion rate! A little bit about Elizabeth, she is an award-winning planner and manag…

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271 Feminist Ritual, Asian Art, and Curating Beyond the Western Gaze | Ann Shi (a poco art collective) 1:04:49

7d ago1:04:49

1:04:49

This week on What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza is joined by Ann Shi, a nomadic curator and founder of a poco art collective, whose deeply intuitive curatorial practice bridges Chinese literati aesthetics, feminist mysticism, and contemporary Asian diasporic identity. With roots in China, academic training in Oxford and at Sotheby’s Institute o…

1
“Training a Reward Hacker Despite Perfect Labels” by ariana_azarbal, vgillioz, TurnTrout 13:19

8d ago13:19

13:19

Summary: Perfectly labeled outcomes in training can still boost reward hacking tendencies in generalization. This can hold even when the train/test sets are drawn from the exact same distribution. We induce this surprising effect via a form of context distillation, which we call re-contextualization: Generate model completions with a hack-encouragi…

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“Banning Said Achmiz (and broader thoughts on moderation)” by habryka 51:47

10d ago51:47

51:47

It's been roughly 7 years since the LessWrong user-base voted on whether it's time to close down shop and become an archive, or to move towards the LessWrong 2.0 platform, with me as head-admin. For roughly equally long have I spent around one hundred hours almost every year trying to get Said Achmiz to understand and learn how to become a good Les…

1
“Underdog bias rules everything around me” by Richard_Ngo 13:26

11d ago13:26

13:26

People very often underrate how much power they (and their allies) have, and overrate how much power their enemies have. I call this “underdog bias”, and I think it's the most important cognitive bias for understanding modern society. I’ll start by describing a closely-related phenomenon. The hostile media effect is a well-known bias whereby people…

1
“Epistemic advantages of working as a moderate” by Buck 5:59

11d ago5:59

5:59

Many people who are concerned about existential risk from AI spend their time advocating for radical changes to how AI is handled. Most notably, they advocate for costly restrictions on how AI is developed now and in the future, e.g. the Pause AI people or the MIRI people. In contrast, I spend most of my time thinking about relatively cheap interve…

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“Four ways Econ makes people dumber re: future AI” by Steven Byrnes 14:01

12d ago14:01

14:01

(Cross-posted from X, intended for a general audience.) There's a funny thing where economics education paradoxically makes people DUMBER at thinking about future AI. Econ textbooks teach concepts & frames that are great for most things, but counterproductive for thinking about AGI. Here are 4 examples. Longpost: THE FIRST PIECE of Econ anti-pedago…

1
34: The Greatest Art Heist That Never Was ➫ Maria Lani: The Woman With Fifty Faces ➫ w/ Jonathan Lackman & Zachary J Pinson 52:06

12d ago52:06

52:06

Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/gK2OcbuE7Oo When the dazzling German actress Maria Lani arrived in Paris in the late 1920s, her presence set the art world abuzz. She quickly recruited over fifty artists—including Pierre Bonnard, Jean Cocteau, Marc Chagall, André Derain, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso (he said no), Man Ray, Georges-Henr…

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“Should you make stone tools?” by Alex_Altair 6:02

12d ago6:02

6:02

Knowing how evolution works gives you an enormously powerful tool to understand the living world around you and how it came to be that way. (Though it's notoriously hard to use this tool correctly, to the point that I think people mostly shouldn't try it use it when making substantial decisions.) The simple heuristic is "other people died because t…

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“My AGI timeline updates from GPT-5 (and 2025 so far)” by ryan_greenblatt 7:26

12d ago7:26

7:26

As I discussed in a prior post, I felt like there were some reasonably compelling arguments for expecting very fast AI progress in 2025 (especially on easily verified programming tasks). Concretely, this might have looked like reaching 8 hour 50% reliability horizon lengths on METR's task suite[1] by now due to greatly scaling up RL and getting lar…

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“Hyperbolic model fits METR capabilities estimate worse than exponential model” by gjm 8:16

14d ago8:16

8:16

This is a response to https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mXa66dPR8hmHgndP5/hyperbolic-trend-with-upcoming-singularity-fits-metr which claims that a hyperbolic model, complete with an actual singularity in the near future, is a better fit for the METR time-horizon data than a simple exponential model. I think that post has a serious error in it and its…

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Episode 204 - Yakuza Papers Vol.4: Police Tactics + 9 more 3:34:49

14d ago3:34:49

3:34:49

This week on The Stacks, in part one (0:00-1:15:47), we discuss the fourth volume of Kinji Fukasaku's epic crime series Yakuza Papers / Battles Without Honor and Humanity, with 1974's Police Tactics, as well as "Miracle Man" - the 18th episode of season 1 of X-Files. In part two (1:15:48-2:43:11) we talk in shorter format about nine-ish additional …

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270 Filipino-American Artist Kim Garcia on Dementia, Diaspora, and Art as Emotional Archive 1:06:23

14d ago1:06:23

1:06:23

In this resonant episode of What’s My Thesis?, artist and educator Kim Garcia joins host Javier Proenza for a layered conversation about memory, community, and the personal and political frameworks that shape diasporic identity. Garcia, whose practice spans sculpture, drawing, and community-based collaboration, reflects on her evolving relationship…

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“My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Lighthaven” by Zack_M_Davis 10:06

15d ago10:06

10:06

On 12 August 2025, I sat down with New York Times reporter Cade Metz to discuss some criticisms of his 4 August 2025 article, "The Rise of Silicon Valley's Techno-Religion". The transcript below has been edited for clarity. ZMD: In accordance with our meetings being on the record in both directions, I have some more questions for you. I did not rea…

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“Church Planting: When Venture Capital Finds Jesus” by Elizabeth 31:18

15d ago31:18

31:18

I’m going to describe a Type Of Guy starting a business, and you’re going to guess the business: The founder is very young, often under 25. He might work alone or with a founding team, but when he tells the story of the founding it will always have him at the center. He has no credentials for this business. This business has a grand vision, which h…

1
“Somebody invented a better bookmark” by Alex_Altair 3:35

17d ago3:35

3:35

This will only be exciting to those of us who still read physical paper books. But like. Guys. They did it. They invented the perfect bookmark. Classic paper bookmarks fall out easily. You have to put them somewhere while you read the book. And they only tell you that you left off reading somewhere in that particular two-page spread. Enter the Book…

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Guest hosts theatre students Alayna & Zoe 43:00

19d ago43:00

43:00

Guest hosts theatre students Alayna & Zoe Majoring in theatre: Anticipation, connection and the breath before the curtain rises What does the moment right before a show begins feel like? In this episode of Seeing Senses, Sarah hands the mic to two guest hosts: University of Georgia theatre majors Alayna Young and Zoe Davidson. Together, they explor…

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Episode 203 - Vertigo + 8 more 3:33:43

21d ago3:33:43

3:33:43

This week on The Stacks, in part one (0:00-1:25:15), we discuss Alfred Hitchcock's influential 1958 psychosexual masterpiece Vertigo, as well as "E.B.E." - the 17th episode of season 1 of X-Files, introducing The Lone Gunmen! In part two (1:25:15-2:41:26) we talk in shorter format about 8 additional features - the 2022 MCU TV series Ms. Marvel, Dea…

1
The Futurists: Adam Pendleton and Yana Peel 30:23

21d ago30:23

30:23

How will the future of technology take shape in art? Artist Adam Pendleton has an unexpected view in this episode of CHANEL Connects. In the drawing room of La Pausa, he connects with Yana Peel, President of Arts, Culture & Heritage at CHANEL. They reflect on Pendleton’s exhibitions—including his recent show at the Hirshhorn and the acquisition of …

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“How Does A Blind Model See The Earth?” by henry 20:39

21d ago20:39

20:39

Sometimes I'm saddened remembering that we've viewed the Earth from space. We can see it all with certainty: there's no northwest passage to search for, no infinite Siberian expanse, and no great uncharted void below the Cape of Good Hope. But, of all these things, I most mourn the loss of incomplete maps. In the earliest renditions of the world, y…

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269 Paper, Process, and the Alchemy of Grief with Lauren Goldenberg Longoria 1:11:16

21d ago1:11:16

1:11:16

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza is joined by artist Lauren Goldenberg Longoria for a conversation that traverses personal memory, studio practice, and the tender labor of transformation. Known for her materially rich works that fuse paper, performance, and poetic intuition, Goldenberg Longoria speaks candidly about the hea…

1
“Re: Recent Anthropic Safety Research” by Eliezer Yudkowsky 9:00

21d ago9:00

9:00

A reporter asked me for my off-the-record take on recent safety research from Anthropic. After I drafted an off-the-record reply, I realized that I was actually fine with it being on the record, so: Since I never expected any of the current alignment technology to work in the limit of superintelligence, the only news to me is about when and how ear…

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“How anticipatory cover-ups go wrong” by Kaj_Sotala 10:43

24d ago10:43

10:43

1. Back when COVID vaccines were still a recent thing, I witnessed a debate that looked like something like the following was happening: Some official institution had collected information about the efficacy and reported side-effects of COVID vaccines. They felt that, correctly interpreted, this information was compatible with vaccines being broadl…

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“SB-1047 Documentary: The Post-Mortem” by Michaël Trazzi 9:42

25d ago9:42

9:42

Below some meta-level / operational / fundraising thoughts around producing the SB-1047 Documentary I've just posted on Manifund (see previous Lesswrong / EAF posts on AI Governance lessons learned). The SB-1047 Documentary took 27 weeks and $157k instead of my planned 6 weeks and $55k. Here's what I learned about documentary production Total fundi…

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“METR’s Evaluation of GPT-5” by GradientDissenter 48:28

25d ago48:28

48:28

METR (where I work, though I'm cross-posting in a personal capacity) evaluated GPT-5 before it was externally deployed. We performed a much more comprehensive safety analysis than we ever have before; it feels like pre-deployment evals are getting more mature. This is the first time METR has produced something we've felt comfortable calling an "eva…

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Seeing sound and hearing fonts with LJ Rich 51:38

26d ago51:38

51:38

Seeing sound and hearing fonts with LJ Rich Mixing senses: Synaesthesia, AI and the unexpected music of fonts Do you hear fonts? Can you taste music? In this episode of Seeing Senses, BBC technology presenter and world renowned AI music artist LJ Rich joins Sarah for a joyfully curious journey through sound, senses and unexpected connections. From …

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“Emotions Make Sense” by DaystarEld 36:21

27d ago36:21

36:21

For the past five years I've been teaching a class at various rationality camps, workshops, conferences, etc. I’ve done it maybe 50 times in total, and I think I’ve only encountered a handful out of a few hundred teenagers and adults who really had a deep sense of what it means for emotions to “make sense.” Even people who have seen Inside Out, and…

J. The Curator Podcasts