LessWrong posts by zvi

Nick Cammarata of Goodfire makes a bold claim: Neural Networks are Already Clean. This was his follow up after various resulting online discussions.

This is clearly good work that tells us new and important things. The question is, how big an update is this, how much progress does it represent and what is the outlook going forward?

The reactions here range from the super optimistic takes of ‘this means mechanistic interpretability is solvable,’ or even ‘all but solved,’ with comparisons to the famous paper Attention is All You Need.
Dean W. Ball (OpenAI): There is so much to say about this, and I will, but WOW, congratulations to Nick and Goodfire. This may be one of the most important single days in deep learning history, and perhaps much more than that.

No matter what, this is a victory for the dogged pursuit of understanding.

roon (OpenAI): when nick told me that he had some interp breakthroughs, he was uh, underselling it. i think this may be remembered as a major moment in scientific history. news so good even Eliezer will have to lower his pdoom. we can start making alignment into a ‘normal science’
This paper is solid and meaningful [...] ---
Outline:
(02:46) Good Smoke, Potential Fire
(04:01) One Neuron, One Central Concept
(06:40) I Can See Everything
(08:55) What a Concept
(13:51) The More You Know
(15:54) Attention Is Still What You Need
(18:15) Occam's Razor
(19:53) The Neurons Sometimes Share Clear Themes
(20:29) Hype
(28:39) Anti-Hype
(30:56) Theme and Variations
(37:15) Is This How Minds Work?
(39:15) But We Can Open The Box, Said Toad
(46:55) That Was Not the Hard Problem
(49:31) More Skepticism
(54:34) That's All There Is, There Ain't No More
(57:47) The Default Outcome of Mech Interp is Goodhart's Law
(01:00:37) Interpretability is Dual Use
(01:01:52) Now The Work Can Begin
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First published:

October 19th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/w2tBHwNERDoSawznx/i-can-see-everything

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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There is a newly leaked bill that Anthropic is purportedly shopping around is (if you assume its bugs get fixed).

It is similar to the FRONTIER Act, with stronger preemption of state laws, stronger transparency provisions and weaker enforcement provisions.

Having slept on this, I find it unacceptable that Anthropic is actively shopping exactly the type of bill I have warned we will need to fight against during the lame duck session. They are trying to use this last time with a Republican Congress to pass preemption of exactly the important state laws, and get some transparency but not much enforcement in exchange.

This reads as intentional, that Anthropic is more afraid that the government might enforce rules against Anthropic, than they are worried about the ability of the government to enforce rules against everyone. Anthropic's policy team seems to have, chosen protecting their business interests and guarding against their political risk, at the expense of safety considerations.

There was no need for the company purportedly existing to promote safety to propose a bill that is not even actively stronger than the FRONTIER Act, when the FRONTIER Act was a compromise bill proposed back in [...]
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Outline:
(02:05) Others RTFB (Read the Bill)
(07:41) Why Would Anthropic Do This?
(13:07) Not Everything Here Is Bad But Oh Boy
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First published:

October 17th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NW4b7m6798byAndeB/leaked-anthropic-draft-ai-regulatory-bill-is-unacceptable

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AI might not yet be eating the physical world. AI is still eating the world of news, and I am finding less and less opportunity to post about other things. My backlog of items grows across most of my secondary topics and I haven’t had time for any side projects.

The monthly, no matter what, is sacred. We continue.

Table of Contents


Home Alone.

The Men Have Never Been Okay.

Antisocial Media.

While I Cannot Condone This.

Zero Marginal Product.

Good News, Everyone.

100 Good Television Shows.

For Your Entertainment.

Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game.

I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars.

Sports Go Sports.

Government Working.

Jones Act Watch.

Variously Effective Altruism.

Walk Away.

The Lighter Side.

Home Alone

The story of our time, told once again: Americans are abandoning quite a lot of formerly popular activities, especially hosting at home, as Derek Thompson discussed. Phones and other electronics are in, most things that are not phones are out, with notably rare exceptions.

That last line rules everything around us. And we all [...]
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Outline:
(00:35) Home Alone
(04:51) The Men Have Never Been Okay
(08:27) Antisocial Media
(09:39) While I Cannot Condone This
(12:26) Zero Marginal Product
(14:22) Good News, Everyone
(16:01) 100. Good Television Shows
(20:23) For Your Entertainment
(23:06) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game
(23:57) I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars
(27:32) Sports Go Sports
(28:47) Government Working
(31:22) Jones Act Watch
(31:54) Variously Effective Altruism
(41:35) Walk Away
(46:32) The Lighter Side
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First published:

October 16th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aLjkbY3KMajc5zemE/monthly-roundup-47-october-2026

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The amount of code being written at Anthropic continues to rise exponentially. It is being managed by Scion, their internal replacement for GitHub that is better suited to the scale and style of the operation, which they created with a small team in five months.

This week also saw the release of two supposed frontier model models.

Google has finally given us Gemini 4 Argon, along with a robust safety report. We do not yet know if Argon lives up to its benchmarks or internal hype. I plan to write up the safety report next week, time permitting. If and only if it is good enough or discussed enough we will also have a full report on capabilities.

Meta gave us Muse Wonder, which like Argon has some excellent benchmarks, although they were presented in a way that looked rather sus. There are some reports that it is very good, but again it is too early to know. I will issue a full report if and only if Muse Wonder has capabilities or discussion that seem worthy.

To help me decide and to let people have fun, I have markets on whether I will issue [...]
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Outline:
(02:24) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(07:10) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility
(09:41) Huh, Upgrades
(12:10) On Your Marks
(13:42) Choose Your Fighter
(14:08) Get My Agent On The Line
(16:13) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(22:07) Cyber Lack of Security
(27:09) Spy Versus Spy
(29:27) The Internet of AI Things
(31:19) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
(31:55) They Took Our Jobs
(37:43) Introducing
(37:54) In Other AI News
(43:15) Massive Fraudulent Distillation
(45:00) Show Me the Money
(47:33) Quiet Speculations
(50:14) Quickly, There's No Time
(55:13) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(01:02:07) Chip City
(01:03:48) The Week in Audio
(01:04:56) People Just Say Things
(01:11:32) The Virtue of Silence
(01:12:30) Rhetorical Innovation
(01:14:47) [Artificial Intelligence]
(01:16:26) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(01:21:45) Backdoor Man
(01:23:34) Cooperative Alignment
(01:25:16) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:28:06) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:33:09) The Lighter Side
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First published:

October 15th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z4guBXZeymkgvd75S/ai-190-scion-of-the-times

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We need the frontier labs to have a deep and robust safety culture.

Alas, this is not the case.

Anthropic devotes considerable effort to cultivating and maintaining such a culture. It shows, especially among the members of technical staff. Having conversations with them can be a very different experience than talking to those at other labs, and there is a much greater sense of understanding and responsibility. But even there, the appreciation of the problems and their difficulties seem woefully insufficient. We see various symptoms of that more and more.

Recently, while I’ve had some good interactions, I’ve also had interactions that make clear that much of Anthropic does not share that same safety culture, with a lot of ‘oh we will muddle through because we are better at operational excellence unlike those other idiots’ and a belief that all the problems are prosaic. Culture is hard.

Then there are OpenAI's cultural problems, which clearly run deeper. That point was only driven further home this week, with David Robinson resigning to blow the whistle, and OpenAI feeling forced to fire three of its safety researchers, on top of many past problems and incidents.

That [...]
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Outline:
(02:05) David Robinson Blows the Whistle
(10:05) The Preference Cascade Continues
(18:05) Perhaps It Is Time To Quit
(18:37) The Lab Strategy of Prosaic Safety is Insufficient
(22:11) Misaligned! (At Anthropic)
(33:22) Misaligned! (At OpenAI)
(38:52) Hugging the Face
(39:13) You're Fired
(40:26) They Are Not Ready To Make a Commitment
(42:10) Words of Warning
(43:24) Conclusions Not to Jump To
(44:00) The Lighter Side
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First published:

October 14th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Azqs8XD75k4F9f7ua/the-safety-culture-at-the-labs-is-broken

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