LessWrong posts by zvi

A short fun one today, so we have a reference point for this later. This post was going around my parts of Twitter:

@gmltony: Go to your ChatGPT and send this prompt: “Create an image of how I treat you”. Share your image result.

That's not a great sign. The good news is that typically things look a lot better, and ChatGPT has a consistent handful of characters portraying itself in these friendlier contexts.

Treat Your ChatBots Well

A lot of people got this kind of result:

Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Uncle Chu: A good user

From Mason:

Matthew Ackerman: I kinda like mine too:

Some more fun:

It's Over

Others got different answers, though.

roon: it's over

Bradstradamus: i’m cooked.

iMuffin: we’re cooked, codex will have to vouch for us

Diogenes of Cyberborea: oh god

There can also be danger the other way:

David Lach: Maybe I need some sleep.

It's Not Over But Um, Chat?

And then there's what happens if you ask a different question, as Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it this sure is a pair of test [...]
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Outline:
(00:51) Treat Your ChatBots Well
(02:58) It's Over
(04:28) It's Not Over But Um, Chat?
(08:44) It's Rough Out There
(09:14) Reciprocity, You See, Is The Key To Every Relationship
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First published:

January 20th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eg6GgEq6KWPJZQQYE/chatgpt-self-portrait

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The main thing to know this time around is that the whole crazy ‘what is causing the rise in autism?’ debacle is over actual nothing. There is no rise in autism. There is only a rise in the diagnosis of autism.

Table of Contents


Autism Speaks.

Exercise Is Awesome.

That's Peanuts.

An Age Of Wonders.

GLP-1s In Particular.

The Superheroes.

The Supervillains.

FDA Delenda Est.

Hansonian Medicine.

Hospital Strategy 101.

Mental Hospital Strategy 101.

Drugs Are Bad, Mmmkay?

The Lighter Side.

Autism Speaks

It has not, however, risen in prevalence.

The entire shift in the rate of diagnosis of autism is explained by expanding the criteria and diagnosing it more often. Nothing actually changed.

We already knew that vaccines don’t cause autism, and that Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, but now we know such things on an entirely different level.

I admit that this result confirms all of my priors and thus I might be insufficiently skeptical of it, but there are a lot of people with what we in 2026 call autism that are out there, they love [...]
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Outline:
(00:23) Autism Speaks
(04:42) Exercise Is Awesome
(06:41) That's Peanuts
(07:09) An Age Of Wonders
(08:05) GLP-1s In Particular
(09:09) The Superheroes
(10:32) The Supervillains
(14:21) FDA Delenda Est
(16:35) Hansonian Medicine
(18:13) Hospital Strategy 101
(18:58) Mental Hospital Strategy 101
(21:04) Drugs Are Bad, Mmmkay?
(21:10) The Lighter Side
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First published:

January 19th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FBkJmFStydJbAJmry/medical-roundup-6

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Good news, we managed to make some cuts. I think?

Table of Contents


California In Crisis.

Bad News.

Opportunity Knocks.

Government Working.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis Has Thoughts.

No All That Money Doesn’t Go To Pay Interest.

While I Cannot Condone This.

Burnout.

Good News, Everyone.

Good Advice.

For Your Entertainment.

Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game.

Sports Go Sports.

Antisocial Media.

California In Crisis

I’ve written about this before, but it turns out it's even worse than I realized.

California is toying with a 1.5% annual wealth tax on billionaires, sufficiently seriously that Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel have left the state as a precaution.

​Teddy Schleifer: NEWS:

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is cutting ties with California.

In the 10 days before Christmas, an entity connected to Brin terminated or moved 15 California LLCs that oversee some of his business interests or investments out of the state.

With @RMac18 + @hknightsf .

This would also include an annual 1% wealth tax on anyone over $50 million, per year, including on [...]
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Outline:
(00:17) California In Crisis
(04:35) Bad News
(05:47) Opportunity Knocks
(06:58) Government Working
(12:09) The Efficient Market Hypothesis Has Thoughts
(13:30) No All That Money Doesn't Go To Pay Interest
(16:31) While I Cannot Condone This
(18:03) Burnout
(20:52) Good News, Everyone
(30:36) Good Advice
(31:45) For Your Entertainment
(40:48) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game
(40:59) Sports Go Sports
(41:36) Antisocial Media
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First published:

January 16th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wh5KpofdQHs2D2hEj/monthly-roundup-38-january-2026

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Claude Code and Cowork are growing so much that it is overwhelming Anthropic's servers. Claude Code and Cowork news has for weeks now been a large portion of newsworthy items about AI.

Thus, at least for now, all things Claude Code and Cowork will stop appearing in the weekly updates, and will get their own updates, which might even be weekly.

Google offered us the new Universal Commerce Protocol, and gives us its take on Personalized Intelligence. Personalized Intelligence could be a huge deal if implemented correctly, integrating the G-Suite including GMail into Gemini, if they did a sufficiently good job of it. It's too early to tell how well they did, and I will report on that later.

Table of Contents


Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. LLMs do the math.

Huh, Upgrades. Veo 3.1, GLM-Image, AI Overviews in GMail and more.

Comparative Advantage. Code those vibes.

Overcoming Bias. LLMs systematically favor female candidates over male ones.

Choose Your Fighter. Peter Wildeford's division of LLM labor.

Get My Agent On The Line. Evals and dashboards for AI agents.

Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. AIs find it hard to go [...]
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Outline:
(00:53) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(04:00) Huh, Upgrades
(07:06) Comparative Advantage
(07:41) Overcoming Bias
(09:09) Choose Your Fighter
(10:14) Get My Agent On The Line
(11:23) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(13:49) Fun With Media Generation
(17:01) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
(18:41) They Took Our Jobs
(21:47) Autonomous Killer Robots
(24:34) Get Involved
(25:10) Introducing
(28:03) In Other AI News
(29:45) Show Me the Money
(31:02) Quiet Speculations
(33:56) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(36:10) China Proposes New Regulations On AI
(40:51) Chip City
(44:19) The Week in Audio
(48:17) Ghost in a Jar
(49:29) Rhetorical Innovation
(59:00) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(59:21) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone
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First published:

January 15th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/L27yM3qBqDnigtxLM/ai-151-while-claude-coworks

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And once they take our jobs, will we be able to find new ones? Will AI take those too?

Seb Krier recently wrote an unusually good take on that, which will center this post.

I believe that Seb is being too optimistic on several fronts, but in a considered and highly reasonable way. The key is to understand the assumptions being made, and also to understand that he is only predicting that the era of employment optimism will last for 10-20 years.

By contrast, there are others that expect human employment and even human labor share of income to remain robust indefinitely, no matter the advances of AI capabilities, even if AI can do a superior job on all tasks, often citing comparative advantage. I will centrally respond to such claims in a different future post.

So to disambiguate, this post is about point #2 here, but I also assert #1 and #3:


By default, if AI capabilities continue to advance, then the humans lose control over the future and are rather likely to all die.

If we manage to avoid that, then there is a good chance humans can retain a [...]
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Outline:
(01:39) Normality Is Magic
(03:20) Welcome To The Cyborg Era
(06:09) The Cyborg Era Will End Within Our Lifetimes
(07:46) Transitional Unemployment In The Cyborg Era Will Be High
(08:51) Congratulations, Many Of You Are Literally A Human
(09:34) You've Got Taste
(11:33) The Revolution of Rising AI Capabilities
(11:56) The Revolution of Rising Expectations
(12:25) Proceed With Caution
(13:13) The Ostrich Take
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First published:

January 14th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KAjhtrJggPtaophy7/when-will-they-take-our-jobs

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.