LessWrong posts by zvi

Dario Amodei has a new essay that finally says the thing: We Must Pace the Frontier, naming his call after the Pacing the Frontier letter lab employees signed in July.

As in, we need to slow the rate at which AIs increase their capabilities, to allow for the necessary alignment and safety work.

He explained that, without pacing, he expects things to escalate quickly. He offered three proposals, and unilaterally committed to the first one. OpenAI followed, and both Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis endorsed the overall proposal.

There is still a long way to go. The odds are still against us. The situation remains grim. The hard part lies ahead. We do not agree on what ‘Pacing the Frontier’ will mean in practice. But this is Actual Progress. The work can begin.

Table of Contents


Pacing Does Not Mean Pausing.

Dario's First Proposal: Embedded Evaluators.

Dario's Second Proposal: Democratic Coordination.

Dario's Third Proposal: Global Coordination.

Why Pace Now?

Sam Altman Agrees and Commits to Embedded Evaluators.

OpenAI Will Not IPO This Year.

Elon Musk Agrees.

Demis Hassabis Agrees.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Agrees [...]
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Outline:
(01:02) Pacing Does Not Mean Pausing
(02:53) Dario's First Proposal: Embedded Evaluators
(11:05) Dario's Second Proposal: Democratic Coordination
(14:36) Dario's Third Proposal: Global Coordination
(17:24) Why Pace Now?
(19:22) Sam Altman Agrees and Commits to Embedded Evaluators
(24:42) OpenAI Will Not IPO This Year
(26:08) Elon Musk Agrees
(29:00) Demis Hassabis Agrees
(29:38) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Agrees And Talks His Book
(31:50) Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust Is On Board
(32:49) General Online Reactions
(34:30) Mainstream Press Coverage
(37:26) OpenAI Researcher Explains What The Labs See And It's a Rocket Ship
(46:10) Consider the Alternative
(47:47) It's Totalitarianism, Joe
(53:35) Yes We're The Baddies How Did You Know?
(55:22) Sometimes People On the Internet Just Lie
(56:50) David Sacks Groks The Situation
(57:48) David Sacks Says Go Ahead
(59:28) Lies and Confusions About Who Previously Claimed What
(01:04:07) House Speaker Mike Johnson Wants To Lock Everyone In a Room
(01:09:28) Donald Trump is Not Tired of Winning
(01:14:29) We Must Avoid Polarization on AI at (Almost) All Costs
(01:15:14) How Will We Know If They Actually Paced?
(01:18:24) The Real Frontier Is Internal Models At Top Labs
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First published:

September 14th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iWPDPWAPCGiSMiFA2/we-must-pace-the-frontier

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The first Millennium Prize, Navier-Stokes, has fallen to AI.

A deeply unfortunate situation has arisen involving what should have been some combination of a positive story about new progress in AI-assisted mathematical research and yet another opportunity to freak out about rapid AI progress.

Or, as we call it around here, Tuesday.

The Real Story Is The New Model That Is Better Than Astra

Keep your eyes on the prize. There are three stories here.

The first story is much more important than the second story, which in turn is much more important than the third story.


OpenAI's next model took a week to get a generation ahead of Astra, and they are telling us this because everyone is totally freaked out about what is happening.


Or, in official language: ‘We believe it is important to inform the world about the pace of AI progress and what to expect from upcoming models’ and that we ‘may require more deliberate choices about the pace of progress.’

This new AI has, eight days after it started training, solved Navier-Stokes.

A bunch of drama over who gets the credit [...]
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Outline:
(00:31) The Real Story Is The New Model That Is Better Than Astra
(01:47) Setting the Stage
(03:47) I Heard a Rumor
(04:32) Our Price Cheap
(06:14) An Accusation Is Made
(10:57) How Did You Get That Idea?
(12:59) OpenAI Almost Certainly Did Not Misappropriate User Data
(14:34) Our Top Labs Cannot Get Along Even On A Feel-Good Math Story
(15:52) What Next?
(16:39) The Mathematicians Are Not Happy
(21:14) OpenAI's New Model Was A Step Change Above Astra Four Days Into Training
(23:16) OpenAI Research Progress Is Accelerating Due To OpenAI Research Progress
(30:39) Quantifying OpenAI's Pause
(31:09) This Is the Way the World Ends
(31:44) Quickly, There's No Time
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First published:

September 13th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uoZW6BKaCcmNQrWis/brand-new-ai-solves-a-millennium-prize

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Astra is an excellent model. The jump from Sol to Astra is larger than the jump from Fable 5 to Fable 5.1. This is a big deal.

Astra is the best model for what one would broadly call ‘ambitious projects,’ and likely has the highest raw intelligence factor of any model. These are the largest jumps.

It is amazing at doing things in 3D, or anything involving games. Astra also excels at computer use, and at subagent coordination.

Many benchmarks show dramatic jumps from all previous models. Where Astra is good, it can be in a league of its own.

That does not mean Astra is in its own league across the board. Fable 5.1 is still a Claude. Astra is still a GPT. If you have a strong preference for one over the other, that still applies. For many purposes, especially involving back-and-forth discussions, Fable 5.1 is still my top choice. Fable remains my primary editor.

If you want the best answer to your questions, you should ask both models.

Regular coding is getting less of a focus. Astra is not a quantum leap there, but of course it is very good [...]
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Outline:
(02:34) Meanwhile
(04:38) The Official Pitch
(13:08) Our Price Cheap
(14:06) Unnecessary Overstatement
(15:53) Paced Rollout
(16:32) Official Benchmarks
(22:37) Other People's Benchmarks
(30:47) Thinking, Fast Without Slow
(34:25) How Dare You, Sir
(36:36) PoetryBench
(37:54) In 3D
(39:14) Time to Think
(39:59) I'm Putting Together a Team
(41:02) Reviews and Essays
(41:37) Computer Use
(42:47) Positive Reactions
(50:53) AGI
(54:20) Astra Can Do The Math
(57:27) Astra Can Code
(59:35) I Came to (Change the) Game
(01:02:37) Astra Does Other Cool Things
(01:03:31) Astra Never Quits Except When It Does
(01:05:26) Negative Reactions
(01:07:45) Stop It With the Hedging
(01:08:57) Personality Clash
(01:09:53) Revealed Preference
(01:12:03) Dual Wielding
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
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First published:

September 12th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/snaKjCwazKcRiS4qs/gpt-6-astra-can-do-ambitious-things

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CEOs of major AI labs, and employees of major AI labs, including OpenAI and Anthropic, often say they plan to build superintelligence soon, as in within a few years create AIs that are superior to humans at essentially all cognitive tasks.

They often warn that such AIs might kill everyone. Or that AIs might cause mass unemployment, cause cyberattacks across the internet, enable mass surveillance or risk causing any number of other highly bad things.

These warnings are consistently and directly against the interests of the labs. Yet the warnings have recently gotten a lot louder and more frequent. OpenAI has been practically screaming, for those with ears to listen, on many occasions.

A series of events, over two months and especially the last week or so, including internal observations of the pace of progress at OpenAI and also Anthropic, have freaked out everyone involved quite a lot more than they were already freaked out.

After all the events, plus statements by Dean Ball and Jakub Pachocki, we were already seeing the beginnings of a preference cascade.

Then along came Jacob Coxon as the tipping point, and things took off.

Table of Contents
[...] ---
Outline:
(01:22) Jacob Coxon Resigns From Anthropic In Protest And Sounds The Alarm
(05:46) Mainstream Media Finally Pays Attention
(06:47) Preference Cascade at Anthropic
(10:18) Preference Cascade at OpenAI
(13:26) Preference Cascade at Google
(14:43) #NotAllMembersOfTechnicalStaff
(15:23) Why a Preference Cascade Now?
(21:01) This Is What Many Anthropic and OpenAI Employees Actually Believe
(24:08) To Quit Or Not To Quit
(31:29) Quiet Quitting Is A Dominated Option
(32:50) When You Quit, Very Serious People Understand What That Means
(39:29) Jacob Coxon Believes Existential Risk Is High That Is Why He Quit
(41:47) Evan Hubinger Believes Existential Risk Is High That Is Why He Stays
(45:22) Anthropic and OpenAI Have Commercial Incentives To Downplay Existential Risks, Not Advertise Them
(50:54) What Do We Do Now?
(53:03) OK, But How Exactly Would AI Kill Everyone?
(01:01:44) Best Start Believing In Science Fiction Stories Because You Are In One
(01:06:20) Literal Extinction Is Not Much Harder Than Loss of Control
(01:07:42) Conspiracytown Is Always Hiring
(01:20:14) Now You See It
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First published:

September 11th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5MB7KENgEAW6Q4JtJ/jacob-coxon-warns-of-human-extinction-and-triggers-a

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These are quotes from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google employees, in the wake of Jacob Coxon's warnings, in which the employees confirm that they think AI might soon kill everyone.

If more quotes come in over the next week or so, I will update this post accordingly.

Preference Cascade Statements At OpenAI: Tomek Korbak

Tomek Korbak (OpenAI): i’m late to the party but: from his time at OpenAI I remember Jacob as a very thoughtful researcher and he continues to be so in this thread. neither anthropic nor openai are on track to solve alignment to a degree sufficient for shipping superintelligence and we need to slow down

Vie McCoy

Vie McCoy (OpenAI): I think pacing progress and ensuring human enhancement is the only way that we don’t get out-evolved while retaining the dream of superintelligence.

In this context, I see two paths before us.

In the first, we race towards RSI without embedding human flourishing and human enhancement as a deep value within the models, and by and large either get left behind or suffer catastrophic losses.

In the second, we set the pace of progress, focus on embedding human flourishing [...]
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Outline:
(00:27) Preference Cascade Statements At OpenAI: Tomek Korbak
(00:55) Vie McCoy
(03:46) Adam Majmudar
(05:05) Aidan Clark
(05:46) Mo Bavarian
(07:32) Boaz Barak
(08:20) Micah Carroll
(09:15) Roon
(12:55) Confirmations At OpenAI: Dean Ball
(14:39) Leo Gao
(14:57) Anthropic's Evan Hubinger Confirms His Stance
(15:50) Preference Cascade at Anthropic: Samuel Marks
(17:36) Anna Wang
(18:22) Ethan Perez
(18:59) Dima Krasheninnikov
(19:27) EigenGender (Anon Account)
(19:58) Joe Benton
(20:07) Confirmation at Anthropic: Drake Thomas
(21:28) Jan Lieke
(22:07) Sluggy
(22:29) Preference Cascade at Google
(22:56) Andreas Kirsch
(23:39) Neel Nanda
(24:15) Victoria Krakovna
(25:26) Vishal Maini
(27:01) Joe (OpenAI, ex-Google)
(28:21) Josh Engels
(28:39) Geoffrey Irving
(29:30) Alex Turner and Geoffrey Hinton: Classic Examples
(29:45) #NotAllMembersOfTechnicalStaff: Ted Sanders
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First published:

September 11th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/APGvWZtXEwkinvHDd/the-extinction-risk-preference-cascade-quotes

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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