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Rapid Fire
Basically a blog where I try to do philosophy outside.
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Nov 29, 2024
Augmenting vs. Automating Away
Another quick one while I continue my recuperatory week of doing as little as possible. I recently got to see a fascinating sequence of...


Nov 8, 2024
Better On Average™
I went to an incredible talk this week by a renowned optimizer in AI spaces. He’s worked on everything from power grids to e-commerce...

Nov 1, 2024
There is no Shallow End of the Pool
Later this month, I’ll be teaching my dissertation chapter on grief to a grad seminar of young bioethicists as part of a class session...


Oct 11, 2024
Value Complacency
This week, I sat in on a graduate-level computer science class. The instructor asked under what conditions humans and AI would be...

Oct 4, 2024
Quick Hitter: How do you understand Confusion?
There are lots of buzzwords in the AI space—fairness, transparency, safety, bias, privacy, trustworthiness, I could go on and on. And...


Sep 27, 2024
If you say “Black Box” again I’m escaping to the Cloud
Just a short one—I’m in Orono, Maine today at a conference on Agency and Reasoning in Games . Tomorrow, I’ll be giving a talk on board...


Jun 21, 2024
DEEP DIVE: Simplicity and Complexity
Hi I’m a four-year-old child learning 8 new words every day. So help me out: What’s a chef? Uhh…a chef is someone who cooks food. Oh...

Jun 14, 2024
The books Elon pretends he’s read
“I read a lot of books,” says Elon Musk. Apparently one of them is Superintelligence, the highly-influential book that AI moguls from Sam...

Jun 7, 2024
I’m shining the Bat-Signal
Maybe you’ve seen my Work-in-Progress talk on AI and the Future of Work. Maybe you even liked it! If so, I have good news: In less than a...


May 3, 2024
I’m in Norway
This week I’ve been pretty busy hiking through Norway. So instead of a regular blog post, here’s what’s up... My article “Writing with...

Apr 19, 2024
What makes You think you’re so Special? (a reluctant defense of X-Risk)
I spent this past week at The Midwest Ethics Symposium on AI presenting my research and meeting lots of great folks from academia and...

Mar 29, 2024
My talk on Superintelligence and Suicide
This week I gave a Zoom talk as part of the AI Futures Work-in-Progress Series at Indiana University (a thing I totally started but it’s...


Mar 1, 2024
I made a Video Essay
Two weeks ago, I had no idea how to use Adobe Premiere Pro. But now, I’m pretty good at Googling. Indiana University is holding a...

Oct 20, 2023
Look at me I’m on a Panel
Last week, I was sick as a dog and downright loopy. What a perfect time to be invited to an APA Panel on AI ethics! Fortunately, I...


Aug 18, 2023
I got Published
Neat! You can check out a free version of my paper “Mutual Aid as Effective Altruism” here. (The final, professionally edited and typeset...


Aug 11, 2023
I got my guy!
So here’s the mind-blowing keynote for Who’s Responsible for ChatGPT? Apparently I have a very expressive face. Anyway, I’ll give you a...


Aug 2, 2023
No blog post BUT...
Come check out Who’s Responsible for ChatGPT?, the free Zoom conference Cargile and I have been organizing for months! It starts...

Jul 28, 2023
Protagonists aren’t always Good Guys
i was hoping that the oppenheimer movie would inspire a generation of kids to be physicists but it really missed the mark on that. let's...

Jul 14, 2023
Twilight Imperium and Instrumental Convergence
I got to play Twilight Imperium last weekend and I was so powerful I didn’t know what to do. I like to describe Twilight Imperium as 8...

Jun 30, 2023
I had to write a research statement about what I’m working on. Here’s my first draft.
Let me know what you think! I'm still figuring out how to summarize my research program and instill confidence I’ll be a “productive”...
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