A flood of journalists are contacting me trying to report on the agi cnc sex parties. Here is some feedback for you guys:
While some of journalists have been fantastic, I have also historically had some rather unpleasant interactions. Many journalists are also deeply confused about Silicon Valley and have a poor understanding of what they’re getting into.
To calibrate expectations, I am pretty unlikely to go on the record about this, unless I believe doing so will meaningfully and positively change the world. If you contact me, I am more likely to talk to you if you already have significant momentum. That said, everything below is still worth saying:
- Jodi Kantor, Meghan Twohey, and Ronan Farrow achieved a pinnacle of journalism. They rewrote the power structures of the world. This is old-school, door-to-door journalism and not cheap hit/puff pieces.
- I cannot recommend the movie She Said enough. Not just to journalists, but to everyone.
- You should be educated in trauma-informed reporting. Most sources aren’t talking for a reason. That said, you should also have the right amount of aggressiveness in getting people to go on the record, within ethical bounds, else nothing will happen. Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey did a great job here, in visiting sources’ houses in person and encouraging their sources, using sound reasoning.
- In terms of sources, you should not expect me to do your job for you. I am a full-time Canadian grad student. You should be out there, on the ground, doing the heavy investigative journalism for me. This work will most likely have to be in person.
- My sources are all pretty burned out, demotivated, and terrified. Introductions are expensive and I’m unlikely to make them, unless there is significant momentum.
- You should be deeply familiar with these books: She Said, Citadels of Pride by Martha Nussbaum, and Right to Sex (in order of importance). You should be deeply familiar with the reporting on Epstein/Weinstein.
- You should have a pretty solid understanding of the philosophy of language, philosophy of power, and Bay Area cultural context, including the history of cults and subcultures around AI.
- You should understand the history of journalism in the Valley, and why all this has been underreported on. That said, I will cut off contact if you try to draw me into any larger sketchy stuff that is beyond my pay grade. I cannot emphasize enough: I have no knowledge of any larger sketchy stuff and have absolutely ZERO interest in being involved in it. DO NOT involve me in it. At the end of the day, I am a random Canadian grad student. My scope is strictly restricted to benevolent AI futures.
- You should understand that a hypothetical MeToo movement in the Valley would play out extremely differently and unpredictably than one in LA. There are way less women here. Gendered/inclusive language is woke and uncool. It’s not even clear if the MeToo-esque movement is wise right now. It may be better to focus on ensuring benevolent AI futures. However, the two topics may have non-negligible overlap…
- To the journalists who have historically written AGI puff pieces— AGI narratives are getting stale. There are new narratives around the bend. I am somewhat excited for you guys, but ngl it’s somewhat distasteful to see many of you buttressing existing narratives that are faulty, without more critical reasoning.
- You should not be an NPC/pawn for larger interest groups, or writing cheap flashy pieces to get views or to please your editor. This is serious, career-making work that requires discipline and integrity. Past journalists win Pulitzers for this kind of stuff.
Despite the tone of this message, I still believe that old-school, hardcore, truth-seeking journalism is an noble institution, and I have a lot of respect for it. If you do your job properly, you will rewrite the very power structures of the world.
To the journalists contacting me about the AGI consensual non-consensual (cnc) sex parties—
During my twenties in Silicon Valley, I ran among elite tech/AI circles through the community house scene. I have seen some troubling things around social circles of early OpenAI employees, their friends, and adjacent entrepreneurs, which I have not previously spoken about publicly.
It is not my place to speak as to why Jan Leike and the superalignment team resigned. I have no idea why and cannot make any claims. However, I do believe my cultural observations of the SF AI scene are more broadly relevant to the AI industry.
I don’t think events like the consensual non-consensual (cnc) sex parties and heavy LSD use of some elite AI researchers have been good for women. They create a climate that can be very bad for female AI researchers, with broader implications relevant to X-risk and AGI safety. I believe they are somewhat emblematic of broader problems: a coercive climate that normalizes recklessness and crossing boundaries, which we are seeing playing out more broadly in the industry today. Move fast and break things, applied to people.
There is nothing wrong imo with sex parties and heavy LSD use in theory, but combined with the shadow of 100B+ interest groups, leads to some of the most coercive and fucked up social dynamics that I have ever seen. The climate was like a fratty LSD version of 2008 Wall Street bankers, which bodes ill for AI safety.
Women are like canaries in the coal mine. They are often the first to realize that something has gone horribly wrong, and to smell the cultural carbon monoxide in the air. For many women, Silicon Valley can be like Westworld, where violence is pay-to-pay.
I have seen people repeatedly get shut down for pointing out these problems. Once, when trying to point out these problems, I had three OpenAI and Anthropic researchers debate whether I was mentally ill on a Google document. I have no history of mental illness; and this incident stuck with me as an example of blindspots/groupthink.
I am not writing this on the behalf of any interest group. Historically, much of OpenAI-adjacent shenanigans has been blamed on groups with weaker PR teams, like Effective Altruism and rationalists. I actually feel bad for the latter two groups for taking so many undeserved hits. There are good and bad apples in every faction. There are so many brilliant, kind, amazing people at OpenAI, and there are so many brilliant, kind, and amazing people in Anthropic/EA/Google/[insert whatever group]. I’m agnostic. My one loyalty is to the respect and dignity of human life.
I’m not under an NDA. I never worked for OpenAI. I just observed the surrounding AI culture through the community house scene in SF, as a fly-on-the-wall, hearing insider information and backroom deals, befriending dozens of women and allies and well-meaning parties, and watching many them get burned. It’s likely these problems are not really on OpenAI but symptomatic of a much deeper rot in the Valley. I wish I could say more, but probably shouldn’t.
I will not pretend that my time among these circles didn’t do damage. I wish that 55% of my brain was not devoted to strategizing about the survival of me and of my friends. I would like to devote my brain completely and totally to AI research— finding the first principles of visual circuits, and collecting maximally activating images of CLIP SAEs to send to my collaborators for publication.
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