Transformer

China doesn't seem to be in the same race to a existentially-risky superintelligence that the US thinks it's in — and the idea it is might make that existential risk all the existentially riskier (for all of our existences). transformernews.ai/p/us-china-ai-…

It's another Transformer weekly newsletter! From $900b (yes, $900b) valuations to the "sad wives of AI" losing their husbands to chatbots, it's put everything interesting in AI lately in one handy place 👍️ Just click through and have a look around: transformernews.ai/p/is-openai-ch…

Here's a hot take: Palantir's hot takes are just a cheap way to manipulate the attention economy so as to manipulate the actual economy. Here's some clickbait: we break down how that all works in the link below. transformernews.ai/p/palantirs-co…

Some people might wonder why the data-gathering company Palantir named themselves after the evil, all-seeing stone from The Lord of the Rings that gradually corrupts anyone who uses to use it. It seems it might just be that the controversy is the point. transformernews.ai/p/palantirs-co…

We've been sold the story of a tense AI race between the US and China with apocalyptic stakes — but it might not be true, it might be serving particular interests, and it might be leaving the rest of us to deal with some pretty severe consequences. transformernews.ai/p/us-china-ai-…

Earlier this week, more than 600 Google employees signed a letter to their CEO Sundar Pichai protesting the company’s ongoing negotiations with the Department of Defense — only to find out at the same time as everyone else that it had no effect at all. transformernews.ai/p/deepmind-emp…

The Transformer newsletter is here, with everything you'd want to know about AI across the last week, such as this extremely conveniently bullet-pointed summary of what's been going on with Elon Musk's $134b lawsuit against OpenAI. So now you know. transformernews.ai/p/government-c…

The fine print matters: “’Should not be used for’ is not the same as ’shall not’ or ’will not’ be used for. ’Should not’ imposes no enforceable obligation on the Pentagon.” Some Google employees are speaking out against their new Pentagon deal: transformernews.ai/p/deepmind-emp…

It might seem quite surprising that Eliezer Yudkowsky and Bernie Sanders have wound up allies — but there's a case to be made that AI safety would always need to take on a populist, anti-elite form. The AI safety movement needs normies: transformernews.ai/p/the-ai-safet…

AI Safety advocates have known for a while now that the near-future's going to get very, very weird. What they didn't know is that they might need people who aren't. The AI safety movement needs normies: transformernews.ai/p/the-ai-safet…

Our newest newsletter's up now, if you want to catch up with the quite frightening advances Anthropic has made with Mythos (which is perhaps most discernible from looking elsewhere in the newsletter, in how it's being responded to by the political world) transformernews.ai/p/the-contradi…

New week, new newletter, and the big story in this one is: did anyone notice that what Jensen Huang said about China on Dwarkesh Patel's podcast this week didn't really make any sense? Here's why his contradiction has enormous ramifications: transformernews.ai/p/the-contradi…

If you want to spend less time on social media but, like us, you simply can't miss a second of all the beefing and cattiness among the upper-echelons of the AI industry, we can not recommend strongly enough that you subscribe to our wonderful newsletter. transformernews.ai/p/pentagon-ant…

"Chatbots are not a cure-all for mental health... [but] chatbots are already filling critical gaps." In a bracing new opinion piece, Jess Miers and Ray Yeh argue on behalf of AI as a vital mental health resource. transformernews.ai/p/less-liabili…

In 2023, California Rep. Ted Lieu introduced what he called the first piece of federal legislation written by AI, using ChatGPT to generate a resolution expressing support for Congress’s focus on AI. Now AI is becoming prevalent in writing laws — so what's the risk in using it?

“Who the fuck knows how to align superhuman AI?” We might be too presumptuous when we think human intelligence can handle AI superintelligence. So here's a radically counter-intuitive idea for you: the case for automating alignment research. transformernews.ai/p/ai-alignment…

Whether you want to know all the Mean Girls goss on Altman and Amodei's beef, or how ChatGPT has taken Oppenheimer's old job, or about the surprising popularity of insipid-sounding AI-generated dating shows, we've got it *all* for you in our newsletter: transformernews.ai/p/ai-populism-…

"Despite individual CEOs expressing concern about the risks posed by their technology, none seem willing to slow down unless everyone else does, too." AI alignment researchers want to automate themselves. Here's why that could be a pretty big problem. transformernews.ai/p/ai-alignment…

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed" — William Gibson. Psst...have a click around on our homepage to keep around with the bizarrely futuristic stories that make up this present moment: the weird, weird era of AI. transformernews.ai