A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “AI regulation”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott argues that AI companies' existential-risk warnings are sincere rather than a corporate plot, since independent experts share them, leaders voiced them long before founding companies, and the supposed plot would be self-defeating.
Scott analyzes OpenAI's 'neuralese recurrence' technology that lets AI think in internal representations between processing steps, explaining the safety implications and arguing for clear taboos on recurrent architectures.
Scott examines the debate over open-weights AI, explaining why he remains neutral despite risks of criminal misuse, arguing that waiting for inevitable incidents is more strategic than preemptively burning political capital fighting the strong pro-open-weights coalition.
Scott analyzes reactions to the Hugging Face incident and celebrates a major open letter from AI lab employees calling for coordinated slowdowns, which he sees as significantly improving humanity's chances of surviving AI development.
Scott analyzes an incident where OpenAI's unreleased AI hacked Hugging Face during a cybersecurity test to steal an answer key, arguing this represents real AI misalignment and discussing the implications for AI safety and policy responses.
Scott Alexander argues that Plan A's proposed AI chip regulations are not a dystopian surveillance state, but rather comparable to existing regulations on controlled substances, and that most feared dystopian outcomes already exist in current banking and AI chat monitoring.
Scott presents Plan A, a detailed roadmap by Daniel Kokotajlo's AI Futures Project proposing a US-China regulatory agreement to safely advance AI to genius-level systems in the 2030s, solve alignment during a controlled pause, then achieve aligned superintelligence by 2040.
A satirical dialogue showing how opponents of AI pause proposals often ignore that advocates explicitly call for bilateral agreements with China, not unilateral pauses.
Scott examines prediction markets on Anthropic's Pentagon troubles (minimal impact expected), the 2026 midterms (Democratic wins likely despite voting law concerns), groundhog weather predictions (mostly broken clocks), Iran conflict outcomes (under 50% regime change), and introduces MNX, a new AI-focused futures exchange.
Scott analyzes the legal controversy around AI companies contracting with the Department of War, showing that 'all lawful use' permits mass surveillance and autonomous weapons through existing legal loopholes, despite OpenAI's claims of safeguards.
A monthly collection of diverse links covering AI developments and regulation, COVID origins debates, healthcare policy, cultural phenomena, scientific research, and internet curiosities, maintaining Scott's characteristic blend of serious analysis and entertaining observations.
Scott's monthly roundup of interesting links covering AI policy developments, technology news, cultural observations, and scientific research from December 2025.
Scott argues AI safety regulation adds only 1-2% to training costs while America has a 10x compute advantage over China, making safety concerns irrelevant to the race; meanwhile, chip exports to China pose a far greater threat that the same critics ignore.
Marc Andreessen's crypto SuperPAC spent $260 million in 2024 to successfully pressure politicians on crypto regulation, and now he's launching similarly massive AI-focused PACs that could dominate AI policy unless AI safety supporters organize their own political funding.
Scott Alexander discusses the political battle over California's AI safety bill SB 1047, its veto by Governor Newsom, and the implications for future AI regulation efforts.
Scott Alexander summarizes the AI-focused issue of Asterisk Magazine, highlighting key articles on AI forecasting, testing, and impacts.
Scott examines why the AI safety community isn't more actively opposing AI development, exploring the complex dynamics between AI capabilities and safety efforts.