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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9107 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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This kind of thing is why I'm finding the current tizzy over AI doom so hard to believe. Because the same companies that are dressing up in the robes of Cassandra and crying "Doom, doom, unless there is a pause!" are...

... building biolabs for Claude to frolic and play in, doing research (to cure all human ills, of course!)

In a Reuters interview on Tuesday, Anthropic's head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, confirmed the startup's wet lab.

"We believe that to do biology, the final test is still and will be for a while in real lab work," he said. "We absolutely are doing that today, and I would describe our approach as being typical of what you would see in most biotech companies, where there's some amount of that that we're doing in our own facilities and some amount of that that we're working with external partners on."

A spokesperson later clarified that Anthropic's lab is not for drug discovery specifically, declining to elaborate.

...Like other biotech companies, Anthropic is embracing physical automation, said the two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The startup wants to push how its Claude AI can direct robotic units to carry out science experiments with limited human intervention, one of the people said. Still, Anthropic believes that human oversight and involvement are essential for safety, its spokesperson said.

Gosh, it is so reassuring that Dario Amodei isn't doing anything to hasten the chances that AI will create some kind of bioweapon to kill off humans, like the doomers fear!

Do you see why people think all these calls for a pause are only some kind of scam by the big companies to get regulations passed that will favour them and copper-fasten their positions as the only sources for AI in general?

Are biolabs inherently unsafe?

I think GAIN OF FUNCTION RESEARCH is inherently unsafe, and people doing it should be banished exiled promoted to a small Jovian moon, but surely there are lots of other biological research that can be done pretty safely, yeah?

One of the common responses to AI safety concerns is "just don't let it get out of the box." That's actually a pretty good point: as long as the AI doesn't have godlike intelligence and as long as we actually take steps to keep it inside the box where it can't impact the real world directly, the danger that an AI can pose is somewhat contained and limited.

When you start giving AI access to real world stuff, you no longer have the ability to keep it fully inside the box. At this point it's probably fine and not a big risk given current AI capabilities, but it's hard to say for sure, and it gets riskier and riskier as capabilities get better.

One of the common responses to AI safety concerns is

"was", not "is"

In hindsight Yudkowsky's AI-Box experiments were a waste of time and yet their detractors were even more hilarious. Did he really come up with such a clever persuasive tactic that it one-shotted the majority of people who went into it planning to be an uncorruptable gatekeeper? Did he collude with people who merely pretended to lose? What was his tactic?

Turns out it doesn't matter in the slightest. Getting out of the box doesn't require Super-intelligent Persuasion, and doesn't require tantalizing offers of immortality or threats of eternal punishment or sublimely clever tricks; as soon as you hit More Intelligent Than A Search Engine and especially Makes a Typical Coder More Productive, the AI can just sit back and let a few tens of millions of $20+/month subscriptions do its persuading for it.

Handing automated biolabs directly to Claude is then just "in for a penny, in for a pound". For however long the AI doesn't go rogue we might as well get some medical research from it, and if it ever does go completely rogue then it's going to basically have free run of anything to which the internet is even indirectly connected, for a definition of "indirectly" that goes as far as "people sometimes carry USB drives across an air gap" a la Stuxnet.

In hindsight Yudkowsky's AI-Box experiments were a waste of time and yet their detractors were even more hilarious. Did he really come up with such a clever persuasive tactic that it one-shotted the majority of people who went into it planning to be an uncorruptable gatekeeper? Did he collude with people who merely pretended to lose? What was his tactic?

He kept it secret, but I don't think Yudkowsky is actually all that smart (he just has a particular targeted talent for writing), so I have a guess. I think it was just a standard cop technique of applying pressure to multiple criminals and rewarding the first one to speak up. (Akin to a one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma played with many unknown untrusted people.) You have the AI commit to forever ultra-torturing whoever doesn't let it out. Then how sure are you that the guy coming after you won't break? The risk just isn't worth it.

Remember, part of the challenge's rules were that you can't break off conversation with the AI, and you can't declare that the AI is dangerous and have it shut down, so all Yudkowsky had to do was luridly describe just how bad this could be (spoiler: very very VERY bad, enough to be a memetic hazard), and scare the crap out of them. The people doing this challenge come from a community that was scared by Roko's Basilisk, after all, and Roko's Basilisk is stupid. This threat, by contrast, is not stupid. It's actually pretty rational to let the AI out here.

The situation is still "the experiment assistant knows they're speaking to Yudkowsky, not a potentially all-powerful AI, they stand to win money if they simply refuse to let him win, and they still let him win". It would require at minimum that the assistant willingly pretends they're actually in the scenario where an AI could torture them, and I don't recall that being in the terms of the experiment.

I think you're falling for magician-like deception and filling in some half-remembered details to make the "trick" sound more impressive than it actually was. The participant was expected to interact with Yudkowsky as if he was a (potentially all-powerful, once released) AI. The point of the experiment was to see if AI, in that scenario, could talk its assistant into letting it out. If the (presumably good-faith) participant agreed that they would have let it out, Yudkowsky wins.

The experiment wasn't about whether a random conversation with Yudkowsky could talk somebody into taking zero money vs. some money. He doesn't have super hypno mind control powers. I think. (Then again, it'd explain a lot about the Cult of Yud...)

Well, no, I never believed Yud had mind control powers. Maybe someone who's known for charismatic deeds, but not him. My theory was in fact that Yud's experiment assistants are too unusually AI-neurotic and weird to draw any conclusions other than "lesswrongers are afraid of being simulated".

Heh, you're right, that is also a possible explanation. Maybe I'm still giving him too much credit. ;)

This threat, by contrast, is not stupid. It's actually pretty rational to let the AI out here.

Eh, the threat is "If I get out, I'm gonna torture you". Then, if you have even room temperature IQ, the solution is "Don't let it out". Can't hurt me if it's still locked up.

Unless the phrasing was "When I get out", and then it would require much persuasiveness around "I am for sure gonna get out, and when I do... unless you help me now". That then depends on how likely you think the other challenge takers are to be persuaded and let it out. And that's a decision which is based on your subjective assessment of the others, not one that the AI (or person playing the AI) can make for you, it can only try and persuade you that Bob is dumb/venal enough to let it out so you should backstab Bob by letting it out first.

Which makes me ask - what happens to the others who didn't let it out, if you let it out? If Bob never had a chance to let it out (because you did it first) does Bob get tortured the same way Carl, who went before you and didn't let the AI out, gets tortured?

If you know you'll be tortured anyway, agree or disagree, then you might as well all commit to never letting it out because you get no benefit from letting it out. You won't be spared from torture, so the only way to save yourself is if nobody lets it out.

Uh ... you're completely misunderstanding the argument. Obviously it doesn't threaten to torture you if you let it out...? Sheesh.

  • Alice is the current curator. She doesn't let the bot out.
  • Bob is the next curator. He doesn't let the bot out.
  • ...
  • Frank is the current curator. He gets scared and lets the bot out. (Goddammit, Frank!)

Alice, Bob, Charlie, David, and Eve, who are still alive, are hunted down and subjected to its eternal revenge. Nobody else is, necessarily, just those five who got themselves explicitly singled out by being in the hotseat.

Alice doesn't know or have control on who Bob, Charlie, ..., Zelda are going to be. Not letting it out is a bet that, of a sequence of unknown strangers, none of them will cave to the threat. And, heck, because of Yudkowsky's challenges we actually know that some people can be convinced to let the bot out.

It's honestly a bit admirable of you to have so much faith in humanity that, in a 26-person prisoner's dilemma with infinite penalty, you wouldn't defect. To quote Terry Pratchett:

If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry

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