keltan

Karma: 746

I live in Newcastle Australia; and work for MIRI.

Reasons I’d appreciate DMs include (though are not limited to):
- You’d like to collaborate on a project
- You’d like feedback on something
- You need an experienced filmmaker
- You need someone to run a workshop
- You would like to say “Hi!”
- You need a place to stay while in Australia

(If we met at LessOnline, you might remember me better as the Drama Workshop guy, or the counterpart to @isabella, or the Fooming Shoggoths’ biggest fan!)

I blog here: https://keltan.substack.com/

Post videos here: youtube.com/keltan

and Rationalist music here: YouTube.com/keltantoo

My name is always spelt with a lower case “k”

keltan 18 Feb 2026 7:54 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: keltan’s comment on: keltan’s Shortform
Also, I think it would be cool if people called their local cinemas to ask if they’ll be showing the film. Perhaps people who are good at event organization could set up screening parties?

keltan 18 Feb 2026 7:52 UTC
5 points
0
on: keltan’s Shortform
The people who made Everything Everywhere All At Once, have made a documentary on x-risk. Looks pretty promising! Eliezer is right at the beginning in the trailer, which you can watch here: https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist

keltan 17 Feb 2026 22:29 UTC
10 points
9
on: You’re an AI Expert – Not an Influencer
Prior to my last year at ControlAI
I’m a bit confused by this opening line. Is it saying:
1. Before I left ControlAI...
2. I have now been working at ControlAI for a year, but before that...

keltan 10 Feb 2026 22:45 UTC
4 points
0
on: My journey to the microwave alternate timeline
This was a super fun read! Especially with the recommended soundtrack.
I recently found some vegan pork buns that are ready after 4 minutes in the microwave. They come in microwave safe plastic, that kinda looks like a cup holder from a fast food place. You fill the bottom with a little bit of water before putting them in.
On the day my partners and I discovered them, we ate both packets in one sitting, then went back to the store and bought another 5 packets, and ate another 3 that day. Microwaves are incredible! People need to know this!

keltan 4 Feb 2026 1:27 UTC
7 points
0
on: keltan’s Shortform
I think some people would be surprised how much hidden information already exists in what seem to be pretty standard AI responses.
A game I like to play with Claude is:
1. Send it a photo of a celebrity
2. Get the standard rejection “Sorry, I can’t name people in images, but I can describe what I see...” which tends to be followed by a pretty general description
3. Then asking a different instance of Claude to guess the celebrity, based on the standard rejection response
Since Sonnet 3.5-7, Claude has been pretty ok at this game.
I used to play a different version with famous YouTube links:
1. Send YT link to Sonnet 3.5
2. “Sorry I can’t open YouTube links...”
3. Ask a new instance to guess what the link I sent to Claude was
~~This only worked with extremely famous video links (e.g.~~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ~~), and was much less reliable than the celebrity version.~~
THIS LINK VERSION ONLY EVER WORKED WITH NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP. I have not tested with never models.
Claude was never perfect at these types of games. For example, I found there were clusters of celebrities who shared similar ‘vibes’ that confuse Claude {Emma Watson, Emma Stone, Anna Kendrick}. But given the space of all possible celebrities~~/YT links~~, I was impressed that Claude succeeded at this task as often as it did.
With prompting, Claude got way better at these games (e.g. “Fill out this template of characteristics the person in this photo has: Eye Colour, Hair Colour, Hair Length, Sex, etc”)

keltan 4 Feb 2026 1:03 UTC
1 point
−6
in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: Conditional Kickstarter for the “Don’t Build It” March
Flag mock-ups based on the IABIED website icon (rough. I’m not a designer. Just trying to make it CGPGrey approved.):
1: Keep it simple: Something a child could draw
2: Make it distinct at a distance: No tiny details
3: Three colors or fewer
4: Symbols, colors and designs should mean something
5: Words on a flag: ideally zero
5b: Don’t write your name on your flag
The Square:
Large Square:
Smaller Square:
Square in context:
I wasn’t a fan of this flag, but kind of like it when it’s in the context of a real march. The shirts are probably the best bit though. I image the back of them to have a slogan on them.
The Halt:
Based of this Australian cave art hand stencil:
Halt (Hand Only):
Halt (Hand Stenciled):
Halt (Hand Stenciled, Wrist included):
Halt in Context:

keltan 30 Jan 2026 22:11 UTC
2 points
3
on: 36,000 AI Agents Are Now Speedrunning Civilization
Thanks for making this post! I’d seen stuff about Moltbook around, but was unclear on what it actually was. I found this clarifying

keltan 29 Jan 2026 3:59 UTC
3 points
0
on: Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit
I’d be interested to know if your lived experience has changed since Opus 4.5 was released?

keltan 22 Jan 2026 8:33 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: mishka’s comment on: mishka’s Shortform
I would imagine that if an intelligent species’ home planet was overtaken by ASI, we would likely see evidence of that takeover. In the way that the ASI would be incentivized to expand into that star system and beyond as rapidly as possible.
Though, I guess it might be within the ASI’s interest to hide from other intelligent minds for as long as it could. Giving those other minds, less time to prepare for the ASI’s arrival.

keltan 14 Jan 2026 23:59 UTC
10 points
0
in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: davekasten’s Shortform
Thank you! Also, Time Stamped Link: https://youtu.be/UECn73UVILg?si=UqTHRBWnrklR8bWs&t=203

keltan 7 Jan 2026 22:00 UTC
4 points
3
on: In My Misanthropy Era
I like Bentham’s definition of what gives a being moral worth:
”the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? ”

keltan 11 Dec 2025 1:02 UTC
2 points
0
on: Artifacts I’d like to try
Inspired by your post, I very quickly (~2h) vibe coded an Obsidian Plugin, based on your River Timeline idea.

The Plugin crashes pretty often, and has some major problems. But there is something interesting here. I have no plans to publish on Obsidian/work on the plugin further. If anyone becomes interested in this project, they are welcome to steal all this code without credit.

keltan 3 Dec 2025 22:26 UTC
9 points
0
on: keltan’s Shortform
I sometimes hear people say “The MIRI warnings of AI risks are out of date. There are different risks now, but MIRI hasn’t changed”. What do people mean by this? The MIRI arguments still seem to hold up to me?
I asked Claude for it’s input, and received this answer; which seems like a good breakdown?
Claude’s Response
This is a criticism I’ve seen circulating in AI safety discussions, and there are a few distinct claims people seem to be making:
The “outdated threat model” argument
Some critics argue MIRI’s core warnings were developed when the assumed path to AGI looked quite different—more like classical GOFAI or relatively interpretable systems where you might hope to formally verify properties. The argument goes that deep learning systems present different alignment challenges (mesa-optimization, deceptive alignment emerging from gradient descent, RLHF-specific failure modes, multi-agent dynamics) that MIRI’s framework wasn’t designed around.
The “they predicted wrong timelines/capabilities”
There’s a strain of criticism that MIRI expected AGI to look more like a single powerful optimiser with coherent goals, whereas what we’re getting is… weirder. Large pretrained models that are hard to characterise as “agents” in the classical sense, that exhibit capability gains from scale rather than algorithmic breakthroughs, and where the alignment problem manifests differently than the “utility maximiser finds unexpected solutions” framing.
The “strategic irrelevance” argument
Some claim MIRI’s response to the current landscape (particularly around corrigibility, interpretability work at other orgs, constitutional AI approaches) has been to maintain their pessimism without engaging substantively with whether these approaches might work, or pivoting their research programme accordingly.
My take on whether this is fair
The core MIRI arguments about instrumental convergence, Goodhart’s law, and the difficulty of specifying human values seem to me to hold up regardless of architecture. The question is more whether the specific failure modes they emphasised (treacherous turns, sharp capability gains enabling deception) are the ones we should be most worried about with current systems versus, say, gradual value drift, multi-agent race dynamics, or misuse.
What specifically prompted you hearing this recently?
Link to chat here: https://claude.ai/share/36ac7360-b2e8-4601-94da-1ce7d05962d9

To write well; first, experience.

keltan27 Nov 2025 2:11 UTC

7 points

0 comments1 min readLW link

(keltan.substack.com)

keltan 27 Nov 2025 2:03 UTC
11 points
2
on: Reasons Why I Cannot Sleep
I am far away (Aus) and probably have a distorted view of Inkhaven. Though, I probably should have been more vocal about how grateful I am, that it is a thing that is happening. I did draft a long comment to the original Inkhaven announcement. Where I gushed about my excitement, and was cheering on the people of the Lightcone. But, I felt embarrassed being so open about my enthusiasm, and ultimately deleted the draft. Oops!
I’ll make up for this mistake a little, by saying, thank you for running Inkhaven, Ben. I think this is a good thing for the world, and it seems like a hard project to organize. It is quite understandable that you’d be feeling like shit, with so much on your plate.
Inkhaven has already had positive knock-on effects in the community. Having participated in the Half-Haven discord for the past two months, I have written ~28 blog posts as of today, and am on track to complete the 30 posts in 2 months goal. I think I am a better writer, because of this, and Half-Haven is something that wouldn’t have happened without Inkhaven, inspiring the idea.
I am grateful to you, and your project. Good luck.
For the Blogosphere!

keltan 27 Nov 2025 1:46 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel’s comment on: NATO is dangerously unaware of its military vulnerability
I haven’t. Where should I search for these? Preferably, raw footage, non-news broadcast?

keltan 24 Nov 2025 22:38 UTC
1 point
0
on: NATO is dangerously unaware of its military vulnerability
The best video on the realities of the modern drone-dominated battlefield is here.
I basically know nothing about this topic. But I saw this video, and was kinda shocked. Were the drones in the removed video, better than this?
Going down a bit of a rabbit hole now, I’ll link other videos that seem relevant:
- Drone Swarm: Again, idk anything about this topic. But this seemed pretty scary. I expect the product being advertised would be ~easy to counter against.

keltan 5 Nov 2025 0:13 UTC
5 points
0
on: Lack of Social Grace is a Lack of Skill
Strong upvote.
IMO, the portrayal of ‘smart’ characters in media, can do damage to the way people who grow up thinking they are intelligent, will interact with others. E.g. Dr House, House; Rick, Rick and Morty; Sherlock Holmes, Lots of things.
This happened to me growing up, and I was a nihilistic prick as a teenager. For me, the remedy was engaging with media created by real-life intelligent people. The Podcasts “Cortex” and “Dear Hank and John”, have majorly shifted my personality in a positive direction. I wouldn’t have predicted that they would make me a better rationalist, but I think they have done that too.
TLDR: Absorb the personality traits of intelligent and kind people, for a possible easy fix to the problem detailed in this post.

keltan 5 Nov 2025 0:05 UTC
6 points
2
on: Lack of Social Grace is a Lack of Skill
before I speak I ask myself what I’m about to say and how I think the person I’m talking to is going to react next.
Obligatory reminder to reverse all advice you hear. This might be the type of idea that would destroy a person with social anxiety

keltan 3 Nov 2025 23:43 UTC
13 points
0
on: Halfhaven halftime
So far, I’m fortunate to be one of the people on track to meet the post number goal. Here are some thoughts at the half way point:
1. FUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKK
2. Writing every day is hard already, writing something I’m ok with putting on the internet is much harder
3. There are other parts of my life that have taken large hits because of this project. I had an excellent ANKI streak, which I have since lost, and have been struggling to get back in to. Perhaps I just need more Dakka.
4. I ‘feel’ like I’m not that much of a better writer in the sense of ‘my posts feel worthwhile for others to read’, but I do ‘feel’ I have gotten better at communicating ideas clearly, and spotting mistakes in my communications.
5. I think I have gotten better at looking at the world, and finding things to write about
6. I have discovered a deep love for this thing ;
7. I kinda ‘feel’ more dumb. Perhaps this is downstream of other things in my life, and that much of my studying time has been replaced with writing; and I’ve had to listen to a lot more music to have time to come up with ideas, which has decreased podcast time. But, I feel a bit depressed, and like I’m more of an idiot than when I started.
8. I haven’t read as many of the other contributors posts as I would have liked to, due to this, and all my other projects eating up all of my time.
9. I have used the same keyboard for the last 5 years, but since starting this, my mistakes per-line have dropped off significantly. (That does not mean miss-spelling, which I still struggle with)
10. When I started this, I planned to make many LW posts, among my substack posts, though I have made no LW posts. This is because I think the quality that 2 days allows me to write, is much too low. I just don’t have the Gs to be outputting things I consider LW quality in that time frame. This is a problem specific to me, I think.
11. YouTube ambient music is going down the drain fast, as AI slop is taking over the algorithm, and most people aren’t noticing. This is relevant, because I basically require ambient music to inspire my writing.
12. I think Half-Haven was a great idea. I am grateful that it exists. I think I wouldn’t have made so many posts, without the fear of publicly not following up, on something I set out to do.
13. New love is wonderful kindling for ideas. Even if your ideas don’t seem to relate to love at all. This may be a personal thing; but I find that writing down the things I ‘wish I had said’ are the best writing projects I have created in this month.
14. I have run a few experiments, and collected data, in an attempt at various blog posts. But running the data, and assessing that data, takes a lot of time, and often doesn’t lead me to writing 500 words, without padding. So, I have not published any new research in this time.
15. I think I am writing much better ‘first drafts’ than I did before this. I think that has something to do with the time pressure.
16. I do not yet know if I will continue to post a blog post every two days, after this ends. It is a habit I think is net positive for me, but clearly has some destructive costs.

keltan

The Square:

The Halt:

To write well; first, ex­pe­rience.

To write well; first, experience.