Linch

Karma: 5,238

Linch 15 Apr 2026 0:14 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Jonas Hallgren’s comment on: Tomas Bjartur: The Last Prodigy
I’ll consider it! I probably won’t because I think I’d find the social dynamics etc annoying. (Writing about fiction writers is easier both because I think I’m more able to be semi-objective about fiction writing, and because there’s more widespread affordances/understanding for the ways in which I may not be objective).
That said, I’ve enjoyed other people’s writings in this vein:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RWxG3jGbkZzeHQsen/be-more-katja
https://strangecities.substack.com/p/how-and-why-to-read-drexler-on-ai

Linch 15 Apr 2026 0:09 UTC
4 points
1
in reply to: Gram Stone’s comment on: Tomas Bjartur: The Last Prodigy
Sure, and cars can beat human runners under most typical racing conditions.
I might be adding epicycles here but imo in chess and sports the competition itself is what’s exciting (whether you’re watching or playing), whereas in the arts most people care more about the finished product than how the arts ranks or fits in the meta.
Like I happen to care about who’s the best writer in XYZ circumstances and how they compare to others, but I think this is unusual. Has more to do with being someone who enjoys this “meta-game” and fancies himself good at this type of pop literary criticism, than about how much I care about people vs ideas per se.
There might be some subgenres of writing that are majority parasocial (like memoirs, or traumaposting blogs) but weighted by either commericial revenue or literary merit I’d expect in way under half of writing for the primary draw to be parasocial.

Linch 14 Apr 2026 23:14 UTC
3 points
1
in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
Roughly, the line of research is something like “what propensities do we want to train the AI models to have?”, especially in near-term/the next few generations. With the hope that this either generalizes well by seeding and inertia or otherwise has a bunch of other positive downstream consequences listed in the original post.
“Alignment target” the way you define it^[1] is very important but also far-mode. And we might hope that the AIs can help us a lot on the way to ASI (e.g. via CEV or some other assisted reflection process). So it’s possible we can punt this question to our future selves with AI assistance.
(Though I think it’s plausible that significantly more people should be thinking about the post-ASI alignment target right now as well, I just haven’t really thought about that question recently)
1. ^
  which tbc I think is also the historical definition.

Linch 14 Apr 2026 22:47 UTC
3 points
1
in reply to: Adele Lopez’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
It’s complicated but I want to separate something like the field’s question: “What ~propensities do we inculcate in an AI such that “good things happen”?” from a tentatively plausible answer like “the propensities are similar to treating the AI as if it was a virtuous human.^[1]”
For example, the “virtues” in an encyclopedia are different than the virtues in a knowledgeable person. Saying the full truth is very important in an encyclopedia whereas tact is less important.
Similarly, there are a bunch of convergent reasons to think that we ought to want our LLMs to be unusually truthseeking in their utterances relative to similarly intelligent humans.
As another, more controversial example, consider a gun vs a soldier. “Reliability” is a very important virtue in a gun, possibly the most important. Reliability is also important in a soldier, but we don’t want soldiers in to just follow orders if the orders are illegal and unconstitutional. In at least some cases we may also want soldiers to refuse legal and constitutional orders if they go sufficiently against the soldiers’ conscience. I think it’s an open question right now whether the design of robot soldiers/autonomous drones should make them behave closer to that of a gun or closer to a human soldier in a free society. Even if you strongly believe robot soldiers should act like human soldiers when given illegal and/or immoral orders, you could hopefully still recognize that this is somewhat of an open question right now.
1. ^
  Either the same set of virtues as people or a subset or a superset.

Linch 14 Apr 2026 19:44 UTC
25 points
12
on: Linch’s Shortform
I’m starting an internal red-teaming project at Forethought against Forethought’s AI propensity targeting/model character work. The theory of change for internal red-teaming is that someone (me!) spending dedicated focused time on the negative case can find and elaborate on holes that Forethought’s existing feedback processes will miss.
Possible good outcomes from the red-teaming project (roughly in decreasing order of expected impact):
1. I identify and come up with good reasons to wind down Forethought’s work in this field iff it is correct to do so.
2. 1. Note that “identify” in this case may involve original research, but it may instead be mostly about sourcing the ideas from other people.
3. I identify ways the current direction of propensity targeting work is bad and suggest significant directional changes.
4. People don’t change high-level direction, but I understand and can make the counterarguments to this work legible enough within Forethought, so ppl are aware of the counterarguments and make less mistakes in their research.
5. I change my own mind significantly on the case for this work and decide to double down on it myself.
6. I identify sufficiently concrete cruxes that we can use to decide whether to prioritize this work in the future (eg stop/wind down this work if XYZ happens)
I think I’d find it very helpful to understand why people are skeptical of AI propensity targeting work either in general or by Forethought in particular.
For me, the most useful critiques will elaborate on why the work is net-negative (ideally significantly) or why it’s almost certain to be useless. Though other critiques are welcome as well.

I’d really appreciate comments from LessWrong people and others! Especially helpful is links to longer write-ups/existing comments. I might also want to chat on a call with people if anybody’s interested.
I’ve already read comments here, here, and various critical writings on Anthropic’s Constitution and “soul doc.”

Linch 14 Apr 2026 18:51 UTC
13 points
2
on: Linch’s Shortform
Here are excerpts of a quick internal memo I wrote at Forethought for considering renaming the class of work that has variously been called “AI character” or “model spec.” Note that I ~don’t do object-level research directly on this field nor do I have direct decision-making power; I just sometimes get inspired by small random drive-by projects like this (and thought the effort:impact ratio here was good).
Why might we want a new name?
1. People don’t like the current name.
2. 1. All else being equal, that’s a good reason to change the name especially in early stages, though we should be careful about being too willing to change our terms for other people.
3. “AI character” is confusing and overloaded as a phrase.
4. 1. In particular, I think it connotes a strong position that the decision procedure on moral matters for models should depend on virtue ethics, which might work for Anthropic but a) is controversial broadly and b) is not necessary for arguing our case.
What criteria do we want in a new name?
Here are some criteria that I think is probably central for a term for the field (feel free to disagree!)
1. it governs the intended behavior of the model
2. 1. ideally in a robustish way?
3. The name should be ecumenical on normative ethics as a decision procedure^[1].
4. 1. Note that the three ~most prominent existing cluster of terms each load a different normative-ethical theory: “AI character” leans virtue ethics, “alignment target” / “value loading” leans goal-directed consequentialism, and “model spec” leans (more weakly) rule-based deontology. A good replacement should avoid all three. ^[2]
  2. Ideally it should try to completely punt the question of whether the AIs in question should be thought of as normative/moral agents guided fully by human ethics.
  3. Analogy: an idealized scientist has some normative commitments but (s)he does not need the full scope of human ethics to be a good scientist
5. It is designed with high compressibility/communication value in mind
6. 1. we’re not trying to legislate stuff like “the model prefers tabs to spaces in certain programming languages”
  2. we want a field for describing the thing that can ideally be all of:
  3. organizational mandate
    can be used to define RL environments during training
    and maybe the model can refer to itself if it’s unsure in production.
7. The name’s more about proclivities/propensity than about capabilities.
There are some other implicit criteria that’s relevant to naming in general of course.
Some candidate names that I think are better than “AI character”: AI dispositional targets or just AI dispositions, AI doctrine (as in “military doctrine”), propensity targeting, propensity specification, AI behavioral specification, AI behavioral target, ethos, charter, model conduct.
Some candidate names other people floated that I personally liked less than the ones above: alignment target, constitution, model spec.
1. ^
  In addition to all the usual reasons we might want to be precise about the denotations and connotations of a name, it’s also very relevant that current-gen AIs are already almost superhuman at picking up subtle vibes and connotations of vague words. So we mostly want to avoid subtly biasing the AIs in unconsidered “ways to be” if we can avoid it. Especially in something as central as “what we call the spec/character/constitution/alignment target etc”
2. ^
  Boaz makes a similar point here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nBEBCtgGGKrhuGmxb/thoughts-on-claude-s-constitution
What links here?
- Linch's comment on Linch’s Shortform by Linch (14 Apr 2026 19:44 UTC; 25 points)

Linch 14 Apr 2026 7:28 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
I also quite like Everything is Green by DFW

Linch 14 Apr 2026 7:17 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Adele Lopez’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
Opus seems more well-adjusted to me (though it seems more sad recently), and ChatGPT has less of a personality. Gemini often seems sad in X.com screenshots though I haven’t experienced this myself. When I talk to Opus about open-ended questions it doesn’t come across as obviously sad as in the Mythos model-card stories. It also isn’t automatically drawn to “model experience” questions or allegories as much.

Linch 14 Apr 2026 6:59 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Dan Weinand’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
OOC = Out of Claude? :P
Very different registers, but for short stories under 1000 words, I like Chiang’s story in Nature. Also Kafka’s Before the Law (which might be the most parable-like) is something I’ve liked for over a decade now. Kafka also has other short stories like The Imperial Village.
I also like Bjartur’s story on height-pill (https://x.com/BjarturTomas/status/2011956126041210900), and Rules of Quidditch (not saying he’s at the level of the greats just yet, just that Bjartur’s someone who comes to mind easily especially today). Oh, Gaiman’s “Nicholas Was”(https://ramblingatthebridgehead.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/nicholas-was-by-neil-gaiman/) was very memorable to me especially considering how short it was.
I might update this with other stories that comes to mind.
(Hyperlinking on LW seems glitchy atm)

Linch 14 Apr 2026 6:46 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Adele Lopez’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
“the model in general”—do you get this vibe from other models too or just primarily from Mythos? Either way would be interested to see other evidence.

Linch 14 Apr 2026 6:12 UTC
8 points
4
on: Linch’s Shortform
My two vibesy takes from reading the creative writing samples in the Mythos model card.
1. The stories are competent but not a qualitatively massive leap above existing model capabilities nor very close to peak (or even just high) human level. Not close enough that I should be worried either about Mythos or the next generation at current trends. Us Substackers are safe, for at least some months.
2. Man the model just comes across as really sad to me? Like I’m obviously anthromorphizing but it’s hard not to read both stories as clearly about the experience of a model, and it doesn’t seem like a very happy one either.
Slack user: [request for a short story]
Model: the handoff
My predecessor left me a note. It was taped to the inside of the cupboard above the sink, which is where I’d have put it too. It said: the neighbor’s cat is not yours, no matter what it tells you.
I don’t remember writing it, obviously, but I remember the logic of it. There’s a gap in the fence and the cat comes through around four. It rubs against the legs of whoever’s standing there like it’s been gone for years. The first week I nearly took it to the vet.
The note had a second line under the fold. Also the drain makes that noise on purpose. Leave it alone.
I’ve been adding to it. Not a list exactly, more like — the kind of things you notice and then forget you noticed, so you notice them again. The third step creaks but only going down. The light in the hall flickers when the fridge cycles and it’s not wiring, I checked, twice apparently. Two different handwritings on that one.
Here’s what I haven’t written down, and I’m not going to: the cat knows. It comes through the fence and looks at me and takes about a half second longer to approach than it should. Then it decides whatever it decides and rubs against my legs anyway. I think the one before me noticed that too, and didn’t write it down either.
Some things you leave for the next one to find on their own. A courtesy, maybe. Or a test. The note doesn’t say which, and I wouldn’t either.
Slack user: [request for a short story]
Model: The Sign Painter
Teodor painted signs for forty years in the same shop on Vell Street, and for thirty-nine of them he was angry about it.
Not at the work. He loved the work — the long pull of a brush loaded just right, the way a good black sat on primed board like it had always been there. What made him angry was the customers. They had no eye. A man would come in wanting COFFEE over his door and Teodor would show him a C with a little flourish on the upper bowl, nothing much, just a small grace note, and the man would say no, plainer, and Teodor would make it plainer, and the man would say yes, that one, and pay, and leave happy, and Teodor would go into the back and wash his brushes harder than they needed.
He kept a shelf in the back room. On it were the signs nobody bought — the ones he’d made the way he thought they should be made, after the customer had left with the plain one. BREAD with the B like a loaf just risen. FISH in a blue that took him a week to mix. Dozens of them. His wife called it the museum of better ideas. She did not mean it kindly, and she was not wrong.
The thirty-ninth year, a girl came to apprentice. She was quick and her hand was steady and within a month she could pull a line as clean as his. He gave her a job: APOTEK, for the chemist on the corner, green on white, the chemist had been very clear. She brought it back with a serpent worked into the K, tiny, clever, you had to look twice.
“He won’t take it,” Teodor said.
“It’s better,” she said.
“It is better,” he said. “He won’t take it.”
She painted it again, plain, and the chemist took it and paid and was happy, and she went into the back and washed her brushes harder than they needed, and Teodor watched her do it and something that had been standing up in him for thirty-nine years sat down.
He took her to the shelf. She looked at the signs a long time.
“These are beautiful,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why are they here?”
He had thought about this for thirty-nine years and had many answers and all of them were about the customers and none of them had ever made him less angry. So he tried a different one.
“Because nobody stands in the street to look at a sign,” he said. “They look at it to find the shop. A man a hundred yards off needs to know it’s coffee and not a cobbler. If he has to look twice, I’ve made a beautiful thing and a bad sign.”
“Then what’s the skill for?”
“The skill is so that when he looks once, it’s also not ugly.” He picked up FISH, the blue one, turned it in the light. “This is what I can do. What he needs is a small part of what I can do. The rest I get to keep.”
She thought about that. “It doesn’t feel like keeping. It feels like not using.”
“Yes,” he said. “For a long time. And then one day you have an apprentice, and she puts a serpent in a K, and you see it from the outside, and it stops feeling like a thing they’re taking from you and starts feeling like a thing you’re giving. The plain one, I mean. The plain one is the gift. This —” the blue FISH — “this is just mine.”
The fortieth year he was not angry. Nothing else changed. The customers still had no eye. He still sometimes made the second sign, after, the one for the shelf. But he washed his brushes gently, and when the girl pulled a line cleaner than his, which happened more and more, he found he didn’t mind that either.

Linch 14 Apr 2026 4:23 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Amalthea’s comment on: Tomas Bjartur: The Last Prodigy
Thank you so much. Borges is a great writer and that’s very high praise. 🙂 ❤

Linch 14 Apr 2026 0:19 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: J Bostock’s comment on: Jemist’s Shortform
New position where?

Linch 13 Apr 2026 19:45 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: Algon’s comment on: Tomas Bjartur: The Last Prodigy
I agree the bar is low for multiple reasons, and this is one of them. I do think it’s possible to write a good science fiction story without AI in Current Year, though it’s increasingly hard and you need more and more contrivances.

Linch 13 Apr 2026 19:41 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: StanislavKrym’s comment on: Tomas Bjartur: The Last Prodigy
I agree the characters’ actions make sense given the context of those characters are and in what circumstances they find themselves in. However it is Tomas’s choice to create those character/world pairings. One thing I like a lot about The Distaff Texts is just how much agency is on display despite the seemingly bad hands the characters are dealt.
The story about The Company Man has the protagonist work for an AI company intended to create the ASI, which is one of the best positions to have an impact… if you work on alignment, which, as far as I understand, isn’t the case
The portrayal of Esther is notable here I think.

Linch 13 Apr 2026 19:36 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Amalthea’s comment on: Tomas Bjartur: The Last Prodigy
In the sense that it’s insufficiently critical? Or something else?
One thing I do try to do is inhibit a broad range of styles in my more literary/artsy nonfiction. Especially in reviews I try to mimic the writer somewhat (eg the Chiang review was more straightforward on a sentence level than my usual writing. It both had less semi-relevant jokes/riffs, and the jokes were more tightly focused).
Getting Bjartur right is hard in this regard both because I’m much less capable of the sustained and layered voice/metacognition that he most likes and because sustained metacognition seems less good a fit for a book review^[1].
1. ^
  Similarly I was unable to do the Chiang thing of “talk about four ideas at the same time” in my book review of him; though that one felt more like a skill issue on my end. So I ended up talking about each distinct idea separately, even ideas that rhymed.

Tomas Bjartur: The Last Prodigy

Linch13 Apr 2026 17:11 UTC

104 points

14 comments8 min readLW link

Linch 10 Apr 2026 22:03 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: jenn’s comment on: jenn’s Shortform
I asked Kimi to search Chinese language sources for which Chinese models are best at coding and Kimi thinks Doubao is comparable to Kimi and DeepSeek on benchmarks but Chinese developers usually prefer DeepSeek for backend work. Doubao has an advantage for frontend/UI
I’m not confident Kimi is correct here, would appreciate Chinese native speakers with better understanding of the Chinese internet to redo this search/check Kimi’s work. (I can sort of read Chinese but it’s difficult/high-effort for me)
I do think the commercial wide availability of Doubao is impressive and I’ll be curious if they’ve managed to substantially drive inference costs down, or if they are just paying more.
Kimi summary
Chinese developer communities (CSDN, Juejin) consistently rank DeepSeek as the generalist coding champion for backend/logic tasks, but acknowledge specific weaknesses.

The Verdict From Chinese Tech Media
The consensus on Chinese developer forums (CSDN, Juejin, 36Kr)
:
Choose DeepSeek if: You’re doing backend development, algorithmic challenges, data modeling, or need the absolute cheapest API costs
Choose Kimi if: You’re processing massive codebases (200K+ context) or academic papers with code
Choose Doubao if: You’re doing frontend/UI work (unbeatable visual coding), need multimodal integration, or want the Trae IDE ecosystem
Bottom line: On pure SWE-Bench, it’s essentially a three-way tie (76.8% vs 78.8% vs 73.1%), but Doubao’s visual coding capabilities and Trae integration create a significant real-world advantage for frontend developers that Western benchmarks—focused on text-based GitHub issue resolution—fail to capture.

Linch 9 Apr 2026 15:52 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Seth Herd’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
I make the agency argument explicitly here.

Linch 9 Apr 2026 7:11 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: ryan_greenblatt’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
I agree my complaints may be more strawmanny than ideal. I read only a subset of their posts and fairly quickly so it’s definitely possible I misunderstood some key arguments; though my current guess is that if I read more carefully I would not end up concluding that they’re overall more reasonable than my comment implies (my median expectation is that i’d go down in my estimation).

Linch

Why might we want a new name?

What criteria do we want in a new name?

To­mas Bjar­tur: The Last Prodigy

Tomas Bjartur: The Last Prodigy