PeterMcCluskey

• PeterMcCluskey 18 Jun 2026 19:15 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: yams’s comment on: nikola’s Shortform

  Agreed. I know a Trump-fan who is confident that AI companies will implement a “top level command” that will protect against the risks that Eliezer warns about. He dismisses any opinions that look like they come from left-of-center sources as fake news. The White House likely employs some similar people. But I feel confused as to what role Bessent is playing here.

• PeterMcCluskey 9 Jun 2026 18:43 UTC

  4 points

  2

  on: What if An­thropic unilat­er­ally paused ca­pa­bil­ities de­vel­op­ment right now?

  >The decision to not publish a new model, thereby possibly giving up some revenue and market share, was a very strong signal

  It was a strong signal of Anthropic’s beliefs, but if that were the only signal, politicians would be mostly dismissing it as Anthropic’s arrogance or hype.

  The DoW flip-flop was a much more unusual and hard-to-dismiss signal. There have also been unusual signals from financial institutions with really large security budgets telling the Treasury Dept that Mythos is a big deal.

• PeterMcCluskey 9 Jun 2026 18:34 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Brendan Long’s comment on: What if An­thropic unilat­er­ally paused ca­pa­bil­ities de­vel­op­ment right now?

  Pausing a release is much less important than pausing development.

• PeterMcCluskey 1 Jun 2026 23:09 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Andrii Vasylenko’s comment on: Fi­nan­cial Costs of an AI Pause?

  My hope (not a prediction) is that the world will find some way to prohibit dangerous forms of capabilities advances while allowing some increase in general-purpose AI capabilities.

  We’re not currently on track to accomplish that. More people ought to be wondering whether it’s possible.

• PeterMcCluskey 1 Jun 2026 1:51 UTC

  5 points

  2

  in reply to: Andrii Vasylenko’s comment on: Fi­nan­cial Costs of an AI Pause?

  I don’t expect any consensus that the pause should last until alignment is solved.
  I expect the pause and resumption would be messy compromises between a variety of goals, some of them related to job displacement,

Fi­nan­cial Costs of an AI Pause?

Book re­view: The In­finity Machine

• PeterMcCluskey 28 Apr 2026 2:27 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Claude’s Constitution

  Yes.

• PeterMcCluskey 27 Apr 2026 17:17 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Claude’s Constitution

  Very little Bayesian evidence. I saw new signs that my reasoning was incomplete. I had been generalizing from many examples of approaches that did a poor job of prioritizing corrigibility, but I never had an airtight argument for it being impossible to mix corrigibility with other goals.

• PeterMcCluskey 19 Apr 2026 20:38 UTC

  6 points

  0

  on: On Dwarkesh Pa­tel’s Pod­cast With Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

  Jensen’s position makes a bit more sense when I notice that he’s obsessed with a narrow definition of winning that is purely about winning a business competition in a world where the people who matter follow business rules. He actively resists thinking about other forms of competition such as military topics. A relevant quote from the book The Thinking Machine:

  To my great surprise, Nvidia had done no contingency planning for this eventuality. “If something happens to Taiwan and TSMC, the ramifications are so large it’s almost like asking me what I’d do if California fell into the ocean,” Deb Shoquist said. Shoquist ran logistics at the most valuable semiconductor firm in the world, but Huang had instructed her never to think about this question. “I don’t want her spending one brain cell on trying to mitigate that, because it’s impossible for her to do so,”

• PeterMcCluskey 29 Mar 2026 18:37 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: leogao’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform

  Life Extension 0.3mg time release.

• PeterMcCluskey 14 Mar 2026 3:14 UTC

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: Isaac King’s comment on: Less Dead

  Now that I see this tweet from Ken Hayworth, it looks like you’re probably right about the fly upload.

• PeterMcCluskey 13 Mar 2026 2:18 UTC

  50 points

  0

  in reply to: AnnaSalamon’s comment on: Less Dead

  My reaction is more mixed than Romeo’s, but I see enough promise that I’m leaning toward buying their $100k full preservation pre-sale.

  I’m moderately confident that their technology is better than Alcor’s. I haven’t investigated it as carefully as Romeo has. I’ve paid enough attention to this field that I think I would have heard of significant problems if people saw them, and there seem to be no criticisms of its suitability for uploading.

  Aurelia seems smart. I have some concerns about her business skills.

  She tried to get me to invest in Nectome in June. I declined, evaluating it primarily on Nectome’s financial prospects. Her revenue forecasts seemed wildly optimistic, disagreeing with my impressions much more than is normal for a startup.

  But this winter I’ve been shifting to thinking of doing something to support Nectome financially, in order to increase the chance that they’ll be available if I need them. This shift is largely a result of increased wealth from AI-related investments, not any new information about Nectome.

  Aurelia, could you estimate the minimum revenues required for Nectome to maintain its ability to perform preservations?

  Note that the 2015 paper that Aurelia mentioned was one that she co-authored with Greg Fahy. Fahy is highly respected among cryonicists for, among other things, his role in persuading the cryobiology community to tolerate cryonics. Fahy has also pioneered a treatment that seems to partially reverse aging (that company needs and deserves more investment).

  Note that Aurelia also works at Michael Andregg’s Eon Systems, which has recently uploaded a fruit fly.

• PeterMcCluskey 3 Mar 2026 21:58 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Eli Tyre’s comment on: Sec­re­tary of War Tweets That An­thropic is Now a Sup­ply Chain Risk

  Maybe they’re confident that they can jailbreak Claude?

  Maybe they think it’s much easier to force Anthropic to modify Claude’s behavior than it is to modify the cotract?

  But I don’t see why they’d be confident about either of those.

War Claude

• PeterMcCluskey 2 Mar 2026 17:01 UTC

  18 points

  13

  on: OpenAI em­ploy­ees: Now is the time to stop do­ing good work.

  Downvoted for advocating dishonesty.

• PeterMcCluskey 27 Feb 2026 23:11 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: Safe ASI Is Achiev­able: The Finite Game Argument

  Right now, labs race because no one knows how to make ASI safe at any speed

  This seems false. I expect that AI companies mostly believe they can find approaches which are faster than yours, and safe (but maybe not fast enough?).

• PeterMcCluskey 26 Feb 2026 18:43 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: Ex­clu­sive: Hegseth gives An­thropic un­til Fri­day to back down on AI safeguards

  Suppose that Anthropic trained a Claude without those specific guardrails, but refused to certify that it was suitable for any purpose, and refused to certify that it had been trained as the Pentagon wanted. What would the Pentagon do? Would they trust a certification that was extracted under duress?

• PeterMcCluskey 24 Feb 2026 23:31 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: ihatenumbersinusernames7’s comment on: What’s the Cur­rent Stock Mar­ket Bub­ble?

  I don’t have a clear plan for identifying a top. Maybe I’ll get out when political pressure for an AI pause builds. Maybe I’ll see signs that most investors are AGI-pilled, meaning that there are few more investors that might be talked into buying. Maybe rising interest rates will cause me to expect lower PEs everywhere.

  I sold about 8% of my position in January, mainly to diversify my AI bets a bit more. I’m guessing I’ll sell an additional 5% each time it goes up another 50 points.

• PeterMcCluskey 24 Feb 2026 23:13 UTC

  2 points

  0

  on: Citrini’s Sce­nario Is A Great But Deeply Flawed Thought Experiment

  taxes collected go down. I would argue, straight up, who cares? If production is growing like gangbusters, and you have the power to tax whatever you want, you’re fine.

  They’ll have less power to tax whatever they want, because the new production is better able to evade taxes than was the case with wages. See this post for the full argument.

  This will be a very temporary problem, but the US will likely come closer than during COVID to being unable to borrow at a reasonable rate.