RSS

Thomas Kwa

Karma: 10,755

Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI.

Previously: MIRI → interp with Adrià and Jason → Head of linear regression at METR → OpenAI.

I have signed no contracts or agreements whose existence I cannot mention.

this is a joke

Re­search ac­cel­er­a­tion: The view in­side OpenAI

Thomas Kwa6 Sep 2026 17:14 UTC
32 points
8 comments1 min readLW link
(openai.com)

Be­cause 8 ≈ e², An­thropic’s re­searcher up­lift is plau­si­bly >2x

Thomas Kwa9 Jul 2026 4:30 UTC
54 points
9 comments12 min readLW link
(metr.org)

Re­search note: A sim­pler AI timelines model pre­dicts 99% AI R&D au­toma­tion in ~2032

Thomas Kwa12 Feb 2026 0:13 UTC
71 points
18 comments8 min readLW link
(metr.org)

Claude, GPT, and Gem­ini All Strug­gle to Evade Monitors

Vincent Cheng and Thomas Kwa
6 Aug 2025 20:28 UTC
61 points
3 comments5 min readLW link

METR: How Does Time Hori­zon Vary Across Do­mains?

Thomas Kwa and Vincent Cheng
14 Jul 2025 16:13 UTC
88 points
8 comments14 min readLW link
(metr.org)

Ts­inghua pa­per: Does RL Really In­cen­tivize Rea­son­ing Ca­pac­ity in LLMs Beyond the Base Model?

Thomas Kwa5 May 2025 18:56 UTC
70 points
22 comments2 min readLW link
(arxiv.org)

Should CA, TX, OK, and LA merge into a gi­ant swing state, just for elec­tions?

Thomas Kwa6 Nov 2024 23:01 UTC
116 points
35 comments1 min readLW link

The mur­der­ous short­cut: a toy model of in­stru­men­tal convergence

Thomas Kwa2 Oct 2024 6:48 UTC
37 points
0 comments2 min readLW link

Good­hart in RL with KL: Appendix

Thomas Kwa18 May 2024 0:40 UTC
12 points
0 comments6 min readLW link

Catas­trophic Good­hart in RL with KL penalty

Thomas Kwa and Adrià Garriga-alonso
15 May 2024 0:58 UTC
62 points
10 comments7 min readLW link

[Question] Is a ran­dom box of gas pre­dictable af­ter 20 sec­onds?

Thomas Kwa and habryka
24 Jan 2024 23:00 UTC
38 points
35 comments1 min readLW link

[Question] Will quan­tum ran­dom­ness af­fect the 2028 elec­tion?

Thomas Kwa and habryka
24 Jan 2024 22:54 UTC
66 points
52 comments1 min readLW link

Thomas Kwa’s re­search journal

Thomas Kwa and Adrià Garriga-alonso
23 Nov 2023 5:11 UTC
80 points
1 comment6 min readLW link

Thomas Kwa’s MIRI re­search experience

Thomas Kwa, peterbarnett, Jeremy Gillen, Bird Concept and Raemon
2 Oct 2023 16:42 UTC
178 points
54 comments1 min readLW link

Catas­trophic Re­gres­sional Good­hart: Appendix

Thomas Kwa and Drake Thomas
15 May 2023 0:10 UTC
25 points
1 comment9 min readLW link

When is Good­hart catas­trophic?

Drake Thomas and Thomas Kwa
9 May 2023 3:59 UTC
190 points
30 comments8 min readLW link1 review

Challenge: con­struct a Gra­di­ent Hacker

Thomas Larsen and Thomas Kwa
9 Mar 2023 2:38 UTC
42 points
10 comments1 min readLW link

Failure modes in a shard the­ory al­ign­ment plan

Thomas Kwa27 Sep 2022 22:34 UTC
26 points
2 comments7 min readLW link

Utility func­tions and prob­a­bil­ities are entangled

Thomas Kwa26 Jul 2022 5:36 UTC
15 points
5 comments1 min readLW link

Deriv­ing Con­di­tional Ex­pected Utility from Pareto-Effi­cient Decisions

Thomas Kwa5 May 2022 3:21 UTC
24 points
1 comment6 min readLW link