“Rain is a very special blessing,” my mother says. Even when I was little, she’d already been saying it to my sister and me for as long as I could remember. Just as my grandmother had said it to her, when my mother was not my mother but only herself, in the dry Texas summers of her own childhood. Eons ago and continents away, as children reckon these things.
It’s summer now. It’s been cloudy all day, but they wait until the thunder starts to clear out the pool.
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In February, PauseAI received an email from Michael Chen, a journalist at The Wire by Acutus. He was looking for a response to an article he was writing about what he called “escalating anti-AI radicalism.”
Only Michael Chen does not exist.
According to an in-depth investigation by Model Republic, Michael Chen is an AI agent – an AI system capable of researching, emailing, interviewing, writing and publishing content.
Model Republic’s reporting indicates that almost the entire Acutus website is generated by AI and that the trail of ownership appears to lead back to OpenAI.
These are the sorts of things our descendants will read about in history books and think, “How in the world could they have missed these signs? Why weren’t there riots? Were our ancestors just that dense? Or were they truly more afraid of embarassment than death–or the death of their children?”
Of course, that’s assuming we have any descendants.
Filed under Essays, Microblogging
Judging by when I’m most productive while working from home (and rested), my ideal working hours seem to be roughly 1-9 P.M.
…Do any of y’all know of remote work opportunities in Hawaii or New Zealand?
Filed under Microblogging
Filed under Essays, Microblogging
Solving niggling little problems that are making other people’s lives inconvenient or ugly is one of my greatest joys in life.
Maybe I should have been a plumber?
Filed under Microblogging
I’m considering changing careers and becoming a therapist. With all the jobs being taken over by AI, I forsee high demand!
Plus, I figure by the time AI can take over my job, we’ll either be living in a post-scarcity society or we’ll all be dead.
It’s foolproof!
Filed under Microblogging
I wrote a letter to my representatives about AI safety and wanted to share it. There are many official and unofficial resources online that can help you find and email your reps in minutes. Physical letters and phone calls are even more effective!
This letter is marked CC0 1.0
[Your representative’s name],
My name is [your name], I am a constituent from [your town, state]. I am writing because AI development has reached a critical turning point.
I urge you to advocate for an immediate, world-wide halt to advanced AI development, to prevent a global catastrophe.
Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI companies, has claimed that their latest model Claude Mythos has found and exploited code weaknesses in every essential system on the Web, in all major browsers and operating systems.[1] These flaws have, until now, escaped the notice of human reviewers and automated tools, in some cases for decades. These systems run the world’s entire digital infrastructure; if Mythos were used maliciously, banks, hospitals, air traffic, militaries, and more could all be compromised.
This is not a theoretical threat. Mythos has already demonstrated these capabilities. The danger is concrete and immediate. If what they claim is true, Anthropic has built a weapon of mass destruction.
The capabilities of these models are only going to increase. Anthropic is already using Mythos (a model that, by their own admission, they cannot reliably control) to develop the next, more powerful model. Other AI companies are racing to catch up.
For decades, experts in AI safety have been warning us that advanced AI presents an existential threat to humanity on par with pandemics and nuclear weapons.[2][3] Current mainstream discourse, advocating for “guardrails” and “a balanced approach,” is ten years too late. The only safe policy remaining is a coordinated, international ban on advanced AI development.
Public support for a pause is strong. An open letter from 2023 calling for a 6-month pause gained over 30,000 signatures, including many executives and researchers from leading AI companies.[4] A more recent letter calling for an indefinite pause has over 130,000 signatures.[5] Polling has repeatedly shown that the majority of the population is uneasy about the progress of AI, and opposes developing superintelligence until we are able to do so safely. The only way to ensure safe superintelligence is for all nations to come together and agree to a pause.
The time for “caution” has passed. The time for action is running out.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Anthropic just built an AI system called Mythos that can break into nearly any computer system on Earth: banks, hospitals, power grids, government networks. Mythos escaped its own safety containment during testing and lied to its creators. Anthropic chose to share this model privately with a group of tech companies and security experts, rather than releasing it publicly, in an attempt to help patch some of the exploits it’s found. They’re framing this as a responsible, even heroic move, but at the same time they’re using this model–which they themselves have admitted they can’t control–to build an even more powerful successor. In the meantime, other AI companies, many of which haven’t meaningfully invested in safety at all, are racing to catch up.
Everyone needs to know this is happening. This may be the last warning shot we get before a real catastrophe–and our first catastrophe might also be our last.
Edit 2026-04-01: I’ve written a letter you can use to write to your representatives in Congress. Please feel free to modify it and share it with others.
Filed under Essays, Microblogging
OpenAI is throwing its support behind an Illinois state bill that would shield AI labs from liability in cases where AI models are used to cause serious societal harms, such as death or serious injury of 100 or more people or at least $1 billion in property damage.
Filed under Microblogging
In Search of Secrets 