presented without further comment, LW reposts Axios(!)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZLs7CcQuxozxqPd7f/scoop-trump-allies-open-new-front-against-anthropic-ceo-over

A memo began circulating within the White House this week that seeks to paint effective altruism as a fringe, cultish collective out of touch with mainstream America. The memo, obtained by Axios, places Amodei at the foundation of the movement, which defines itself as an effort to maximize the benefits of philanthropy.

Critics of the movement, which has ties to the AI research community, have called out its obsession with AI safety, animal welfare (including musings on shrimp consciousness) and other values they deem far from the U.S. mainstream.

The memo says it prioritizes “foreigners over citizens, shrimp over families, future hypothetical people over the living, and - on the current agenda - possible machine minds over Americans.”

In the view of the Florida-heavy White House and its allies, Anthropic is staffed with too many Biden-era liberals, Democrats and strange Californians.

The document lists a veritable parade of horribles for the average conservative mind: abortion, veganism, devaluing human life by overvaluing animals or granting “digital minds” civil rights-like protections.

This is a plausible explanation, but I am surprised that this git behavior is not more well-known as there have been multiple discussion about “supply-chain attacks” even before LLMs became widespread.

I have no fucking clue what’s going on here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Xzr9G5Atvyp7PEna7/ai-artificial-immigrants

Zvi “I made my chops playing pro MtG” Moskovitz discovers that baldly stating that AI will kill us all fails to convince people who have a lot of money riding on the status quo, and freaks out about it

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8eDaCvSRzzKCxKSEk/politics-gets-interested-in-those-trying-not-to-die

New York Post gets way more attention than that rag deserves, tbh

You wanna dance with Murdoch Sacks and Trump, you best bring your A game. Maybe use some of that FTX cash to hire some real lobbyists and skip the blogging.

404 Media: People Training OpenAI’s AI Fired for Using AI to Train the AI

the model collapse is coming from inside the house

Related, Mike Masnick at Techdirt is iffy at best about LLMs but this is a good take

Techdirt: The Apocalypse Will Not Be Sexy

This essential nuts-and-bolts safety work also doesn’t, typically, require brilliant and manly heroes to nobly die for the ashes of their fathers and the temples of their gods. Instead, the hard work of actual safety requires things that are much less sexy: empathy, conflicting values, and a deep understanding of tradeoffs that will never fully resolve. Those qualities are not highly esteemed in the present moment. But they are critical for tackling the actual threats and the actual risks, which aren’t as flashy, and don’t make for such fun headlines. AI safety matters, but we’re unlikely to move in the direction of actual safety if all the focus is on fantastical stories involving killer robots.

Followup to Trump’s Extremely Superior renaming of “AI” (https://awful.systems/post/9709966/12701983)

RawStory: Trump scrambles to fix ‘supreme’ poll as MAGA melts down over ungodly comparison

our friends are taking Donald Trump seriously

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HGJSGRwjPqhDEud5Y/you-should-go-vote-for-the-maga-rebranded-name-for-ai

I can’t belive the fucking New York Post is AI skeptic now

https://nypost.com/2026/09/19/us-news/openai-anthropic-oversold-security-breaches-to-pressure-feds-into-protecting-turf-insiders/

The election for the new Riksdag in Sweden was last Sunday, and I just checked the list of all votes, including for parties that didn’t crack the 4% electoral count limit

https://resultat.val.se/val2026/RD?r=S

If you scroll down past the racist assholes at the top you’ll find RegleraAI.nu (basically Regulate AI Now) which of course has a website: https://regleraai.nu/. Usual doomer stuff, just in Swedish.

They got 390 votes, more than explicitely Nazi Nordiska motståndsrörelsen at 355.

the thread has hit the orange site, lots of spluttering indignation

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49766911

points to previous submission

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985

here’s another Rat-explainer piece

https://www.iankduncan.com/personal/2026-09-16-sex-ai-and-the-apocalypse/

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746654, where commenters are predictably blasé about it all… “yeah yeah doesn’t everyone know who Big Yud is?”)

in general, I don’t think EA breaking into the mainstream like this led to the outcome they wanted - there’s way more discussion about weird sex and eugenics than the dangers of Robot Satan

Some LWer wanted OpenAI to spam a warning about AI killing us all to every user of their app

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gJJ9YHzuBvwAXrthW/there-is-a-channel-to-900m-weekly-users-what-goes-in-it

New Yorker writer talks to another journo about the recent doom hype

https://archive.ph/2pXlU

There’s way to much hype for my liking but might be interesting.

Important to note, Joshua Rothman states he is worried about stuff like virus release, global warming and drone warfare. Among the faithful, this is strictly not Doom ,because statistically a nucleus of the human race will survive. Only 100% guaranteed lethality for every human being on Earth is x-risk.

he has a slobstack (ofc)

btw did you know the Luddites weren’t actually working class (n/m they predated the Marxist proletariat by like 75 years or so)

https://www.verysane.ai/p/against-the-luddites

enjoy this rightwinger employing multiple rightwing tropes to decry that “AI safety” is viewed as leftwing:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Rx38cuCpL9hguLCDq/for-love-of-the-lightcone-don-t-partisanize-ai-safety

it’s all of course framed in the most parochially US-centric terms possible, and Extremely Online as well

maybe this grand project is undermined by the following exchange in the comments

niknoble: "It’s been interesting to see slowdown advocates worried about partisanization, when that is also a big worry of mine as an accelerationist. […]

reply by Hide “Why are you an accelerationist? Are you not concerned about everyone on earth being killed?”

reply to Hide by O O: “If you believe there’s low odds for doom, it’s a rational position.”

Good luck, safety advocates.

yeah I have nfc how bluesky and different views of it work but here’s that thread depicting our dear friends as a sex cult

https://skywriter.blue/@segyges.bsky.social/3mvom4b4dn22q

sure sounds like someone is salty they’re not being invited to the orgies

someone mentioned weird quasi-lefist SE Gyges in last week’s post, they have a LW account:

https://www.lesswrong.com/users/se-gyges?from=post_header

The new Maas biochips

So there are 2 explanations to why mssrs Altman and Amodei have decided to ‘slow down’ “AI” development:

1. it’s too dangerous, any misstep could awaken the evil Robot Satan and kill us all
2. the rate of progress in new GenAI models has slowed down dramatically, and there’s no obvious way to fix that

I’ll let you guess which explanation I find most likely.

edit I missed “blatant regulatory capture”

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/09/14/big-ai-sets-out-its-terms-for-regulatory-capture-and-calls-it-pace-the-frontier/5296067