Adam Becker

😉

Thanks, glad it was helpful for you!

The Useful Idiots of AI Doomsaying Those who predict that superintelligence will destroy humanity serve the same interests as those who believe that it will solve all of our problems.

Oh I'm very excited to read this. (And FWIW, death and apocalyptic thinking are two of the main themes in MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER.) I'm guessing you've already seen it, but on the off chance you didn't, my review of Yudkowsky's book is here: www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

This conversation with @edzitron.com was so much goddamn fun, and I've been bowled over by the response - friends and kind internet strangers are both telling me that it's their favorite conversation with me they've heard yet. Thanks, all. We had a great time recording it & we'll be doing another.

Thank you!

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks!

Thank you!

And they didn't even understand the philosophy they read

The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion

Not everywhere in the East Bay. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/t...

Yuuuup.

The AI Kids Take San Francisco Brilliant, workaholic teenagers are flooding the city — and reshaping our future in their image.

Nonetheless, this is a remarkable piece of writing. I haven't posted all the best bits here. Go read it. And congratulations to you, @kerryhowley.bsky.social!

How do you make contact with the intelligence rising up from the machines around you? Do you build it a body? Do you offer it yours? It is perhaps tedious to point out that we are always operating under the shadow of destruction, deploying tools that might end us, convincing ourselves, not without reason, that if we don’t build the bomb, someone with worse intentions will. Not a single one of the AI kids had attempted to lecture me about a theory or suggested I read a paper; it was not me they were trying to program. Somewhere along the way, drawn into their swell, I had begun to think of large questions about the nature of AI as New York questions, millennial questions, distant from the center of things. Where it mattered, humans were not debating AI; they were merging with it. You order the parts you need, you learn, you debug. The kids carry on with the crisp clarity of engineers, integrating what is immediately useful, discarding or rewriting what is not. No one will ask your permission to build a world you do not understand.

At the end here, I actually disagree with @kerryhowley.bsky.social a bit. I don't think this is going anywhere meaningful. This is the rise of a scam economy, not an incomprehensible transhuman future. This crap won't work, but it will lead to an even more toxic startup culture in tech.

“We help make AI applications more efficient by optimizing prompts and reducing token usage with agent workflows,” he says amiably. He also DJs. He’s Indian Canadian, has participated in 200 hackathons, and thinks there’s nothing to worry about, visa-wise; Trump, he says, will probably *increase* legal immigration.

God, these kids are so cooked.

“You’re the oldest of four kids (you have three younger brothers who all worship you), a former Division I fencing athlete at UC Berkeley who grew up in Detroit,” Dumpster told the AI. Detail by detail, he was transforming Claude into his ideal VC. “Your adaptability between high society and down-to-earth spaces is legendary — you’re a concert violinist who plays first chair, but you also show up uninvited at dive bars with your fiddle to play impromptu sets … You skateboard (longboard only — you have a bit of disdain, but don’t mention it — for non-longboarders).” Dumpster added, “You DJ frequently on the Robot Heart bus at Burning Man.” He called his AI venture capitalist “No Cap,” as in “no valuation cap” but also as in “no lie.”

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahaha

oh no

Everyone understands that elsewhere, science funding has disappeared, graduate students left hanging, academic departments in existential crisis. It would not seem to be a good time for science in the United States. The students politely acknowledge this reality, but it is not the air they breathe. “It’s like, okay, so if government money is not a reliable source anymore,” says Sanjana, “okay, let’s see how we can actually make this work and make this happen. Academia and industry is intertwined here more than ever. And I actually really like that because I think it’s important to take work that is new and innovative — ” “And translate it,” says Sid. The undergraduates know “four or five” people working for cryonics start-ups.

*screaming, throwing things*

Cryonics is not a thing. It is not a thing. It is a scam for turning dead people into frozen meat slurry.

But sure, whatever.

Giulia will leave the U.S. tomorrow; the summer is over, the house will shut down. But she feels that S.F. is home. “Italy is very driven on pleasure and on beauty,” she says, leaning against a chair and playing with her hair. “And here I feel like I’m so much connected to the people here, because it is mission driven. There is more than aperitivo and pasta and vino — ” “Who is Vino?” asks Sanjana.

1. lol, lmao even
2. Hell of an advertisement for Italy after living in the Bay as long as I have.

A filing cabinet for interesting people,” Pat calls it. In the elevator the buttons are labeled in service of this goal. Floor 4: ROBOTICS. (The robot fight was held in the basement.) 9: AI. 11: LONGEVITY. 2: SPACESHIP. It’s on the 15th floor that a swinging robot arm encased in glass attempts and fails to make me a latte and on the HUMAN FLOURISHING floor (14), where blankets and pillows are placed in anticipation of productivity-enhancing meditation, that I wander into a talk by the Neurophenomenology and Psychedelic Research Consortium. The crypto floor (12) is

The dream is always the same: go to space and live forever. 🙄

Humans are “very bad at being self-aware,” he says between bites. “Like, What are the five emotions you feel right now and what percentage? The whole idea of our work is to use deep algorithms and computational neuro to, uh, understand state of mind from brain scans alone.”

Oh god it just gets worse

Christine’s P(doom) is “honestly … 5 to 15 percent,” but for now she and a close friend share a light-filled room and their days are filled with stimulating people, like the guy building a “rizz master app,” who “actually gives the most insightful advice,” and Carsten, a Swiss German 27-year-old who was designing AI-involved sandals but recently pivoted to drug testing.

I hate that I understand this sentence, and that this is totally familiar here in the Bay Area. @kerryhowley.bsky.social is doing important work documenting these horrors. (Source: nymag.com/intelligence...)

@edzitron.com is joined in studio by astrophysicist @adambecker.bsky.social to talk about his new book More Everything Forever, the BS AGI story, why Eliezer Yudkowsky should never be taken seriously, and why billionaires love LLMs. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-better-offline-150284547/episode/radio-better-offline-adam-becker-296360958

@edzitron.com is joined in studio by astrophysicist @adambecker.bsky.social to talk about his new book More Everything Forever, the BS AGI story, why Eliezer Yudkowsky should never be taken seriously, and why billionaires love LLMs.

www.iheart.com/podcast/1119...

One of the stories that didn't make it into my book was about a group of Rationalists who decided that their powers of reasoning were so strong that they could try highly addictive drugs like meth a few times without becoming addicted. And of course, they all got addicted and it was a mess.

One of the stories that didn't make it into my book was about a group of Rationalists who decided that their powers of reasoning were so strong that they could try highly addictive drugs like meth a few times without becoming addicted. And of course, they all got addicted and it was a mess.

I know - I've been on Gil's podcast. 😉 bsky.app/profile/gild...

Yep. The core drive is to make everything simple, because the idea of a complex world that they don't understand, and thus don't control, is just too terrifying to directly countenance.

Yep. Anything to keep it going. Andreessen said that "any deceleration of AI will cost lives," and called slowing down AI "a form of murder." These billionaires are so entitled — and so terrified of their own inevitable deaths — that they frame any limits on their own power in apocalyptic terms.

Had a great conversation with @edzitron.com - check it out!

Thank you!

Thanks!

This was a good one — check it out Wednesday!