This site has 156 blog posts.2/14/2026Prettify Your Text In-Browseropen sourcewebsite1/20/2026No Instrumental Convergence without AI Psychologyinstrumental convergencecritiqueAI12/23/2025Recontextualization Mitigates Specification Gaming Without Modifying the Specificationspecification gamingmats programAI12/23/2025Apply for Alignment Mentorship From TurnTrout and Alex Cloudmats programshard theorycommunityAI12/18/20252025-Era “Reward Hacking” Does Not Show that Reward Is the Optimization Targetreinforcement learningspecification gamingAI11/22/2025Output Supervision Can Obfuscate the CoTreinforcement learningmats programAI11/6/2025Advanced Privacy Despite Authoritarianismunderstanding the worldopen sourcepracticalcommunity11/6/2025Consistency Training Helps Stop Sycophancy and Jailbreaksactivation engineeringdeepmindAI10/28/2025My Open Source Contributionsopen sourcepersonal10/28/2025An Opinionated Guide to Privacy Despite Authoritarianismunderstanding the worldopen 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programAI3/5/2024Many Arguments for AI X-Risk Are WrongcritiqueAI2/10/2024Dreams of AI Alignment: The Danger of Suggestive NamesrationalitycritiqueAI1/19/2024Don’t Use the “Shoggoth” Meme to Portray LLMscritiqueAI1/2/2024Steering Llama-2 with Contrastive Activation Additionsactivation engineeringcorrigibilitymats programAI10/16/2023How Should TurnTrout Handle His DeepMind Equity Situation?practicaldeepmind10/13/2023Paper: Understanding and Controlling a Maze-Solving Policy Networkactivation engineeringshard theoryAI9/9/2023AI Presidents Discuss AI Alignment AgendashumorAI9/6/2023ActAdd: Steering Language Models without Optimizationactivation engineeringAI7/24/2023Open Problems in Activation Engineeringactivation engineeringAI6/20/2023Ban Development of Unpredictable Powerful Models?AI6/19/2023Mode Collapse in RL May Be Fueled by the Update Equationreinforcement learningAI6/2/2023Think Carefully Before Calling RL Policies “Agents”reinforcement learningAI5/13/2023Steering GPT-2-XL by 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About Alignmentshard theoryhuman valuesAI7/7/2022Human Values & Biases Are Inaccessible to the Genomeunderstanding the worldshard theoryhuman values6/30/2022Looking Back on My Alignment PhDgrowth storiesrationalitypersonalAI4/10/2022Emotionally Confronting Doomrationalitypracticalcommunity3/27/2022Do a Cost-Benefit Analysis of Your Technology Usagepractical2/22/2022ELK Proposal: Thinking Via A Human ImitatorAI1/22/2022Instrumental Convergence For Realistic Agent Objectivesinstrumental convergenceAI12/3/2021Formalizing Policy-Modification CorrigibilitycorrigibilityAI11/20/2021A Certain Formalization of Corrigibility Is VNM-Incoherentinstrumental convergencecorrigibilityAI11/18/2021Satisficers Tend To Seek Power: Instrumental Convergence Via Retargetabilityinstrumental convergenceAI11/2/2021You Should Read “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”rationalitytalk notespersonalgrinnellfiction9/22/2021Insights From Modern Principles of Economicsunderstanding the world8/9/2021When Most 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ViewcorrigibilityAI5/4/2020Insights From Euclid’s “Elements”scholarship and learningunderstanding the world4/22/2020Problem Relaxation as a TacticrationalityAI4/4/2020A Kernel of Truth: Insights From “A Friendly Approach to Functional Analysis”scholarship and learningunderstanding the world3/25/2020ODE to Joy: Insights From “A First Course in Ordinary Differential Equations”scholarship and learningunderstanding the world2/28/2020Conclusion to “Reframing Impact”impact regularizationAI2/27/2020Attainable Utility Preservation: Scaling to Superhumanimpact regularizationAI2/27/2020Reasons for Excitement About Impact of Impact Measure Researchimpact regularizationAI2/25/2020Choosing the Strength of the Impact Penalty Termimpact regularizationAI2/22/2020Attainable Utility Preservation: Empirical Resultsimpact regularizationAI2/22/2020Continuous Improvement: Insights From “Topology”summaries2/17/2020Attainable Utility Preservation: Conceptsimpact regularizationAI2/14/2020The Catastrophic Convergence Conjectureinstrumental convergenceimpact regularizationAI2/10/2020Attainable Utility Landscape: How The World Is Changedunderstanding the worldimpact regularization1/10/2020On Being Robustrationalitypersonal12/29/2019Judgment Day: Insights From “Judgment in Managerial Decision Making”scholarship and learningunderstanding the world12/22/2019Can Fear of the Dark Bias Us More Generally?understanding the world12/5/2019Seeking Power Is Often Convergently Instrumental in MDPsinstrumental convergenceAI11/19/2019How I Do Researchscholarship and learningrationality10/10/2019Thoughts on “Human-Compatible”AI10/7/2019The Gears of Impactunderstanding the worldimpact regularization10/1/2019World State Is the Wrong Abstraction for Impactunderstanding the worldimpact regularizationAI9/27/2019Attainable Utility Theory: Why Things Matterunderstanding the worldimpact regularization9/24/2019Deducing Impactunderstanding the worldimpact regularization9/23/2019Value Impactunderstanding the 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Insights From “Computability and Logic”summaries12/28/2018Penalizing Impact via Attainable Utility Preservationimpact regularizationAI9/18/2018Towards a New Impact Measureimpact regularization9/2/2018Impact Measure Desiderataimpact regularization8/24/2018Turning Up the Heat: Insights From Tao’s “Analysis II”summaries7/29/2018I Want to Take Off the Coatrationalitypersonal7/5/2018Making a Difference Tempore: Insights From “Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction”reinforcement learningsummaries6/30/2018Overcoming Clinginess in Impact Measuresimpact regularization6/16/2018Worrying About the Vase: Whitelistingimpact regularizationAI6/3/2018Swimming Upstream: A Case Study in Instrumental Rationalitygrowth storiespracticalpersonal6/1/2018Into the Kiln: Insights From Tao’s “Analysis I”understanding the worldsummaries5/3/2018Confounded No Longer: Insights From “All of Statistics”scholarship and learningsummaries4/30/2018Internalizing Internal Double Cruxrationalitypracticalpersonal4/22/2018The First Rung: Insights From “Linear Algebra Done Right”scholarship and learning4/3/2018Unyielding Yoda Timers: Taking the Hammertime Final Examrationality3/28/2018Open-Category ClassificationAI3/25/2018The Art of the Artificial: Insights From “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach”scholarship and learningAI3/21/2018Lightness and Uneasepersonal3/7/2018How to Dissolve Itrationalitypractical2/28/2018Set Up for Success: Insights From “Naïve Set Theory”scholarship and learning2/26/2018Walkthrough of “Formalizing Convergent Instrumental Goals”instrumental convergenceAI1/24/2018Interpersonal Approaches for X-Risk Educationcommunity