LessWrong (30+ Karma)

In August 2026 Eliezer Yudkowsky and Geoffrey Irving had a 90-minute debate at the ILIAD III Conference. You can watch the "Fixed Audio"-version on YouTube. They first identify their disagreements like How hard is superalignment? and discuss the theory of impact of Irving's new organization Resolution. They then go into depth on scalable oversight.
Epistemic Effort: I transcribed the audio using 5 services and merged those using Claude Fable 5.1. Then I spent ~6 hours carefully reviewing and editing the transcript. (I also added links and [disagreement which they indicated non-verbally]. Subheadings by Claude Fable 5.2.)
Introductions
Yudkowsky [00:00]: Hi, I'm Eliezer, well-known Harry Potter fan fiction author. [cheering] [laughter]
Irving [00:10]: I'm Geoffrey Irving. I'm now the chief scientist at Resolution. I was at, for better or worse, various labs before, and also AISI.
Audience member: And Pixar.
Irving: And Pixar. [laughter]
Survey of disagreements
Yudkowsky: So we're going to try to resolve all of our open disagreements over the course of the next hour. [laughter] An impossible task, but not as impossible as some, really. [laughter] So I would propose that we maybe take turns stating beliefs, that we suspect the other might disagree with, that we [...]
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Outline:
(00:56) Introductions
(01:29) Survey of disagreements
(02:10) How hard is superalignment?
(10:24) Resolution, singular learning theory and capabilities externalities
(16:32) Should anyone do alignment research
(18:41) Mech interp and alien concepts
(24:20) Resolution's theory of impact
(31:12) Depth: scalable oversight
(31:17) Is imprecise training okay?
(34:38) Scalable oversight as interactive proofs
(37:10) Biased verifiers
(41:31) Scholastic vs experimental method
(45:13) Test case: Bio Anchors 2021
(52:40) Collusion and the society of Irvings
(59:37) Where exactly does the scheme break
(01:02:43) What a verifier needs that a coin lacks
(01:11:29) Audience questions
(01:11:33) Break
(01:13:43) "If not X, we're doomed"
(01:16:47) Is the current world also very bad
(01:20:00) What Resolution wants to automate
(01:24:20) Is any alignment researcher blocked on whether a theorem is true?
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First published:

November 14th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cssj22TretAQQajZ4/transcript-yudkowsky-and-irving-debate-scalable-oversight

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. Subtitle: This mad race must end.
Note: I think this is partially me working through my plans and partially my emotions, so imo it's less epistemically rigorous than ideal for LessWrong.



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First published:

November 13th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6PydFibiADKrxGzcn/my-tentative-plans-given-less-than-one-year-left-to-change


Linkpost URL:
https://linch.substack.com/p/i-plan-to-drop-everything-to-push

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
When we say "space is big", it's partly meant as a correction to images like this:
Wikimedia source.
where, for simplicity, celestial objects are shown in unrealistically close proximity—like Jupiter is just down the hall from Mars.
As we all know, the planets of the solar system are actually really far apart, even relative to their huge size. In Sweden's 1:20,000,000 to-scale solar system model, Earth and Venus are just ~2 feet in diameter, yet over a mile apart. In other terms, they're several thousand "Earth-widths" apart:
Horizontal distance not to scale, wouldn't fit on screen.
And we all know that's just the start of it: the stars are incredibly far apart. Finland also has a to-scale model of the solar system, but it's 150 times more condensed than Sweden's at 1:3,000,000,000. Its model of our sun, Sol, is just ~1.5 feet in diameter.
Its model of the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is in Australia.
Horizontal distance [...]
The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:

November 14th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2zyskdas6TsL9dqNg/outer-space-is-not-consistently-big

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:
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After a couple of years working in data and tech at GiveDirectly, I left to work in politics, campaigning for candidates at the state, local, and federal levels. I most recently managed Mayor Zohran Mamdani's general election campaign, but earlier this year, recognizing the urgency of the AI moment, I began as a senior advisor at Guardrails Alliance. In my new role, I believe the analysis and tactics we’ve long used and studied on the populist left can help us win the fight for AI safety and shared benefits.
The fight for AI regulation is fundamentally the same type of fight against corporate power that the populist left and labor have led throughout history. The message and tactics that win that fight are both effective and incredibly popular, and embracing them will help us put the American people in control of AI today and permanently in control of their futures. Here– in what I am told is likely the shortest LessWrong post of all time– I'll explain what the AI safety movement can learn from the populist left as it attempts to raise the salience of its message, build political power, and ultimately pass transformational legislation.
First, we [...]
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First published:

November 14th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kXA22cZ6BdYdyL3Jz/i-was-zohran-s-campaign-manager-here-s-what-the-ai-safety-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

One of the great mysteries of capitalism is the nature of the "firm". It's a question that is near and dear to my heart as someone that's been "doing startups" for the last six years, and almost every startup founder has considered it whether they realize it or not.
There are two ways of asking The Mystery of the Firm, depending on your initial inclination. The most generic way to ask it is: When and why do businesses transact with each other, instead of doing things in-house? What determines the shape and size of businesses, in different sectors of the economy?
A more pointed way to ask the question is: Why isn't there just one big corporation? One Big Corporation would have a lot of advantages; it doesn't have to pay someone a gross margin on its inputs, it'd have massive advantages of scale in place like media or software, and (presumably) it'd have a much easier time sharing information between components that would ordinarily be different firms.
Economists have many ways of answering this question. My preferred explanation, which is compatible with a lot of others, is that the primary bottleneck on firm size are Moral Mazes. [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
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First published:

November 13th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zdLN7bLPnh5jzWCAx/agi-is-probably-bad-for-startups-even-if-it-doesn-t-lead-to

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.