Sven for short

Former @Stripe, @OpenDNS, @LinkedInEng. He/him. Safe(r) AI, cloud, and tech comms. NYTimes emoji expert. Opinions my own. Made with ❤️ in Indiana.

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

Deeply disappointed that @jackclarkSF doesn’t use the phrase “seizing the means of prediction” in the latest Import AI newsletter. 😂

[John Scott-Railton @jsrailton]

NEW: malware developers added nuclear & biological weapons text to to their spyware.

Goal? To trigger LLM safety refusals... so that their spyware wouldn't be analyzed by an AI security scanner.

Cleanest practical example I can think of for why over-indexing on first order safety alignment is risky.

When closed (and open) models ship with aggressive refusals, they will be sprinkled with second-order blindspots that attackers will discover...and exploit.

We are only in the earliest days of attackers leveraging these features, and it wouldn't surprise me if users systems that need to handle complex cybersecurity issues demand that models be less safety-blunted.

In the weeds: @SocketSecurity's post also shows why intention matters in how you design a malware analysis pipeline to avoid prompt manipulation.

H/T to colleagues that shared this with me https://t.co/f3Aj9TYxU4

[Miles Brundage @Miles_Brundage]

Yeah - also I'm glad to hear that Rep. Obernolte is thinking about splitting up GAAIA into a few pieces.

An obvious first step would be funding CAISI properly, with special hiring authorities + the ability to recoup some costs w/ a levy on AI companies. https://t.co/TulB7kII5F

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

Like, this tells me two things:

1) @jamestalarico has way more game than Ken Paxton or 99% of the politicians out there.

2) He’s decided to use those powers for good, not evil.

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

I just wanna know these baddies did to Talarico that made him join the seminary.

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

I just wanna know these baddies did to Talarico that made him join the seminary.

[Miles Cranmer @MilesCranmer]

This is an insane paper and I love it

https://t.co/DP8OR5NJf2

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

@kyliebytes Self-care is important.

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

Me: "I mean, A.I doesn't really 'evolve' ... it's not like there are some kind of lower synthetic life form that will presage the invention for more intelligent autonomous systems."

@ServiceNowRSRCH & @UofT researchers:

https://t.co/eAni8tfzoU

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

@_oRyca_ @atrupar Those Alaska error rates shooting the moon.

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

Based on my own research, the puzzle could just be “Find a decent rigid fork replacement for a Trek 7200 (non-FX) that won’t mess up the a2c height too much.”

[Miles Brundage @Miles_Brundage]

A job listing that makes sense only in the 21st century AD or the 21st century BC https://t.co/Vey4KTm4d9

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

@patio11 [Insert joke about 100 monkeys banging on typerwriters and Charles River Labs here]

[Miles Brundage @Miles_Brundage]

https://t.co/rN9B0Rto7E

https://t.co/KRT3Aq4yiW

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

“Let’s try to shame all the baddies” is a choice you can make, but I also think it’s also a severe misreading of the current social media moment, imho.

[Forrest Miller 🎥🏆 @AlwaysFlacko]

Lost in the "Talarico has a lobbyist girlfriend and she's VEGAN" story is a detail that apparently Brianna Menard is descended from Michel Branamour Menard the Canadian Fur Trader who founded Galveston, Texas and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, who Menard County is named after lol

[Sven for short @Stephen_Lynch]

Insane that this is taking off on X, given all of the other potential stories out there. 👀

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

Insane story from NYC:

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Samuel Alito’s son has worked as a lawyer inside Trump’s Treasury Department since early last year. The administration hid it.

No public resume, no LinkedIn, no mention on the Treasury website, outdated bar listings. Four former officials confirmed it.

The public was never told.

Here is why that matters.

Philip Alito served as an attorney-adviser in Treasury’s general counsel office, briefed on department matters across the board, while the Supreme Court took up a case in which the Treasury Department was a named defendant.

The department never disclosed the connection in court.

Justice Alito did not recuse.

The federal recusal law is plain. A justice must step aside in any case where his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

That is the test.

Not whether anyone can prove influence but whether a reasonable person looking at this would doubt it. A justice ruling on cases involving the very agency that employs his son fails that test on its face.

And Treasury sits at the center of many upcoming issues, including the fight over Trump’s $1.776 billion dollar fund to reward the January 6th rioters he pardoned. That fight could be headed to the Court too.

This is exactly why the honor system has failed.

The Supreme Court is the only court in America with no enforceable code of conduct. I support withholding funding from the Court until the justices adopt a binding code with real recusal review.

Congress holds the power of the purse.

We should use it.

https://t.co/t2aZrXpaoU

[David Singleton @dps]

Try a bit of Stripe nostalgia here: https://t.co/SW4Uv2wcc6

[Colin McCarthy @US_Stormwatch]

Three personal weather stations recorded 0.94-1.05 inches of rain in Davis in 15 minutes, which would make this an unofficial 1-in-1000 year rain event.

[Colin McCarthy @US_Stormwatch]

California this wet season:

- Wettest Oct–Dec on record in Santa Barbara, Ventura & parts of LA County
- Driest & warmest March in state history
- 115" February snowstorm + deadly avalanche near Donner Summit
- 2nd-lowest spring snowpack on record
- Northern Sierra on track for a top-5 wettest April on record
- Latest start to ski season ever in parts of the Sierra
- 21 straight days of tule fog in the Central Valley
- Christmas Day tornado in LA County
- 7.5 inches of snow in an hour on Christmas Eve in Mammoth
- 40 million people under a flood watch in late December

Did I miss anything?

[Colin McCarthy @US_Stormwatch]

After London reached an unprecedented 35°C (95°F) today, southern France could make a serious run at 40°C (104°F) in the next few days.

We have never seen a heatwave this intense this early in the year across Western Europe. It's only late May.

[Dylan Wood @DrWood95]

@daletanhardt Photo finish

[Miles Brundage @Miles_Brundage]

Now that the full EO is public, it's fair to say that many of these things in it should have just been done a long time ago, with now being better than never, and we just wasted another few days at least.

The voluntary program thing is more complicated... https://t.co/m5AvtK0BoE