Chris King

AI is fun and cool. So were NFTs and Crypto, but people couldn’t handle the complexity and responsibility. I’m sure that won't be a problem for AI though!

[banteg @banteg]

>be me
>discover effective altruism
>apparently normal charity is inefficient
>why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing
>fair enough
>buy mosquito nets
>save lives
>numbers look good
>feel powerful

>couple years later
>someone asks an innocent question
>why only count people alive today
>huh
>future people matter too
>obviously
>my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet
>reasonable.jpg

>keep following logic
>what about their grandchildren
>also yes
>what about people in 500 years
>sure
>5000 years
>why not
>500 million years
>starting to get weird but morality is morality

>open calculator
>humanity could survive for an astronomically long time
>could colonize galaxy
>could have trillions upon trillions of descendants
>maybe digital people too
>maybe simulated civilizations
>maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds
>calculator starts smoking

>realize currently living humans are rounding error
>8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta
>future contains potentially 10^something people
>can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets

>new moral priority unlocked
>protect the long-term future

>stop thinking in units of "people helped"
>start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved"

>malaria?
>terrible
>but only kills existing humans
>AI extinction could delete the entire light cone
>nuclear war could permanently derail civilization
>bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years
>someone invents wrong constitution in 2140
>quadrillions suffer
>better fund governance workshop now

>friend says maybe we should improve hospitals
>explain opportunity cost
>friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people
>explain scope sensitivity
>friend stops inviting me to dinner

>need to decide what to fund
>easy
>expected value

>suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction
>sounds tiny
>but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives
>multiply
>mother of god

>$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies
>charity evaluation complete

>someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from
>expert judgement
>which expert
>us
>how calibrated
>extremely thoughtfully

>reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative
>still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude
>epistemic robustness achieved

>someone says maybe project doesn't work
>assign 20% chance
>still astronomical

>maybe project makes problem worse
>assign 5% chance
>still astronomical

>why 5
>because 30 felt pessimistic

>publish 46-page report
>contains seventeen sensitivity analyses
>every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign

>critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities
>yes
>that's literally why it's important

>critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical
>make probability smaller
>critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong
>make probability smaller again
>critic begins rubbing temples

>discover AI safety
>perfect longtermist cause
>AI might kill everyone
>or create utopia
>or seize galaxy
>or tile universe with paperclips
>or create billions of conscious software minds
>finally a problem with numbers big enough for me

>start AI safety nonprofit
>mission: prevent dangerous AI
>hire smartest people available
>smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI
>interesting

>we must understand capabilities to understand safety
>we must scale models to study alignment
>we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first
>we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong
>we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous

>outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies
>complicated field

>company releases stronger model
>very concerned
>company begins training even stronger model
>extremely concerned
>company raises $14 billion
>concern reaches unprecedented levels

>need to influence government
>future is at stake
>normal democratic process too slow
>politicians don't understand exponential curves
>public doesn't understand x-risk
>experts must guide them
>who counts as expert
>people who understand x-risk
>who understands x-risk
>our friends

>someone objects that this seems politically convenient
>explain we're representing future generations
>future generations unavailable for comment

>develop concept of value lock-in
>terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever
>therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in
>whose values
>let's circle back

>begin with impartial morality
>end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want
>beautiful arc

>meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things
>voting wrong
>having parochial attachments
>loving family more than strangers
>caring about local community
>getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible
>evolutionary biases everywhere

>explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted
>except intuition that future digital people count
>and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad
>and intuition that our probability estimates are sane
>and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future
>those intuitions survived peer review

>someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter
>inefficient
>could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher
>think of all the simulated people you just killed

>okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly

>PR team says "future generations deserve a voice"
>much better

>journalist asks what longtermism means
>say "future people matter"
>everyone agrees
>great
>journalist asks what follows from that
>well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures
>journalist raises eyebrow
>return to "future people matter"

>motte has entered the chat

>critic: of course future people matter
>me: glad we agree
>critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them
>me: why do you hate our grandchildren

>eventually notice uncomfortable implication
>if future value dominates everything
>then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future
>education matters because future institutions
>health matters because future productivity
>democracy matters because future trajectory
>human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy

>see starving child
>feel compassion
>check spreadsheet
>child's direct welfare contribution negligible
>but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality
>compassion restored

>tell myself this is impartial altruism

>one day assistant asks obvious question
>"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?"

>silence

>open spreadsheet
>increase column width
>add confidence interval

>assistant asks again
>"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?"

>stare into cosmic light cone

>10^50 people staring back

>none of them exist
>none of them can tell me
>none of them can falsify my assumptions

>realize I have invented the perfect constituency

>infinitely important
>completely silent
>and always represented by me

[Chris King @peergrid]

This thing I was not promised and was given access to like yesterday and was told up front my access would be temporary is now owed to me and having it taken away is against my human rights! I demand satisfaction.

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.

The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance.

Access to all other Claude models is not affected.

We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible.

Read our full statement: https://t.co/bwn0sximKZ

[ciphrd @ciphrd]

Statement about the future of fxhash

Hey fx community,

As you are aware, these times have been hard for platforms on NFT markets, and we're no exception. We recently had to scale down the team and have been working on scaling down our infrastructure. At this point in time, no one in the team is getting paid, there's myself and a handful of volunteers, as we're essentially running out of cash. I can understand why many platforms stopped trying, building this kind of product is draining you to the bone.

That being said, I am committed to getting us through this rough patch as I still deeply believe in such a tool existing for artists, but it's clear that the current model is not working. I've been thinking a lot about the future of fxhash, if any, and it came clear to me that the platform drifted from its initial goal of serving artists primarily along its journey.

I think at the root of the problem is that a tool serving artists should be fully owned by its users, and not operated by a small team of people, regardless of how benevolent might their intentions be. While it's always been a long-term goal of ours to fully decentralize the protocol at some point, now seem to be the only opportunity we'll have at it. It only seems like a tangible path towards the future in case the company could not keep supporting the product.

We're close to securing some money as a loan / investment, targeting end of June. Once we get this cash, it's clear that we will need to immediately change our trajectory.

The plan

- reduce operational costs to a minimum
- 4k$/mo in services -> will require 1-3 months of work
- 8k$/mo in employment -> reemploy a very small and focused team
- 2 devs
- 2-3 part-time members for helping across the board (admin, marketing, artist liaison, community, etc...)

- transition towards decentralization
- implement a DAO
- open-source everything
- figure out pipelines to slowly decentralize decision-making and ownership, from governance towards implementation
- open books: company financials for everyone to see

- first order of business to solve together: financial sustainability, targeting profitability
- consolidate the core product through governance
- chains supported
- features available
- etc...

This is the very last time we'll be able to raise cash in our current state, so essentially this will be our last shot at finding a way to build a sustainable long-lasting ecosystem. But I deeply think that the only way to do so will be collectively. It's essential that we reduce operational costs to a minimum until we figure out a sustainable path in the future.

The bridge till June

It's unclear whether we will be able to keep all the services running until we get cash. We took all the steps that we can and informed our providers, but their policies are understandably strict, I'll keep you updated about this.

[Chris King @peergrid]

@ProofOfCash @waitbutwhy And yet you call your commentary “schooling retards” because “humanity must work together” - sounds a lot like trying to change minds.

[Chris King @peergrid]

The poll was a poll. The experiment is the thought experiment. Unless you believe that if the poll had gone another way, a bunch of people would now be dead, the thought experiment is still an abstract thing to be discussed and debated as if it has not happened - because it has not.

[Chris King @peergrid]

@ProofOfCash @waitbutwhy I am sorry - are you losing your grip on reality? Do you believe this experiment has actually happened, and now we are talking about it in retrospect? What exactly do you think is happening here?

[Chris King @peergrid]

You really are missing the entire point, along with everyone else treating this as an exclusively game theoretical exercise. THAT is the boring and easy part. If we don’t care about anything but my own individual survival or survival of the greatest proportion of people or any other goal you might choose, then the game theoretic solution can be found on wikipedia. But even you don’t believe it is just game theory! Look at your other posts… This is a morality issue for you. And here you are - CURRENTLY CAMPAIGNING on behalf of the “solution” you believe in! It is clearly NOT forbidden, AND you do not believe it should be forbidden, or I guess you would not be here right now. I am saying - don’t just lie on the internet for points - ask yourself… would I be saying the same thing to my mom I am saying to strangers on X? Ask yourself the REAL ACTUAL question here. And… don’t feel obligated to tell us here on X what you discover. You would probably just lie about it anyway, like almost everyone else does (it’s only human).

[Chris King @peergrid]

Tim’s post literally describes a private vote by everyone on earth. You have added “simultaneous” and “identical information”. You are correct he gave no additional instructions (for example he was quite clear about the vote being private - why not add simultaneous? why not add immediate? why not add no coordination allowed?) - that does not mean some additional instructions are ok to add and some are not, depending on which version of the thought experiment is more interesting to you. I have asked an extension of the thought experiment, a completely allowed one which, I am sorry, DOES make it more interesting than your version - everyone is framing this as moral, not merely game theoretical, INCLUDING YOU in your other posts, so I highlight the moral trap around hypocrisy. Even with campaigning, this is still completely unlike any vote any of us has ever seen, and it brings the ACTUALLY important part of the thought experiment, the difference between what we say and what we do, in starker relief by adding multiple audiences - we can say different things to different people. Rather than campaigning about this all on X now, as you and many others have been, we can have the debate in our own minds, as part of the thought experiment itself. I have no interest in dodging the original question, I have wrestled with it and still have not decided what I personally would press. I am however 100% sure I will be telling everyone I care about to vote red. I may even tell everyone else to vote blue. I am admitting to hypocrisy one way or the other.

[Chris King @peergrid]

Adding extra rules that he never gave turns this into a completely different game. Tell me: how many private votes have you ever in your life seen where coordination / campaigning / prep time was banned? Alternatively: how many have you seen where all those things HAPPENED A TON?

We might as well invent more crazy rules with absolutely no rational or any other basis. Since it would make the game even easier to analyze, let’s just assume when he said “everyone” then he just meant @ProofOfCash, unlike every other time anyone has ever used the word “everyone”. Therefore I guess by that definition yeah, no prep is possible since there’s only one player.

Bro just give up, delete your braindead comments, you know you are wrong - you read WAY more into the simple text of the question than could reasonably be inferred. Instead, how about you try addressing my original question? You might have an interesting thought. But I worry you are too tied to a position you have staked out across apparently a ton of comments on this stupid game to finally admit - a sane, loving human is going to tell the people they love to vote red, even if they themselves might vote blue.

[Chris King @peergrid]

Oh shit I missed that part in OP’s comment - you really must have masterful reading abilities. Can you please highlight all the parts of OP’s post I missed?

You mention game theory and focal points as if you didn’t just learn about them by reading someone else’s comment, so let me ask you - is there a tautology in what you are saying? Since I can tell you won’t figure it out, I will give you the answer… Yes. Focal points occur in games with no coordination. So a game that you declare to not allow coordination could have focal points. The existence of focal points in your characterization of the game does not justify your characterization of the game as requiring no coordination.

[Chris King @peergrid]

@TimmyChalk @waitbutwhy Where does it say that is the whole point?

Also: I can press blue and STILL hope
my kid pressed red. I can hope
my kid pressed red REGARDLESS of what I think is “right” or “moral.” Think harder.

[Chris King @peergrid]

@ProofOfCash @waitbutwhy I suggest you re-read OP. The *vote* is private… there is no ban on campaigning or attempting to influence the votes of others. Don’t worry, I won’t be snarkily awarding you anything.

[Chris King @peergrid]

@trq212 Cool - can you guys fix the Linux seccomp sandbox bug so I can unpin from version .91?

[Chris King @peergrid]

Finally I can replace the cron+posttooluse hook combo I was using to poll telegram / auto-inject during multi-turn flows! Much easier to just port what I had to a custom channel rather than reuse the telegram one - has whisper audio transcription + history/search via sqlite. TYVM!

[Chris King @peergrid]

AI has entered the "crypto influencer loses crypto keys to obvious scam, wallet drained" phase of the hype cycle. OpenClaw is dangerous - designed to be used by any normie and it immediately impresses, but then normies do normie stuff and get wrecked.

[Summer Yue @summeryue0]

Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw “confirm before acting” and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldn’t stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb.

[Chris King @peergrid]

@artnome Just wait til AI replaces homeless people too.

"Spare a few btc for some tokens, man?"
"Nah you're just gonna blow it on LinkedIn slop"

[Chris King @peergrid]

Blew thru Claude Max 20x weekly quota by Wednesday afternoon. Agent teams are game changing - sooo much less work than planning out workflows of sequential phases of parallel herds of background agents. Idea -> Implementation with no concern about "How".

[Giannis Sourdis (🦉,🦉) @Greekdx]

It’s funny how everyone is dunking on NG and saying “I said this would happen ages ago”.

Reality check but most marketplaces/platforms don’t exist anymore, even older players than NG.

RIP:
Makersplace
Knownorigin
Async Art
Nifty Gateway

The only ones left from 2020 (or older) are Rarible and Super Rare (and OS)

Foundation was abandoned by its founders, Art Blocks is not releasing anymore, Fxhash is experimenting, Objkt is very slow lately, highlight seems abandoned and Opensea is focusing on token trading…

The only person I clearly remember that called all of this early was @artnome 🤷🏻‍♂️

At least we still have Manifold and Transient for smart contracts and Verse, Fellowship, Heft, Nguyen Wahed and Feral File, Gallery Met for curated platforms/galleries. (I’m definitely forgetting some).

[Nifty Gateway Studio @niftygateway]

Today, we are announcing that the Nifty Gateway platform will be closing on February 23, 2026. Starting today, Nifty Gateway is in withdrawal-only mode.

Nifty Gateway was launched in 2020 with the vision of revolutionizing digital art. Since launching, Nifty supported dozens of innovative drops and brought new creative experiences to life. We are incredibly proud of the work the Nifty team has pioneered and grateful to Nifty Gateway’s customers and artists for joining us on this journey.

Customers with a current balance of USD or ETH, or who hold an NFT, will be notified by email with instructions for moving their assets off of the Nifty platform. Please reach out to [email protected] with any questions.