Why AI Safety Won't Make America Lose The Race With China
Release Date: 12/02/2025
Best Of Moltbook
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
is “a social network for AI agents”, although “humans [are] welcome to observe”. The backstory: a few months ago, Anthropic released Claude Code, an exceptionally productive programming agent. A few weeks ago, a user modified it into Clawdbot, a generalized lobster-themed AI personal assistant. It’s free, open-source, and “empowered” in the corporate sense - the designer how it started responding to his voice messages before he explicitly programmed in that capability. After trademark issues with Anthropic, they changed the name first to Moltbot, then to OpenClaw. Moltbook is...
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Slightly Against The "Other People's Money" Argument Against Aid
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
In the comments to last year’s USAID post, Fabian : While i am happy for the existence of charity organisations, i don't get why people instead of giving to charity are so eager to force their co-citizens to give. If one charity org is not worth getting your personal money, find another one which is. But don't use the tax machine to forcefully extract money for charity. There are purposes where you need the tax machine, preventing freerider induced tragedy of the commons. But for charity? There are no freeriders. If you neither give nor receive, you are just neutral. The receivers are not...
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Highlights From The Comments On Scott Adams
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[original post: ] Table of Contents: 1: Should I Have Written This At All? 2: Was I Unfair To Adams? 3: Comments On The Substance Of The Piece 4: The Part On Race And Cancellation (INCLUDED UNDER PROTEST) 5: Other Comments 6: Summary/Updates
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The Dilbert Afterlife
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Thanks to everyone who sent in condolences on my recent death from prostate cancer at age 68, but that was Scott Adams. I (Scott Alexander) am still alive. Still, the condolences are appreciated. Scott Adams was a surprisingly big part of my life. I may be the only person to have read every Dilbert book before graduating elementary school. For some reason, 10-year-old-Scott found Adams’ stories of time-wasting meetings and pointy-haired bosses hilarious. No doubt some of the attraction came from a more-than-passing resemblance between Dilbert’s nameless corporation and the California...
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Mantic Monday: The Monkey's Paw Curls
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
The Monkey’s Paw Curls Isn’t “may you get exactly what you asked for” one of those ancient Chinese curses? Since we last spoke, prediction markets have gone to the moon, rising from millions to billions in monthly volume. For a few weeks in October, Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan was the world’s youngest self-made billionaire (now it’s some AI people). Kalshi is . The catch is, of course, that it’s mostly degenerate gambling, especially sports betting. Kalshi is . Polymarket does better - only 37% - but some of the remainder is things like - currently dominated by the “140 -...
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SOTA On Bay Area House Party
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[previously in series: , , , , , , , ] Every city parties for its own reasons. New Yorkers party to flaunt their wealth. Angelenos party to flaunt their beauty. Washingtonians party to network. Here in SF, they party because Claude 4.5 Opus has saturated , and the newest AI agency benchmark is PartyBench, where an AI is asked to throw a house party and graded on its performance. You weren’t invited to Claude 4.5 Opus’ party. Claude 4.5 Opus invited all of the coolest people in town while gracefully avoiding the failure mode of including someone like you. You weren’t invited to Sonnet...
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The Permanent Emergency
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
One morning around 6, the police banged on our door. “OPEN UP!” they shouted, the way police shout when they definitely have an alternative in mind for if you won’t. I was awake at the time, because the kids were up early and I was on shift. I opened the door. The cops seemed mollified by the fact that I was carrying twin toddlers and looked too frazzled to commit any difficult crimes. They said they’d gotten a 9-1-1 call from my house with plenty of screaming. Had there been any murders in the past hour or so?
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Highlights From The Comments On Boomers
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[original post: ] Before getting started: First, I wish I’d been more careful to differentiate the following claims: Boomers had it much easier than later generations. The political system unfairly prioritizes Boomers over other generations. Boomers are uniquely bad on some axis like narcissism, selfishness, short-termism, or willingness to defect on the social contract. Anti-Boomerism conflates all three of these positions, and in arguing against it, I tried to argue against all three of these positions - I think with varying degrees of success. But these are separate claims that could...
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You Have Only X Years To Escape Permanent Moon Ownership
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
If you’re not familiar with “X years to escape the permanent underclass”, see , or the , , and articles that inspired it. The “permanent underclass” meme isn’t being spread by poor people - who are already part of the underclass, and generally not worrying too much about its permanence. It’s preying on neurotic well-off people in Silicon Valley, who fret about how they’re just bourgeois well-off rather than future oligarch well-off, and that only the true oligarchs will have a good time after the Singularity. Between the vast ocean of total annihilation and the vast continent...
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Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[Original post: ] Table of Contents 1: When was the vibecession? 2: Is the vibecession just sublimating cultural complaints? 3: Discourse downstream of the Mike Green $140K poverty line post 4: What about other countries? 5: Comments on rent/housing 6: Comments on inflation 7: Comments on vibes 8: Other good comments 9: The parable of Calvin’s grandparents 10: Updates / conclusions
info_outlineIf we worry too much about AI safety, will this make us “lose the race with China”1?
(here “AI safety” means long-term concerns about alignment and hostile superintelligence, as opposed to “AI ethics” concerns like bias or intellectual property.)
Everything has tradeoffs, regulation vs. progress is a common dichotomy, and the more important you think AI will be, the more important it is that the free world get it first. If you believe in superintelligence, the technological singularity, etc, then you think AI is maximally important, and this issue ought to be high on your mind.
But when you look at this concretely, it becomes clear that this is too small to matter - so small that even the sign is uncertain.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-ai-safety-wont-make-america-lose