Open Thread 424
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This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here. Also:
1: Mox asks me to advertise their 2026 fundraiser. They’re a rationalist/EA coworking space in San Francisco that hosts ACX meetups, ACX grants infrastructure, AI safety work, and more. And while I’m advertising them, they also offer deals on personal and organizational office space.
2: StopTheRace.ai will be holding a protest on Saturday, March 21 in front of major AI company offices, asking them to commit to a mutual pause (ie to stop AI research if every other AI company in the world agrees to do so). Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind has already informally agreed to something like this in principle (which is why GDM isn’t being protested), and Anthropic has expressed interest but its new responsible scaling policy stops short of an explicit commitment. I think this is a reasonable ask, albeit so unlikely to happen that protests about it will probably do more to raise awareness than be a coherent plan in themselves. If you’re curious about the details of an AI pause, I expect to be able to provide more information in a few months.
3: ACX grantee Markus Englund announces a first set of results from his project to automate anomaly detection in scientific data, finding serious and reportable data issues in eighteen papers, including an influential study linking Parkinson’s to the gut. He plans to scale up his efforts by over an order of magnitude in the year ahead.