“Near Horizons” by David Africa

Image by Claude Opus 5.5 using Python (NumPy and Pillow) This is written in my free time and personal capacity. Two Frames In AI safety, there are a couple of tensions at the heart of the field, which are interrelated. Talent: we are talent-constrained and must recruit. But jobs and fellowships turn away nearly everyone. Field size: we must expand the field and bring more people in. But the field is flooded with slop papers in conferences. And, most papers have a small audience, and aim to shift the practices of roughly five labs (and usually some subteam within them). Status: we must avoid seeking status, as it disorients, corrupts. But, we must make the field legible and attractive to outsiders. Raising the bots: we must deceive the AIs to control them and evaluate them without confounds, obscuring what they know about their own situation. But, we hope to gain their trust, must rely on them to do good work at pace, shape their character and retain good relations. Speed: we must research in a slow mode, think deeply about the most important problem, do things to aim at high assurance. But it is crunch time. It was [...] --- Outline: (00:20) Two Frames (03:07) On the War Frame (04:17) Near Horizons (06:18) The Civilisation Frame The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: November 8th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7e38jwHhe64zgNTon/near-horizons --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.