“More people should write basic AI safety explainers” by Linch

<p> I think people continue to underrate the value of writing the clearest, most basic, simplest possible case for important parts of AI safety. For example, before I wrote my own explainer for the simplest possible case for AI doom, I noticed that all existing explainers, of which there aren't many, had multiple of the six problems below: </p><ol> <li> They have too many extraneous details</li><li> They appeal to overly complex analogies</li><li> They seem to spend much of their time responding to insider debates and come across as shadow-boxing objections.</li><li> They have "meta" stuff prominently in the text.</li><li> Often they "sound like science fiction." I think this plausibly was correct historically but in the year 2026 they don't need to be.</li><li> Often they reference too much insider jargon and language.</li></ol><p> I set out to improve on the SOTA. I did not fully succeed, but I think it was moderately better. Since then, there have been other, probably better, explainers (Yay!).</p><p> But actually this is true not just for the core case but many other parts of relevant safety arguments as well. For example, before I wrote my explainer on recurrent neuralese (which has since been superseded by Scott's better explainer) [...]</p> <p><i>The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.</i> </p><p>---</p>

<p><b>First published:</b><br/>

October 13th, 2026 </p>

<p><b>Source:</b><br/>

<a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SCWyEE3y3j6KweykR/more-people-should-write-basic-ai-safety-explainers?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Source+URL+in+episode+description&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SCWyEE3y3j6KweykR/more-people-should-write-basic-ai-safety-explainers</a> </p>

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<p>Narrated by <a href="https://type3.audio/?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Narrated+by+TYPE+III+AUDIO&utm_term=ea_forum&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TYPE III AUDIO</a>.</p>