Holden Karnofsky
Co-founder of GiveWell and Open Philanthropy; writes Cold Takes
Co-founded the charity evaluator GiveWell and later Open Philanthropy, one of the largest funders of AI safety work. His Cold Takes blog lays out why he thinks this could be "the most important century" because of AI.
Papers & key writings
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Hand-picked from the hub based on what Holden Karnofsky covers.
'Eugenics on steroids': the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute
Article (republished on The Free Library) on the history and criticism of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, the research center tied to longtermism and existential-risk work, which closed in 2024. The page blocked an automated check, so this description is based on the title.
Why this: Covers AI safety and effective altruism too
Some Anthropic Veterans Are Reportedly Buying Remote Land in Case AI Goes Awry
The Decoder summary of a Wall Street Journal report on long-serving Anthropic employees considering remote land purchases, and the company's ties to Effective Altruism and AI-risk communities.
Why this: Covers AI safety and effective altruism too
Yoshua Bengio
Deep learning pioneer and Turing Award winner, now focused on AI risk. His site holds papers, talks and written positions; his Google Scholar list has the full publication record, most-cited first.
Why this: Also about AI safety
Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
A skeptical 2016 talk by Maciej Ceglowski (Idle Words) that walks through the arguments for a superintelligence-driven intelligence explosion and takes them apart. Ceglowski compares the superintelligence risk debate to the Manhattan Project question of whether the first nuclear test could ignite the atmosphere, and argues that the core premises rest on speculative leaps rather than settled science. The talk was given at Web Camp Zagreb and is published as a full text transcript.
Why this: Also about AI safety
