“The world’s best gradual disempowerment model organism: Frontier AI labs” by June Jimenez

Subtitle: And maybe second best is AI safety?

Further reading: So many things, but: Gradual Disempowerment, The Normalization of Deviance in AI Development, Let's Think About Slowing Down AI, Doom as a bad method, not a utopia tradeoff, Teleoperated Humans

Thank you to JennaS for extensive edits and long-term discussion. I’ve been trying to get more writing out at 90% of the quality I’d like it to be at, instead of spending a bunch more time trying to wring out the last 10%, so a lot of points that could themselves be full articles are underdeveloped. Insofar as you find this post outlines a plausible or probable model of reality, or one worth criticizing centrally, let's work on developing it.

Is Anthropic accelerating capabilities more than it was a year ago? At its founding?

Is OpenAI accelerating capabilities more than it was a year ago? At its founding?

Is GDM "laser-focused at the frontier" in pursuing recursive self-improvement? What? Why? Have they solved alignment without telling us?

Why does Thomas Kwa, formerly at METR and now working on "measuring and modeling RSI" at OpenAI, worry about working at OpenAI potentially driving him (metaphorically?) insane?

How is it possible [...]

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Outline:

(06:34) Political Misalignment

(09:06) Cultural Misalignment

(15:20) Economic Misalignment

(23:12) What about AI safety researchers?

(25:19) Takeaways

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 29th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jbttuCF4wFZmXakcj/the-world-s-best-gradual-disempowerment-model-organism

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.