Read Scott Alexander

Apr 23, 2026

acx

Read on

Links For April 2026

53 min • 8,070 words • 588 comments • 272 likes • podcast (47 min)

Scott Alexander's April 2026 links roundup covers diverse topics including Venn diagram complexity, flag desecration laws, AI developments, political analysis, scientific studies, and various cultural curiosities. Longer summary

This monthly links post compiles interesting articles, studies, and observations from across the internet in April 2026. Major themes include AI progress and policy (including discussions of AI alignment, capabilities, and regulation), political developments (Trump administration actions, election analysis), scientific findings (from evolutionary psychology to medical treatments), and various cultural oddities. Scott provides brief commentary on each link while noting that he hasn't independently verified all claims and that commenters typically find errors in a few links per post. Shorter summary

Recurring tags: prediction markets (85), media criticism (76), links (62), medical research (52), link roundup (35), internet culture (34), AI alignment (32), evolutionary psychology (30), AI progress (15), education policy (12), AI policy (11), political analysis (10), scientific studies (7), cultural commentary (3), religious phenomena (2)

Feb 05, 2026

acx

Read on

Links For February 2026

48 min • 7,419 words • 660 comments • 255 likes • podcast (49 min)

A monthly collection of diverse links covering AI developments and regulation, COVID origins debates, healthcare policy, cultural phenomena, scientific research, and internet curiosities, maintaining Scott's characteristic blend of serious analysis and entertaining observations. Longer summary

Scott Alexander's February 2026 links collection covers a wide range of topics including AI developments, politics, science, culture, and internet phenomena. Major themes include updates on AI capabilities and regulation (with discussions of OpenAI, Anthropic, and various political machinations around AI policy), the ongoing COVID lab leak debate and related prediction markets, healthcare and drug development issues, cultural observations from around the world, and various scientific and academic findings. The post maintains Scott's characteristic style of jumping between serious policy discussions, academic research, internet curiosities, and cultural commentary, with particular attention to AI safety concerns, rationalist community topics, and interesting historical or linguistic oddities. Shorter summary

Recurring tags: forecasting (87), prediction markets (85), scientific research (64), links (62), rationalist community (38), internet culture (34), AI alignment (32), links roundup (28), OpenAI (27), AI development (23), AI capabilities (21), healthcare policy (20), drug development (18), dating (18), AI regulation (14), crime statistics (13), Anthropic (12), AI policy (11), COVID-19 origins (6), lab leak theory (3), cultural observations (2), political influence (2)

Nov 03, 2025

acx

Read on

Writing For The AIs

9 min • 1,316 words • 317 comments • 183 likes • podcast (8 min)

Scott explores three approaches to 'writing for AI' - teaching knowledge, influencing beliefs, and enabling simulation - finding the first limited, the second theoretically confused, and the third creepy and ethically troubling. Longer summary

Scott examines the concept of 'writing for AI' - creating content that will influence future AI systems - through three lenses: helping AIs learn knowledge, presenting arguments to shape AI beliefs, and helping AIs model writers in enough detail to recreate them. He finds the first two either limited or theoretically muddled, and the third deeply unsettling. The post explores why influencing AI beliefs faces both practical obstacles (alignment training will override corpus data) and theoretical ones (finding the right sweet spot of influence). Scott is particularly disturbed by the idea of AIs simulating him, comparing it to being 'an ape in some transhuman zoo,' and struggles with questions about whether writers should try to impose their values on future AI systems. Shorter summary

Recurring tags: AI alignment (32), writing (11), liberalism (11), wireheading (7), Tyler Cowen (5), AI training (3), future of AI (3), repugnant conclusion (2), personal identity (2)

Oct 13, 2025

acx

Read on

ACX Grants Results 2025

32 min • 4,808 words • 266 comments • 196 likes • podcast (29 min)

Scott announces the results of the 2025 ACX Grants round, awarding $1.5 million to 42 projects out of 654 applications, covering areas from genetic engineering and disease prevention to AI safety and educational reform. Longer summary

Scott Alexander announces the results of the 2025 ACX Grants program, which received 654 applications and funded 42 projects across diverse areas including global health, AI safety, metascience, animal welfare, and development economics. The grants range from $5,000 to $150,000 and support initiatives like genetically engineered nutritious corn, screwworm eradication, lead-acid battery recycling programs, organ donation improvement, AI bias research, and various biosecurity and pandemic prevention projects. Scott thanks the funders, Manifund team, and numerous expert evaluators who helped assess applications, and notes that some projects remain in stealth mode. The post concludes with extensive credits to contributors and mentions that the next grants round will likely occur in late 2026 or early 2027. Shorter summary

Recurring tags: effective altruism (97), forecasting (87), AI safety (69), charitable giving (26), animal welfare (21), ACX Grants (16), genetic engineering (15), grant-making (10), development economics (9), global health (5), organ donation (3), metascience (2), biosecurity (2)

May 08, 2025

acx

Read on

Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr

18 min • 2,728 words • 98 comments • 96 likes • podcast (17 min)

Scott examines reader tests and discussions of AI's GeoGuessr abilities, revealing that AIs perform best with tourist locations and are roughly on par with human professionals. Longer summary

This post discusses the comments and follow-up tests on Scott's previous article about AI's GeoGuessr abilities. Various readers tested Claude/o3's location-guessing capabilities, with mixed results. The key insight was that the AI performs better with tourist destinations that have lots of photos available. Scott addresses suspicions about the Nepal picture from his original post, showing the AI's reasoning was sound. The post also compares AI performance to human GeoGuessr champions like Trevor Rainbolt, and discusses formal AI GeoGuessr benchmarks that show AIs performing similarly to human professionals. The post concludes by considering whether this represents true intelligence or just specialized training, though noting that even OpenAI's leaders seem impressed by the capability. Shorter summary

Recurring tags: study critique (268), highlights from the comments (67), AI capabilities (21), AI progress (15), human vs AI performance (2), tourism (2)

May 02, 2025

acx

Read on

Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius

28 min • 4,281 words • 483 comments • 406 likes • podcast (37 min)

Scott tests OpenAI's o3 model's ability to identify locations from photos, finding it has remarkable success even with minimal visual information, raising questions about AI capabilities. Longer summary

Scott tests OpenAI's o3 model on increasingly difficult GeoGuessr-style location guessing challenges using his own photos. Starting with a Google Street View image of a featureless plain, progressing through personal photos of Nepal mountains, a dorm room, and extremely zoomed-in shots of grass and river water, Scott finds that o3 shows remarkable ability to identify locations from minimal visual cues. While it fails on some challenges like identifying a specific house address, its success rate and reasoning process on most images is impressive enough to make Scott question whether this represents a qualitatively different level of AI capability. Shorter summary

Recurring tags: AI capabilities (21), AI progress (15), pattern recognition (7), GPT models (6), geography (5), AI limitations (3), photography (2)

Apr 25, 2025

acx

Read on

AMA With AI Futures Project Team

1 min • 42 words • 325 comments • 63 likes

Announcement of an AMA session with the AI Futures Project team about AI, forecasting, and alignment. Longer summary

This is a short announcement post for an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session with the AI Futures Project team, where they will be answering questions about AI, forecasting, and alignment for a specific time period. The post includes links to the project's team page, their AI 2027 scenario work, and their blog. Shorter summary

Recurring tags: AI (110), forecasting (87), AI alignment (32), AI forecasting (10), AI Futures Project (2), AMA (2)

Apr 24, 2025

acx

Read on

AI Futures: Blogging And AMA

3 min • 415 words • 189 comments • 87 likes • podcast (4 min)

Scott announces his collaboration with AI Futures Project's blog and their upcoming AMA, highlighting recent posts including one about AI time horizons that was validated by new OpenAI data. Longer summary

Scott Alexander announces he will be shifting most of his AI blogging to the AI Futures Project blog, where he has already co-written several posts. He highlights three recent posts, particularly one about AI time horizons that was validated by new OpenAI data showing faster horizon growth than previously estimated. He also announces an upcoming AMA with the AI Futures Project team on ACX. Shorter summary

Recurring tags: OpenAI (27), AI development (23), AI progress (15), blog announcement (10), AI forecasting (10), AI timelines (7), Daniel Kokotajlo (4)