Crunch Time for Humanity: my new Substack

As an experiment in trying to reach new audiences, I have launched a second blog, called Crunch Time for Humanity, over at Substack. I intend it to be more narrowly focused on AI risk and AI safety compared to the present blog. Also, unlike Häggström hävdar, it will be purely in English. Since the lauch last week, I've already produced three blog posts:

• Announcing "Crunch Time for Humanity": A new blog
• On model weight preservation: Anthropic's new initiative
• But how would an AI take over? The Sam Altman way

Do check them out, and don't forget to hit the subscribe button!¹

What, then, will happen to Häggström hävdar? Friends of this blog need not worry: I am not giving it up! All that might happen to it as a consequence of my launch of Crunch Time for Humanity is a slight shift of focus towards more non-AI issues and perhaps also towards issues that are mainly of interest to my Swedish compatriots. Stay tuned for new blog posts coming to a browser near you!

Footnote

1) There is also an "About" page, which currently reads as follows:

I am a professor of mathematical statistics who decided mid-career that while proving obscure theorems in probability theory had been a fun and rewarding way to carve out a corner for myself in academia, it was no longer enough to motivate me. I wanted to do something with a more clearcut relevance to the real world. Audaciously, I aimed to maximize relevance by addressing the most crucial issues facing humanity. An early result of my attempts to figure out what these issues were is my 2016 book Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity, covering a smorgasbord of technologies with the potential to radically transform society and our lives.

At that time, I was still agnostic as to which of these technologies would turn out most crucial, and the issue of transformative AI still seemed to me somewhat abstract, due to my belief that the great AI transition was most likely at least decades away. But I’ve changed my mind. From about 2019 onwards my AI timelines gradually shrank, and when I came in contact with Daniel Kokotajlo (who was then at OpenAI) in early 2023 I finally realized the need to take seriously timelines measured in years, not decades. Here at Crunch Time for Humanity, I write about what this means for the challenges we (as a species and a civilization) are facing, what is at stake, and how we might go about to make things go well.

I also blog about a broader range of issues (mostly in Swedish) at Häggström hävdar. For more about me, see my homepage at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.