# The Co-opting of Safety

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051/the-co-opting-of-safety
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051/the-co-opting-of-safety.md
Podcast: [muckrAIkers](https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051)
Published: 2025-08-21T15:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://kairos.fm/muckraikers/e016
Audio file: https://op3.dev/e/media.transistor.fm/08948e9d/f91e5d6e.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/muckraikers-7026051/episodes/the-co-opting-of-safety
Duration seconds: 5069

## Resource

We dig into how the concept of AI "safety" has been co-opted and weaponized by tech companies. Starting with examples like Mecha-Hitler Grok, we explore how real safety engineering differs from AI "alignment," the myth of the alignment tax, and why this semantic confusion matters for actual safety. (00:00) - Intro (00:21) - Mecha-Hitler Grok (10:07) - "Safety" (19:40) - Under-specification (53:56) - This time isn't different (01:01:46) - Alignment Tax myth (01:17:37) - Actually making AI safer Links JMLR article - Underspecification Presents Challenges for Credibility in Modern Machine Learning Trail of Bits paper - Towards Comprehensive Risk Assessments and Assurance of AI-Based Systems SSRN paper - Uniqueness Bias: Why It Matters, How to Curb It Additional Referenced Papers NeurIPS paper - Safetywashing: Do AI Safety Benchmarks Actually Measure Safety Progress? ICML paper - AI Control: Improving Safety Despite Intentional Subversion ICML paper - DarkBench: Benchmarking Dark Patterns in Large Language Models OSF preprint - Current Real-World Use of Large Language Models for Mental Health Anthropic preprint - Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback Inciting Examples ars Technica article - US government agency drops Grok after MechaHitler backlash, report says The Guardian article - Musk’s AI Grok bot rants about ‘white genocide’ in South Africa in unrelated chats BBC article - Update that made ChatGPT 'dangerously' sycophantic pulled Other Sources London Daily article - UK AI Safety Institute Rebrands as AI Security Institute to Focus on Crime and National Security Vice article - Prominent AI Philosopher and ‘Father’ of Longtermism Sent Very Racist Email to a 90s Philosophy Listserv LessWrong blogpost - "notkilleveryone…

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