{"podcast":{"title":"muckrAIkers","slug":"muckraikers-7026051","podcast_index_feed_id":7026051,"rss_url":"https://feeds.transistor.fm/muckraikers","website_url":"https://kairos.fm/muckraikers/","image_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/2Xoj9Q8V0g3EZ4QkfrR-DMBxWLBu5eO1bikePOFS7Ng/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS83MzQ3/NzVkMTk3MWFiM2Nl/ZDRmNzFhMGQxZDQ3/MzM3Yi5wbmc.jpg","author":"Jacob Haimes","episode_count":25,"summary":"Join us as we dig a tiny bit deeper into the hype surrounding \"AI\" press releases, research papers, and more. Each episode, we'll highlight ongoing research and investigations, providing some much needed contextualization, constructive critique, and even a smidge of occasional good will teasing to the conversation, trying to find the meaning under all of this muck.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-15T04:21:26.211565+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051"},"episode":{"title":"The Co-opting of Safety","slug":"the-co-opting-of-safety","published_at":"2025-08-21T15:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051/the-co-opting-of-safety","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051","url":"https://kairos.fm/muckraikers/e016","audio_url":"https://op3.dev/e/media.transistor.fm/08948e9d/f91e5d6e.mp3","summary":"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…","meta_description":"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 h…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":5069,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/muckraikers-7026051/episodes/the-co-opting-of-safety/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/muckraikers-7026051/the-co-opting-of-safety.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}