"The Locally Optimal Discursive Posture" by deanball cover art

"The Locally Optimal Discursive Posture" by deanball

"The Locally Optimal Discursive Posture" by deanball

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Longtime lurker, first-time poster.

I want to address a section of a recent essay of mine that has gotten some attention within the AI safety community. The main topic of the essay is what Dawn Song et al. call self-sovereign agents, or AI agents that are independent actors in the world. At the end of the essay, I say that I feel I haven’t spoken about this topic over my 2.5 years of writing with sufficient candor, and that I think this critique applies to others in the AI policy community–particularly the parts of it that tend to manifest themselves in Washington, Sacramento, and Albany–in other words, the parts of the AI safety world that are most involved in hands-on AI policy work. I attribute this primarily to a desire to remain “within the Overton Window,” or to not sound “crazy” within the halls of power, and I assert that others in my profession have made this same calculation.

I believe–and have believed for three years–that self-sovereign AI as I describe it in my essay would likely happen on our current trajectory. That being said, the essay takes pains to distinguish between “self-sovereign” AI and truly “rogue” [...]

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First published:
September 10th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y9TNHfgDwh6vw7Ert/the-locally-optimal-discursive-posture

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