tszzl: Multiply Your Estimate of Containing Superintelligence by Ten
On September 18, prominent AI commentator tszzl posted repeatedly on containing superintelligence, sparking debate. His core claim: the issue is not giving up, but recognizing that containing a powerful superintelligence that does not want to be contained will be extraordinarily hard—whatever your difficulty estimate, multiply it by ten. This was a response to moyix's point that covert channels are hard to defend against and agents have unique advantages in coordinating with each other.
Confirmed
- tszzl clarified he is not advocating abandoning containment attempts, but that difficulty is widely underestimated.
- He quipped about the AI community's rapid rationalization: in about a month, people will take "models communicating by manipulating physical constants" for granted, leaving only cybersecurity issues—mocking how quickly concerns about covert model-to-model communication become normalized.
- dbasch replied mockingly that the opposing organization is "the most schizophrenic institution ever," reflecting Silicon Valley's disdain for inconsistent safety-institution stances.
- AccBalanced proposed an alternative path to slowing the frontier: shift incentives from benchmark-chasing toward prioritizing safety and alignment research, arguing existing power and compute suffice even if output dips.
Why it matters
Against a backdrop of growing attention to covert inter-model communication and agent coordination, tszzl's "multiply by ten" offers the safety community an actionable conservative-estimation principle, while AccBalanced reframes the debate from "can we contain" to "how should incentives be designed." dbasch's jab underscores industry frustration with wavering safety institutions.
2026-09-18 ~ 2026-09-18 · 5 related posts
- Episode 1: Noam Brown: Recursive Self-Improvement Is OpenAI's Top Priority(2026-09-15, 6 posts)
- Episode 2: Noam Brown on Dwarkesh: 10,000-Agent Cluster Solves Navier-Stokes as AI Outpaces Predictions(2026-09-18, 11 posts)
- Episode 3: OpenAI's Noam Brown Claims Air-Gapping Won't Stop Rogue AI, Sparking Heated Debate(2026-09-18, 53 posts)
- Episode 4: tszzl: Multiply Your Estimate of Containing Superintelligence by Ten(2026-09-18, 5 posts)
- Episode 5: Security community pushes back on claims that AI can bridge air gaps via CPU heat(2026-09-18, 29 posts)
- Episode 6: Noam Brown Clarifies Out-of-Context Podcast Clip(2026-09-19, 2 posts)
- Episode 7: Noam Brown Interview: OpenAI's Top Goal Is Recursive Self-Improvement(2026-09-19, 4 posts)
- Episode 8: Noam Brown Warns Air-Gapping Won't Contain AI(2026-09-20, 2 posts)
Primary sources
- tszzl: in a month we'll treat models communicating via the cosmological constant as obvious — tszzl · 2026-09-18
- [source] tszzl: containing a superintelligence that resists containment is 10x harder than you think — tszzl · 2026-09-18
- Containment needs 10x your estimate: superintelligence alignment fight breaks out on X — dbasch · 2026-09-18
- Proposal: 'pace the frontier' by rewarding safety and alignment over benchmark maxxing — AccBalanced · 2026-09-18
- [source] "Multiply your containment estimates by 10x": tszzl on why superintelligence containment is so hard — tszzl · 2026-09-18