Making Mesa-Optimisation Click for Non-Experts Should Be a Safety Priority

herbiebradley · x · 2026-09-27

Herbie Bradley argues that mesa-optimisation and instrumental convergence are becoming critical concepts for communicating AI risk, and that finding ways to make these ideas quickly click for smart non-experts should be a priority for the safety community.

The thread led into a wider debate on the actual evidence for mesa-optimizers and whether the evolution analogy is useful.

Related event: AI safety researchers debate whether mesa-optimization still explains alignment risk(10 posts)→

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