Inside Berkeley's 'Cult of p(doom)': the viral AI Safety exposé, fully digested
AIFlow_ML · x · 2026-10-25
SE Gyges's Substack post "AI Safety Is Mostly A Sex Cult In Berkeley, California" is going viral on AI Twitter, with journalist Taylor Lorenz amplifying it. AIFlowML quotes the full source with prior reporting, noting: "funny until you see who writes the rules for local AI."
Key points:
- Core claim: AI Safety's intellectual center is a small circle descended from fan-fiction author Eliezer Yudkowsky, which the author calls a sex cult — people who shouldn't be making AI policy.
- Cites OpenAI's Roon publicly saying Yudkowsky is in/running such a circle, while still taking his ideas seriously.
- Traces layered disavowals: SBF grantees denying EA affiliation, SBF himself denying it, core members calling themselves "rationalist adjacent."
- Lists influence evidence: Yudkowsky advising Bernie Sanders on AI policy, his Time piece advocating nuclear risk to halt AI research, and the Netflix documentary.
- The accompanying "Cult of p(doom)" poster parodies the doom culture: "Prophets. Priors. Paperclips."
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