L
Luke Muehlhauser
lukemuehlhauser.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2014
Luke Muehlhauser, formerly of MIRI, writes about AI risk, economic history, philosophy, and music.
What HN saysCommenters cite it for nuanced replies on superintelligence, such as the answer to Wait But Why, and for a guide to modern classical music.
23HN people shared it
9linked it in comments
18stories submitted
282story points
11 months agolast shared
2014people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1How big a deal was the Industrial Revolution? (2017)3 people · 102 points · first shared 2019 · 83 comments on HN
- 2Musk and Gates on superintelligence and fast takeoff3 people · 4 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 3Three wild speculations from amateur quantitative macrohistory2 people · 9 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 4A beginner’s guide to modern classical music2 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 5The Riddle of Being or Nothingness2 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 6A reply to wait but why on machine superintelligence2 people · first shared 2015
- 7Pre-Socratics: A Painless Introduction1 people · 106 points · first shared 2015 · 14 comments on HN
- 8How German nuclear scientists reacted to the news of Hiroshima1 people · 37 points · first shared 2016 · 8 comments on HN
- 9Why I Resigned From The Anthropic Board1 people · 13 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 10There was only one industrial revolution1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 11Ancient Indian Philosophy: A Painless Introduction1 people · 1 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 12Positional Externalities [pdf]1 people · 1 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 13Bostroms unfinished fable of the sparrows1 people · first shared 2025
- 14All curves with events.png1 people · first shared 2017
- 15If youre an ai safety lurker now would be a good time to de lurk1 people · first shared 2015
What HN people wrote when they linked it
nickpsecurity · 2017-05-15
Instead of telling you what they recommended, I'm going to give you my modern list instead of assurance activities that could be considered for the next evaluation scheme. Orange Book had a subset of these. I pulled from the whole field to get a larger list.
https://lobste.rs/s/mhqf7p/static_typing_will_not_save_us_from_broken/…
The two summaries of the history of successes and problems in TCSEC are here:
http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-Back-Addend…
https://www.acsac.org/2004/papers/ClassicPaperSchafer.pdf
ejlo · 2016-12-22
Here is a page with a lot of good examples of more accessible modern classical music:
http://lukemuehlhauser.com/how-to-fall-in-love-with-modern-classical-m…
adamisom · 2016-08-19
Tim Urban is a great writer, but read something like this - http://lukemuehlhauser.com/a-reply-to-wait-but-why-on-machine-superint… - if you want more nuance. (Caveat: It's been some time since I read either article, or about superintelligence.)
astrofinch · 2015-12-12
What I've heard is that MIRI has an explicit philosophy of concentrating on the more abstract & theoretical aspects of AI safety. The idea being that if AI safety is something that you can just tack on to a working design at the end, they don't have a comparative advantage there: it's difficult to predict which design will win and the design's implementor is best positioned to tack on the safety bit themselves.
>...imagine a hypothetical computer security expert named Bruce. You tell Bruce that he and his team have just 3 years to modify the latest version of Microsoft Windows so that it can’t be hacked in any way, even by the smartest hackers on Earth. If he fails, Earth will be destroyed because reasons.
>Bruce just stares at you and says, “Well, that’s impossible, so I guess we’re all fucked.”
>The problem, Bruce explains, is that Microsoft Windows was never designed to be anything remotely like “unhackable.” It was designed to be easily useable, and compatible with lots of software, and flexible, and affordable, and just barely secure enough to be marketable, and you can’t just slap on a special Unhackability Module at the last minute.
>To get a system that even has a chance at being robustly unhackable, Bruce explains, you’ve got to design an entirely different hardware + software system that was designed from the ground up to be unhackable. And that system must be designed in an entirely different way than Microsoft Windows is, and no team in the world could do…
gnarlouse · 2025-11-29
I think Billionaire alignment is a much larger problem than AI alignment. To use Bostrom's language, it's not full-on owl domestication, but sparrows with owl-like powers that we need to worry about.
https://lukemuehlhauser.com/bostroms-unfinished-fable-of-the-sparrows/
nl · 2017-10-17
You can chart outcomes instead of trying to score inventions.
See for example: http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/all-curves-with-events.p…
I'd caution that these graphs are completely useless for talking about a technological singularity though, and - even worse - they make it seem like "something must happen" because that line is so obviously "almost vertical". This simply isn't the case, and - importantly - is almost the opposite to the argument for a singularity.
Jach · 2017-04-01
Musk replied to Ng's comment: http://lukemuehlhauser.com/musk-and-gates-on-superintelligence-and-fas…
Or as someone else quipped, the moment a human steps foot on Mars, Mars has become overpopulated.
rhaps0dy · 2015-12-12
Be sure to de-lurk if that's the case!
I guess. A lot of people already did.
http://lukemuehlhauser.com/if-youre-an-ai-safety-lurker-now-would-be-a…
smcl · 2015-12-02
This reminds me a little of "Being or Nothingness" by Joe K (hehe) http://lukemuehlhauser.com/the-riddle-of-being-or-nothingness