This is a blog about AI futurism and AI alignment. It's edited by Ajeya Cotra, and written primarily by her and Kelsey Piper (although we may solicit guest posts in the future). Our first post has more detail on what we're about here!

Thanks to ilzolende for formatting posts and pages on this website for publication. Each post has an accompanying audio version generated by a voice synthesis model trained on the author's voice using Descript Overdub. You can find it in podcast form on various major podcast services here.

If you have questions or comments, you can contact us at mailbox@planned-obsolescence.org.

Ajeya

I'm Ajeya. I work at Open Philanthropy, a grantmaking organization that aims to do as much good as possible with its resources. My job at Open Phil is to recommend grants to technical research in AI alignment and think through which research might be most applicable for aligning future, more powerful AI systems.

I'm the editor of Planned Obsolescence. On this blog, I'm sharing my own views. I have many colleagues who also work on AI; we agree about some things and disagree on others, and the views I express on this blog aren't Open Philanthropy's "official" positions (this is such a complicated and fast-moving area that it's difficult to have much in the way of "official" positions).

With that said, my own views do affect how I spend my own time and what research I end up recommending funding for. Given that these views do have impact on decisions, it feels important to explain them and get more engagement on them. I write for Planned Obsolescence on my work time, and I may in the future discuss funding decisions on this site.

Kelsey

I'm Kelsey. I'm a senior writer at Vox's Future Perfect, where I cover AI, pandemics, and other high-stakes problems affecting humanity's future. I also (outside my time at Vox) write for Planned Obsolescence. In all of my writing here, my views are my own. I have no affiliation with Open Philanthropy, and have never taken money from Open Philanthropy; in lieu of payment for posts on Planned Obsolescence, I've asked Open Phil to make donations to Against Malaria Foundation.