[Linkpost] “When capabilities work is the *safe* bet” by RobinHa
[Linkpost] “When capabilities work is the *safe* bet” by RobinHa  
Podcast: LessWrong (30+ Karma)
Published On: Thu Jul 02 2026
Description: This is a link post. If you believe that LLMs lend themselves unusually well to alignment compared to other regimes, this can be a very good reason to start doing capability research on them rather than LLM safety research. Imagine you have these beliefs about how AI goes: By I mean the probability that the first ASI is LLM-based (and that it isn't) - the two are mutually exclusive and sum to 100%. Let's imagine you are a super genius, and your effort alone makes something 10% more/less likely than currently. Then This is 1% less doom than doing nothing, congrats! Now for frontier capability work on LLMs - since these probabilities are about which regime reaches ASI first, pushing up also pulls down. Woah, almost an additional 3% down! You could also instead go the Steven Byrnes route: An additional percentage down! These numbers shouldn't be taken seriously - the '10% more/less likely than currently' assumption in particular is arbitrary. Different problems aren't equally movable: making LLM ASI happen when it otherwise wouldn't could be far harder than the other shifts (esp. since many people are already trying), or making non-LLM ASI safe might be so hard that any [...] --- First published: July 1st, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NgPfJ7ATYqMFQr7zu/when-capabilities-work-is-the-safe-bet Linkpost URL:https://robinhaselhorst.com/blog/capabilities-safe-bet --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.