“plzdontkillus Fellows Got ~2M AI Safety Views, Not 21M” by Josh Thorsteinson
“plzdontkillus Fellows Got ~2M AI Safety Views, Not 21M” by Josh Thorsteinson  
Podcast: LessWrong (30+ Karma)
Published On: Thu Sep 17 2026
Description: Summary I was a fellow at plzdontkillus, a month-long creator bootcamp at Lighthaven, partially funded by MIRI, where ~55 fellows posted one video per day. plzdontkillus.com originally claimed “21M+ AI risk views” with no breakdown. After I shared a draft of this post, the organizers relabeled it “X-Risk Relevant Views” and published one. Three videos account for 80% of the views: a datacenter-water-use debunk (8.5M), an AI dystopia video (6.4M), and a Rob Miles Hugging Face incident explainer (2.5M). The rest total 4.3M. Under my stricter definition of AI safety content, fellows generated ~2 million views total. Based on my analysis, fellow-made AI safety videos made up around ¼ of fellows’ output and ~2% of total views. 13 out of ~55 fellows posted zero AI safety videos, and an additional 8 posted only one or two. This is partly because the program didn't incentivize AI safety content. If they run it again, I think they should change that. Me I’m Josh Thor. I was a fellowLike every fellow, plzdontkillus offered me a $2000 stipend and free room and board for the month (which I accepted)I won the program's “Other” category for [...] ---Outline:(00:13) Summary(01:28) Me(02:12) What they claim(05:26) My analysis(06:58) Program incentives(08:38) Aella's response(11:00) My recommendation The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 17th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LQ9wKT9oNeArbwukz/plzdontkillus-fellows-got-2m-ai-safety-views-not-21m --- 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.