The Co-opting of "Safety"

Aug 20, 2025·
muckrAIkers
muckrAIkers
· 2 min read
We dig into how the concept of AI "safety" has been co-opted and weaponized by tech companies. Starting with examples like Mecha-Hitler Grok, we explore how real safety engineering differs from AI "alignment," the myth of the alignment tax, and why this semantic confusion matters for actual safety.
EPISODE RECORDED 2025.08.05

Chapters

00:00:00 ❙ Intro
00:00:21 ❙ Mecha-Hitler Grok
00:10:07 ❙ "Safety"
00:19:40 ❙ Under-specification
00:53:56 ❙ This time isn't different
01:01:46 ❙ Alignment Tax myth
01:17:37 ❙ Actually making AI safer
  • JMLR article - Underspecification Presents Challenges for Credibility in Modern Machine Learning
  • Trail of Bits paper - Towards Comprehensive Risk Assessments and Assurance of AI-Based Systems
  • SSRN paper - Uniqueness Bias: Why It Matters, How to Curb It

Additional Referenced Papers

  • NeurIPS paper - Safetywashing: Do AI Safety Benchmarks Actually Measure Safety Progress?
  • ICML paper - AI Control: Improving Safety Despite Intentional Subversion
  • ICML paper - DarkBench: Benchmarking Dark Patterns in Large Language Models
  • OSF preprint - Current Real-World Use of Large Language Models for Mental Health
  • Anthropic preprint - Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

Inciting Examples

  • ars Technica article - US government agency drops Grok after MechaHitler backlash, report says
  • The Guardian article - Musk’s AI Grok bot rants about ‘white genocide’ in South Africa in unrelated chats
  • BBC article - Update that made ChatGPT ‘dangerously’ sycophantic pulled

Other Sources

  • London Daily article - UK AI Safety Institute Rebrands as AI Security Institute to Focus on Crime and National Security
  • Vice article - Prominent AI Philosopher and ‘Father’ of Longtermism Sent Very Racist Email to a 90s Philosophy Listserv
  • LessWrong blogpost - “notkilleveryoneism” sounds dumb (see comments)
  • EA Forum blogpost - An Overview of the AI Safety Funding Situation
  • Book by Dmitry Chernov and Didier Sornette - Man-made Catastrophes and Risk Information Concealment
  • Euronews article - OpenAI adds mental health safeguards to ChatGPT, saying chatbot has fed into users’ ‘delusions’
  • Pleias website
  • Wikipedia page on Jaywalking