Research institutions weren't built for a world where AI can generate papers for $15, conferences get 20k submissions, and a handful of closed labs are pulling ahead fast. I wrote about what the research community could do about it, and proposed a concrete system to help. The Research Commons: multi-blind coordination, anonymous channels, roles for requesters/executors/reproducers/reviewers, and attribution that actually reflects who did what. alexlacoste.substack.com/p/t…

Following up on the thread about AI [safety] paths outside a traditional PhD: here's a list for the non-technical side -- policy, governance, advocacy, comms, journalism, fieldbuilding, and more. - AI Policy Strategy Fellowship by Successif (did this last year, highly recommend!) - AGI Strategy, Frontier AI Governance, and Tech AI Safety by @BlueDotImpact (did the governance cohort in 2021, really great) - Talos Fellowship and AI Policy Leaders Programme by Talos Network - Horizon Fellowship by @HorizonIPS - AI Policy Fellowship by @iapsAI - Tarbell Fellowship by @tarbellcenter - Pathfinder Fellowship by @KairosAIS And one meta one: ENAIS's AI Safety Course Collaboration initiative gives local AI safety chapters infra for effective courses. Last year, I've facilitated their AI Policy Deep Dive and can vouch for them.

If leading AI companies are indeed approaching the point of recursive self-improvement, a coordinated, verifiable, and universally applied pause is probably the only responsible solution to mitigate several major AI risks; at least until safety guarantees are developed and demonstrated. Ensuring that such a moratorium is respected would require sincere collaboration between various countries and companies, but I definitely believe it is achievable if others follow in @AnthropicAI's footsteps.

If you call it exploration and discovery, but are still running from the shadow, . . .

I’m pleased to share that we’ve launched the TRACE Institute. A new research effort bringing together physicists, mathematicians, biologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers on a key question in science: what are observers, and how are they related to spacetime and reality?

Thank you to Dr Bradly Alicea, @JesParent and @mehular0ra for mentoring and guiding me throughout the application process. Looking forward to contributing to the community!

This summer, I’ll be working with @INCForg and @OpenWorm as GSoC scholar, applying Spatio-Temporal Graph Neural Networks to map C. elegans embryonic development. ​Many thanks to my mentors and the organization for the opportunity. ​Project details: summerofcode.withgoogle.com/…

Related| Performing as Human in 2026: AI's latest twist on 200 years of Mediated Presence An abridged history of performing for audiences you cannot see, and the new wrinkle in it. Competing against GenAI now, development of theories of audience then. blog.jesparent.com/p/perform…

I'm constantly irritated that I don't have time to read the torrent of cool papers coming faster and faster from amazing people in relevant fields. Other scientists have the same issue and have no time to read most of my lengthy conceptual papers either. So whom are we writing these papers for? I guess, at least until they fall in to the same issue from their own work, AI's will be the only ones who actually have the bandwidth to read all this stuff. I'm not specifically talking about today's language models - let's assume we mean whatever inevitable AI shows up, that is able to read the literature and have impact on the research (whether by talking to humans or by running lab automation/robot scientist platforms). So then: how should we be writing, knowing that a lot of our audience will be AI (plus cyborgs, hybrots, augmented humans, etc.)? Maybe it's too early to know what to do, but we better start thinking about it because assuming our audience will always be today's humans seems untenable. Taking seriously the idea that someday the impactful audience will be very different, and that the things we write now are in some sense a training set for truly diverse future beings, how does our writing change? or does it? what say you @danfaggella @mpshanahan @Plinz @blaiseaguera ?

Lots of interesting ideas - preprint: "Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human Flourishing" arxiv.org/abs/2605.10310 @rubenlaukkonen @sudoraohacker @weballergy @verena_rieser @AdamCElwood @996roma @drmichaellevin @sebkrier @FranklinMatija @shamilch @_fernando_rosas @scychan_brains @matybohacek

NEW: $3M in Fast Grants for AI-driven life sciences research. We’re funding pilot projects in AI diagnostics, prediction, and personalized therapeutics — with a two-week review turnaround. 35 grants · $25K–$100K · Deadline: June 15 Please share! biswasfamilyfoundation.org/s…

Applications are now open for the MESEC Workshop 2026: Computational Modelling for Consciousness Science — From Fragmentation to Integration. The workshop will take place in Carcassonne, France, from 29 August to 5 September 2026. mesec.co/event/workshop_2026…

What a great set of articles! Honored to be in it!

Final forms of 3 new papers! #consciousness #selforganization #cognition #economics and more royalsocietypublishing.org/r… royalsocietypublishing.org/r… royalsocietypublishing.org/r…

Awesome new theme issue of Philosophical Transactions: ‘World models in natural and artificial intelligence’ Thank you @adamsafron! royalsocietypublishing.org/r…

in this edition of AI pushback: