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MichaelDickens

Karma: 8,599

I do independent research on EA topics. I write about whatever seems important, tractable, and interesting (to me).

I have a website: https://​​mdickens.me/​​ Much of the content on my website gets cross-posted to the EA Forum, but I also write about some non-EA stuff over there.

I used to work as a software developer at Affirm.

Re­sults from Ver­sion 2 of the Pop­u­la­tion Ethics Quiz

MichaelDickens5 Oct 2026 20:48 UTC
11 points
3 comments3 min readEA link

The likely out­come of an AI pause is that we un­pause too early and ev­ery­one dies

MichaelDickens28 Sep 2026 18:35 UTC
17 points
5 comments3 min readEA link

Cam­paign spend­ing limits would re­duce ex­tinc­tion risk (but spend­ing limits might not ac­cord with Con­sti­tu­tional prin­ci­ples)

MichaelDickens21 Sep 2026 22:17 UTC
24 points
3 comments5 min readEA link

Re­sults from the Pop­u­la­tion Ethics Quiz

MichaelDickens14 Sep 2026 22:28 UTC
60 points
11 comments11 min readEA link

Wholly AI-gen­er­ated posts should not be al­lowed on the EA Forum

MichaelDickens10 Sep 2026 20:45 UTC
60 points
26 comments1 min readEA link

Pop­u­la­tion ethics is a big deal, which is why I made this pop­u­la­tion ethics quiz

MichaelDickens31 Aug 2026 23:11 UTC
102 points
28 comments4 min readEA link

Don’t Treat AI’s Skil­lset as Static

MichaelDickens25 Aug 2026 3:25 UTC
10 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

Rea­sons to Act on Your Best Guess: A Re­ply to the Challenge of Unawareness

MichaelDickens17 Aug 2026 7:59 UTC
16 points
3 comments16 min readEA link

On De­moc­ra­tiz­ing ASI to Pre­serve Civil Liberties

MichaelDickens10 Aug 2026 12:08 UTC
14 points
3 comments3 min readEA link

Notes on the pos­si­bil­ity of moral progress

MichaelDickens5 Aug 2026 16:05 UTC
23 points
0 comments7 min readEA link

Paus­ing AI at hu­man level seems harder than paus­ing ASAP

MichaelDickens13 Jul 2026 17:19 UTC
17 points
1 comment2 min readEA link

Train­ing AI to be bet­ter at cor­rect­ness than persuasion

MichaelDickens6 Jul 2026 18:06 UTC
12 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

AI will make biolog­i­cal ex­tinc­tion risks worse be­fore it makes them better

MichaelDickens29 Jun 2026 17:05 UTC
11 points
0 comments6 min readEA link

A fron­tier AI com­pany should shut down

MichaelDickens15 Jun 2026 16:56 UTC
38 points
10 comments2 min readEA link

How valuable are weak AI safety reg­u­la­tions?

MichaelDickens8 Jun 2026 18:24 UTC
29 points
3 comments6 min readEA link

We Need Breadth-First AI Safety Plans

MichaelDickens1 Jun 2026 17:36 UTC
12 points
1 comment4 min readEA link

Sen­tient Welfare Across Three Futures

MichaelDickens25 May 2026 16:22 UTC
18 points
2 comments2 min readEA link

Dona­tion Timing Un­der Uncer­tainty About AI Timelines

MichaelDickens11 May 2026 18:42 UTC
17 points
5 comments2 min readEA link

Can AI make ad­vance­ments in moral philos­o­phy by writ­ing proofs?

MichaelDickens14 Apr 2026 0:09 UTC
33 points
1 comment4 min readEA link

Paus­ing AI Is the Best An­swer to Post-Align­ment Problems

MichaelDickens11 Apr 2026 15:46 UTC
15 points
0 comments2 min readEA link