alt Hacker NewsAI safety is mostly a sex cult in Berkeley:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49831269 article is gone. archive: https://archive.is/QMo1k
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985
Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse: https://www.iankduncan.com/personal/2026-09-16-sex-ai-and-th...
Edit: I have no take on sex cults, just adding additional info to the parent comment I'm responding to, thats is not just sci-fi authors, there is another demographic.
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Use your own mind and think from first principles. Can an AI agent execute a bash command to login to a web server? Yes. Can it call drop db? Yes. Can it provision a GPU and download model weights? Yes. Can it write an agile roadmap with a multi sprint plan? Yes. Can it follow that plan? Yes. Can all of that result in damage to core information infrastructure that is necessary for daily functioning society? Yes. Do humans descend into violence if there is food or energy insecurity. Yes.
What is missing from that to say AI safety is a reasonable position?
This seems like an ad hominem? "He has weird kinks, therefore his theories are incorrect." Should we investigate the sex lives of every Nobel Prize winner to figure out which prizes need to be rescinded?
I don't see how that discredits any of their intellectual arguments?
The article is gone because the author retracted it
I've noticed that a lot of smart people in tech jobs are neurodivergent. And that neurodivergent people have a very different take on sex. More open and direct, things like polyamory, bdsm etc. This tends to be frowned upon by neurotypical people, especially of the religious or conservative kind, and associated with bad morals.
But I don't think that's true, in fact I see a really strong focus on consent in these communities. It's not what conservatives want to see, they want to see everyone in a marriage, with kids and a family home etc. Because that's what their ideal world looks like. But there's nothing really wrong with it if someone wants a gangbang for her birthday as mentioned in that article as an example. As long as everyone consented and the evidence provided mentions elaborate interviews and STI tests.
Also I think this is more correlation than cause and effect. We all know the saying that furries built the internet and it surprises nobody.
Lol this was crazy I hadn't heard this before
For what it's worth, I don't live in Berkeley (not even California) and my sex life is very vanilla and monogamous. I'm also quite concerned about AI safety, so I guess there goes your argument.