AI 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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ToValueFunfetti 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The article is gone because the author retracted it

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Hammershaft 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't see how that discredits any of their intellectual arguments?

	▲	johndhi an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Its certainly worth considering...

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0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 Should we investigate the sex lives of every Nobel Prize winner to figure out which prizes need to be rescinded?

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socializer an hour ago | parent | next [-]

What you do in private is up to you. But when you're inviting members of your congregation to orgies in the congregation's compound, I think you earn the label. My admittedly third-hand understanding is that this is what people allude to. And even if you discredit the "sex" part, it has the hallmarks of a cult. A hermetic community committed to unfalsifiable beliefs about the coming apocalypse.

To be fair, I don't know if any of this applies to the parent story; I'm just replying to the sub-thread.

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junofan 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The cult aspect is more salient. Ultimately the Atlantic piece comes down to controlling people, which is a little cult-like.

	▲	0xDEAFBEAD an hour ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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nradov an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Lots of Nobel Prizes ought to be rescinded.

https://lexfridman.com/andrew-scull-transcript#the-ice-pick-...

	▲	0xDEAFBEAD an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sure... on the basis of the work that was done, not because the researcher has the wrong sexual fetish.

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johndhi an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Lol this was crazy I hadn't heard this before