AI NEWS PAGE DOSSIER
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky's file: Friendly AI, MIRI, LessWrong, alignment, rationalism, and two decades of insisting the machine might kill everybody.
Yudkowsky spent decades building the intellectual subculture around superintelligence risk: first trying to accelerate advanced AI, then concluding alignment was the central problem, founding institutions and communities around that concern, and eventually arguing that building sufficiently capable AI could be catastrophic.
HOW THE HELL DID ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY GET HERE?
2000
HE STARTS AN INSTITUTE TO GET TO SUPERINTELLIGENCE FASTER
Yudkowsky co-founded the organization that became MIRI in 2000. MIRI’s own history says its early goal was to help accelerate the arrival of smarter-than-human AI.
RECEIPTS: MIRIfirst-party
2003
THEN HE DECIDES THE REAL PROBLEM IS NOT DYING
MIRI’s history says Yudkowsky shifted toward the problem of ensuring advanced AI would pursue desirable goals rather than merely accelerating its arrival.
RECEIPTS: MIRIfirst-party
2006
THE ARGUMENT MOVES ONTO THE INTERNET
Yudkowsky became a principal contributor to Overcoming Bias, writing extensively about rationality, catastrophic risk and artificial intelligence.
RECEIPTS: LessWrongreported
Feb 2009
LESSWRONG BECOMES ITS OWN COMMUNITY
LessWrong was created in 2009 using Yudkowsky’s writing as seed material, becoming a major online home for rationalist and AI-risk discussion.
RECEIPTS: LessWrongreported
Jan 30, 2013
THE SINGULARITY INSTITUTE BECOMES MIRI
The organization renamed itself the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, emphasizing technical research on advanced AI and alignment.
RECEIPTS: MIRIfirst-party
Sep 16, 2025
THE DOOM ARGUMENT BECOMES A BOOK
Yudkowsky and Nate Soares published If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, presenting their case that sufficiently powerful unaligned AI could cause human extinction.
RECEIPTS: MIRIfirst-party