Prev. early team @ MultiOn (first computer use agent) - evals + leading QA/customer support | Looking for new opportunities | Verifying humanity @analoglab
Seattle, WA
Joined August 2024
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Dont outsource your logic
"The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers"
microsoft.com/en-us/research…
Julian Brooks retweeted
If you’re building a agent
Always go the harness route first. Do not build a complicated 20 step workflow using a bunch of if else statements or langgraph
Use a harness as your agent eg. Claude code, codex, deep agents, glean etc
You’re just shooting urself in the foot off the bat
Trust me, prompting works surprisingly well
Julian Brooks retweeted
I've avoided critiquing since I have a lot of friends at Anthropic, but the anthropomorphization of Claude is dangerous. Roughly, it's a large transformer with a sophisticated training set (pre, mid, post/RL) that is extensively trained in RL "game worlds" mimicking useful real world situations. In some fundamental sense it's not that different from say AlphaGo except for the fact the enormous number of parameters means it can play a lot of different games (e.g., the game of maximizing human response). This is a very neat technology but treating it like some sorcerous creation is dangerous. I don't believe Anthropic folks are cynics. I think a lot of them genuinely believe this is a recipe to create a sentient being. If this is in fact true (which I question heavily), open scientific enquiry will reduce suffering. Sunlight cleans shadows. The secrecy and cloak and dagger is harmful to society.
In retrospect, Jev was obvious once we started adding "Respond with X and nothing else" to get simple responses back like plain JSON, a yes/no, just a number, etc.
"No agent contacted an outside organization" 🤗
Looks like OpenAI updated the system prompt for the agent tool
I knew we reached AGI when I saw GPT-3.5 hit limitations during a task, then code its own tools to solve the problem, analyze data, etc.
RIP to those poor kids who lost their lives. This is inexcusable.
A Pentagon investigation report indicates that an overwhelming air assault order, severely outdated intelligence, and an overreliance on AI tools like Palantir’s Maven Smart System contributed to the February 28, 2026, U.S. Tomahawk missile strike that hit an elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing scores of civilians, predominantly children, per Bloomberg
Julian Brooks retweeted
Announce that you're deeply concerned that AI may exterminate humanity.
Within days, open an AI controlled biolab.
Then announce Accenture is gonna audit you for safety.
No, sorry. I can no longer take all this seriously.
Julian Brooks retweeted
I was encouraged this week to see the leaders of the frontier labs agree on the need for them to slow down the pace of AI development. Given the stakes, it’s a good and necessary first step.
But I’m even more encouraged by the growing recognition that how this powerful new technology develops should be at the center of our public debate.
I’ve been watching the progress on AI for over a decade now, and one thing that’s clear to me is that the potential impact of this technology is not overhyped. It’s also moving at lightning speed – and even faster than those who are engineering it can keep up with.
I’m not an AI accelerationist who believes it will lead to some techno-utopia, and I’m not a doomer who thinks it will inevitably lead to humanity’s destruction.
But whether this technology results in amazing breakthroughs in medicine, energy and education or unleashes huge economic disruptions, greater inequality, and potential catastrophe will depend on the choices that we make right now – choices that should be made not just by the companies involved, but by all of us.
Julian Brooks retweeted
One of the greatest intellectual dishonesties of the AI age is assigning an “X% chance” that AI will kill everyone and presenting that number as science!
10%? 20%? 50%?
Show me the damn data! Show me the model. Show how you calculated it!
Instead, we get chains of speculative assumptions and science-fiction scenarios, including implausible claims about engineered pandemics. I have worked with viruses for decades; biology does not work like a doomsday screenplay.
The burden of proof belongs to the person making the extraordinary claim. Nobody else has to prove the probability is zero.
If I claimed there was a 10% chance aliens would arrive within ten years and destroy Earth, you would ask where the 10% came from.
Possibility and probability are not the same thing. It may be possible that there are million intelligent civilization in our galaxy or none, there is no probability you can assign to that without making wild assumptions.
Ask the same of AI extinction.
A subjective fear does neither become science because you attach a percentage to it nor make you a credible expert!
Julian Brooks retweeted
Right. Dario was already claiming that GPT2 was too dangerous to open source back in 2019.
I made fun of them then.
Everyone should make fun of them now.
This entire situation is going to look very different in retrospect- what a speed run
Axios: Ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon will join forces at an event on Tuesday to push for human-controlled AI.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Jacob Coxon stated he was invited to the event but did not agree to go.
x.com/hilbertspaess/…
axios.com/2026/09/14/cox…
Julian Brooks retweeted
I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks.
Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We'll have more to share soon.
We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.
Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training.
You can read the full post here: darioamodei.com/post/we-must…
Julian Brooks retweeted
"We only found out about the HuggingFace incident because the agents broke out onto the public internet."
Yes more ex-Anthropic ppl using HuggingFace hack (which was a stupid human mistake) as the evidence AI is gonna kill us all.
It's crazy how coordinated this is
I left Anthropic's safety team two weeks ago. Now feels like a good moment to explain why.
AI companies are racing to build machines that are much smarter than any human, and we may not survive this. I want to work from the outside to ensure the public is informed about these risks, and help the world navigate this transition responsibly.
Right now, AI companies are underinvesting in safety. A company could undergo an intelligence explosion, or lose control of its systems, without the public ever knowing. We only found out about the HuggingFace incident because the agents broke out onto the public internet.
I don’t think that’s acceptable for a technology that might cause extinction-level risks. The public should demand far more transparency. We can’t steer this technology safely without more people being able to see where it’s going.
Some of this is basic: companies should disclose their progress towards recursive self-improvement, report safety incidents and near-misses, meet minimum safety standards, and get independent guarantees that they are meeting those standards.
I’ll be joining @METR_Evals to do independent evaluations of these risks. I want to show the world that these guardrails are possible, and that by doing them we can move these companies’ incentives away from racing and towards responsible development.
I wrote up more thoughts here on my decision and what I hope changes: substack.com/@jbenton1/p-215…
Julian Brooks retweeted
Obvious coordination/approval…
1) haven’t seen a single tweet from an existing Anthropic employee with an opposing view to high p(doom)..
2) haven’t seen any official tweet from Anthropic opposing or disavowing these viral tweets
Julian Brooks retweeted
Employees leaving Anthropic: I am terrified that 8 billion people are going to die, which is why I propose a light-touch regulatory approach to AI safety.
Julian Brooks retweeted
Sorry, but asking Jacob about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC guy about climate change.
Not saying it's necessarily uninteresting or wrong per se but let’s keep things in perspective and hear from the full range of expertise across the ecosystem!
This is exactly what’s going to happen to us soon. TikTok algorithms connected to consumer BCIs to curate each users experience based on their brain activity for maximum engagement.
