Dr. Holly Elmore, executive director of PauseAI US, is done giving AI insiders the benefit of the doubt.
In this spicy episode, Holly calls out a number of respected figures in the AI safety community for allegedly “selling out” the cause: Effective Altruists, Anthropic & OpenAI employees, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Zvi Mowshowitz—and even yours truly!
Holly isn’t afraid to psychoanalyze her subjects, which I push back on, but I can’t deny she has a track record of pushing the Overton window and surfacing uncomfortable truths.
Does Holly’s approach risk burning bridges with allies for little benefit, or does AI safety need a moral conscience willing to call out the rot nobody else will?
Timestamps
00:00:00 — Cold Open
00:00:48 — Introducing Holly Elmore
00:02:20 — Why Holly Moved to DC
00:06:03 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™
00:07:18 — How We Got Here: EA, Rationality, AI Alignment
00:16:32 — “If Anyone Builds It” and LessWrong’s Missing Mood
00:21:47 — Holly Supports the Government’s Fable Crackdown
00:33:39 — Beef: Dean Ball (OpenAI)
00:53:09 — Beef: Eliezer Yudkowsky
00:56:14 — Beef: Zvi Mowshowitz
01:11:50 — Beef: Liron Shapira!
01:16:15 — Beef: Nirit Weiss-Blatt (Dr. Techlash) Being “Bad Faith”
01:19:31 — Anthropic Took Over EA
01:22:04 — Holly’s Basilisk: What If Building Superintelligence Becomes a Crime?
01:32:35 — Beef: Amanda Askell, the “Mother of Claude”
01:39:05 — Beef: Daniela Amodei, Co-Founder of Anthropic
01:40:23 — Beef: Joe Carlsmith, Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic
01:49:39 — Beef: Open Philanthropy / Coefficient Giving, Ben Goldhaber
01:54:28 — Wrap-Up
Links
* Support PauseAI US: https://www.pauseai-us.org/
* Holly on Twitter/X: https://x.com/ilex_ulmus
* Joe Carlsmith’s “Leaving Open Philanthropy, going to Anthropic” post: https://joecarlsmith.com/2025/11/03/leaving-open-philanthropy-going-to-anthropic/
* Dean Ball joins OpenAI announcement (FAI post): https://www.thefai.org/posts/dean-ball-joins-openai-as-head-of-strategic-futures
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