Open Thread 450

Read the original at Astral Codex Ten ↗
Cite

Alexander, S. (2026, September 7). Open Thread 450. Astral Codex Ten. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-450

Dated when The Aporia collected the article, usually within hours of publication. Check the original for its exact date and byline.

Astral Codex Ten · collected 2026-09-07 · by Scott Alexander commentary

Quick Summary

ACX's weekly open thread allows users to post about anything they want. There is no concrete news report in this article, but rather announcements and updates from various individuals and organizations associated with the community. ACX Reader Survey closes by the end of the week, and there are job openings at Apollo Research and Ovelle Bio.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-09-07, using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the same event (that is the story summary below).

AI analysis runs on qwen2.5:14b, locally

Story summary

A group called Apollo Research is hiring for various positions related to artificial intelligence (AI) development and security. They have job openings in London and San Francisco, with sponsored visas available. The roles include Engineering Manager (Product), Full-Stack Software Engineer, and others such as Research Scientist (Control), AI Red Team Engineer, and Security Engineer. Apollo Research works with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, and their product Watcher monitors billions of AI tokens per month. To signal this job opportunity, they asked the author to spread the word through his platform.

Written for “Open Thread 450” on 2026-10-22, grounded in this article and the 0 other(s) covering the same event.

Story

📰 Open Thread 450
Technology · 1 article(s) covering the same event.

Compared with similar articles

This article reads unscored and hedges 4% of its claims. Each row says how that neighbour differs.
Open Thread different event · 95%
Reason
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 no claims extracted 📰 publisher trust 67
“The articles have different dates and do not describe a single specific incident, but rather general open threads.”
Open Thread different event · 95%
Reason
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 no claims extracted 📰 publisher trust 67
“The articles are open threads posted on different dates.”
Open Thread different event · 85%
Reason
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 no claims extracted 📰 publisher trust 67
“Both articles appear to be general open threads for discussion but lack details confirming they describe the exact same occurrence.”
Open Thread different event · 85%
Reason
⚖️ leaning not scored 🔴 no claims extracted 📰 publisher trust 67
“The articles are open threads with different publication dates, indicating they describe separate instances of weekly discussions.”
How this article was measured signals, leaning charts, publisher record, byline, topics and claims

Signals How these are calculated →

Claims extracted
27
sentences that state something as happening or true
Uncertain
4%
1 of 27 hedged ("reportedly", "may", "according to")
Leaning
not political
takes no side on a contested political question
Publisher signals
not measured
these signals count newsroom corrections; Commentary has none to count
Outlets on this story
1
Technology
Same framing elsewhere
1
articles that frame the event the way this one does
Analyzed 2026-09-07 · how these are computed

How this is being covered How these are calculated →

Article leaning vs. publisher reliability
Source leaning vs. consistency

Publisher

Astral Codex Ten · 56 article(s) · 3 correction(s) detected
No corrections detected for this publisher. That may mean careful reporting, or simply that nothing has been checked.

Who wrote this

Scott Alexander
48 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction
🔮 I may have more of these in the upcoming week.
2026-10-19 · assertive framing · Open Thread 456
🔮 [This is one of the finalists in the 2026 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done.
2026-10-17 · assertive framing · Your Book Review: Storm Of Steel
🔮 AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI have long mentioned the possibility that their products could be existentially dangerous, but this has recently crescendoed into even more dire warnings, including suggestions that we have to pace the frontier, ie coordinate to slow AI progress.
2026-10-15 · assertive framing · AI Safety Is Not A Corporate Plot
🔮 [This is one of the finalists in the 2026 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done.
2026-10-10 · assertive framing · Your Book Review: We Present Television
🔮 When I objected that maybe we should wait for you to accept before figuring out details, they all said great, that’s absolutely right, they would contact you right away.
2026-10-06 · assertive framing · An Open Letter To Steven Pinker On AI
🔮 I’m pretty busy and will try to make up for it after that changes.
2026-10-05 · assertive framing · Open Thread 454
🔮 My wife and I could make healthy embryos, but none of the transfers were sticking.
2026-10-02 · assertive framing · Our AI Midwife
🔮 The challenger in that race, Jamie Joyce, contacted me and asked me to change my mind (both candidates will be facing off again in the general election).
2026-09-28 · assertive framing · Open Thread 453
🔮 [This is one of the finalists in the 2026 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done.
2026-09-25 · assertive framing · Your Book Review: Lee Kuan Yew's Memoirs
🔮 In the public debates after the release of AI 2027, some people accused us of misleading readers by positing “neuralese recurrence”, a hypothetical technology that would allow AIs to think dangerous thoughts without getting detected.
2026-09-24 · assertive framing · The Specter Of Neuralese
Also by Scott Alexander
Open Thread 456
2026-10-19 · Astral Codex Ten
Your Book Review: Storm Of Steel
2026-10-16 · Astral Codex Ten
AI Safety Is Not A Corporate Plot
2026-10-15 · Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 455
2026-10-13 · Astral Codex Ten
Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.
All 48 articles by Scott Alexander →

Topics

ACX ACX Reader Survey Apollo Binghamton Discord

Subjects

ACX ORG · 2× Apollo ORG · 2× ACX Reader Survey ORG · 1× Binghamton GPE · 1× Discord ORG · 1× Duke ORG · 1× Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra ORG · 1× University of British Columbia ORG · 1× University of Maryland ORG · 1× University of Tokyo ORG · 1×

Narrative

Roles are open in both London and San Francisco, in person, visas sponsored: Engineering Manager (Product), Full-Stack Software Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Product Security Engineer, Research Scientist (Control), AI Red Team Engineer, AI Security & Control Researcher, AI Security Researcher, and Security Engineer.
framing: assertive · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-09-07
🔮 At Ovelle, you will help make eggs abundant, thereby solving infertility, unlocking further advances in reproductive technology, and supporting the flourishing of future generations.
2026-09-07 · Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 450 · assertive framing

Claims (27 extracted, 1 hedged)

Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. asserted
you → post → questions
ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. asserted
ACX → have → world
Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here. asserted
you → subscribe → ?
I’ll probably close it around the end of this week. asserted
I → close → week
And new meetups added at University of British Columbia, University of Tokyo, and Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra. asserted
meetups → add → Tokyo
Apollo Research, a group “focused on reducing risks from scheming frontier AI”, asks me to signal-boost some job openings: asserted
Research → focus → openings
Apollo is hiring across product, control research, and internal security. asserted
Apollo → hire → product
Apollo works with frontier AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and builds Watcher, a coding agent security product deployed in production and monitoring billions of agent tokens per month. asserted
Apollo → work → month
Roles are open in both London and San Francisco, in person, visas sponsored: Engineering Manager (Product), Full-Stack Software Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Product Security Engineer, Research Scientist (Control), AI Red Team Engineer, AI Security & Control Researcher, AI Security Researcher, and Security Engineer. asserted
visas → sponsor → Manager
A formal AI safety background is not required for the security and product roles. asserted
background → require → roles
Applications are rolling, apply here. asserted
Applications → roll → ?
4: Friend of the blog and ACX Grants evaluator Metacelsus (of De Novo) asks me to advertise a position at his reproductive technology startup: asserted
Metacelsus → ask → startup
Ovelle Bio, a startup working on growing human eggs from stem cells, is hiring for a stem cell biologist position: https://ovelle.bio/careers/stem-cell-scientist/ . asserted
Bio → work → position
At Ovelle, you will help make eggs abundant, thereby solving infertility, unlocking further advances in reproductive technology, and supporting the flourishing of future generations. asserted
eggs → help → generations
This position is based in Boston and requires a PhD or equivalent experience in mammalian cell culture and molecular biology, but we primarily value scientific creativity, adaptability, and passion for solving impactful problems. asserted
we → base → problems
Those interested can apply at the link above. asserted
Those → apply → link
Like many of you, I enjoyed the reader book review of Thomas Urquhart’s translation of Rabelais. asserted
I → enjoy → Rabelais
I wasn’t expecting this to become important context for breaking news in AI, but evaluation site Vals - which tests new models against real-world problems - asserted
which → expect → problems
recently reported that the new Claude Fable 5.1 demonstrated its cryptography chops by decoding a famous 370-year-old unsolved cipher by Thomas Urquhart. asserted
Fable → report → Urquhart
ACX animal welfare grantee Robert Yaman of Innovate Animal Ag (see also his blog, The Optimist’s Barn) asks me to signal boost a job opening for his new project: asserted
me → see → project
We are hiring a Head of Instrumentation & AI, roughly a founding CTO for a hardware-and-data research program. asserted
We → hire → program
The poultry industry has always struggled to get high-quality commercial data, and nothing is harder to measure than welfare: most of what’s known rests on small university studies that take years and don’t resemble real production. asserted
that → struggle → production
New AI tools around continuous sensing, machine vision, and robotics are making it possible to measure welfare bird by bird in a working commercial flock and run rigorous experiments against those measurements. asserted
it → make → measurements
The job is to build this new AI-native tech stack for animal welfare. asserted
job → build → welfare
They want a technical generalist with 0-to-1 experience; hardware or physical-AI background is a plus, and you don’t need to know anything about chickens. asserted
you → want → chickens
Details and how to apply here. Note that this involves some level of cooperation with factory farms’ profit motive to improve conditions on the margin, and different animal advocates may have different opinions on whether this is net positive and/or deontologically permissible. uncertain
this → apply → opinions
I haven’t made up my mind, so I include this here to let you make your own decisions. asserted
you → make → decisions
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