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 by the local model 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).
Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever.
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you → post → questions
ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world.
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ACX → have → world
Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here.
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you → subscribe → ?
I’ll probably close it around the end of this week.
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I → close → week
And new meetups added at University of British Columbia, University of Tokyo, and Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra.
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meetups → add → Tokyo
Apollo Research, a group “focused on reducing risks from scheming frontier AI”, asks me to signal-boost some job openings:
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Research → focus → openings
Apollo is hiring across product, control research, and internal security.
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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.
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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.
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visas → sponsor → Manager
A formal AI safety background is not required for the security and product roles.
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background → require → roles
Applications are rolling, apply here.
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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:
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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/ .
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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.
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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.
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we → base → problems
Those interested can apply at the link above.
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Those → apply → link
Like many of you, I enjoyed the reader book review of Thomas Urquhart’s translation of Rabelais.
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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 -
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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.
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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:
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me → see → project
We are hiring a Head of Instrumentation & AI, roughly a founding CTO for a hardware-and-data research program.
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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.
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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.
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it → make → measurements
The job is to build this new AI-native tech stack for animal welfare.
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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.
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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.
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this → apply → opinions
I haven’t made up my mind, so I include this here to let you make your own decisions.
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you → make → decisions