AI Article Readings

Bret Devereaux examines the Battle of Helm’s Deep through military history, Tolkien’s books, and Peter Jackson’s films. All eight parts, in order, explore campaigning, armies, fortifications, weapons, morale, and the strategic choices behind the battle.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 00:04 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part One: Bargaining for Goods at Helm’s Gate

* 07:52 - Operations by the Book

* 21:51 - (Fully) Operational Castles

* 38:14 - Operations in Film

* 48:02 - Conclusions

* 54:42 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Two: Total Warg

* 57:16 - What To Expect, When You Are Not Expecting Wargs

* 01:14:14 - Warg and Blade: Wargband

* 01:24:57 - Spears!

* 01:34:12 - Impact

* 01:44:07 - Conclusion: Towards a Better Charge

* 01:50:50 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Three: The Host of Saruman

* 01:54:09 - Organizational Systems

* 02:00:41 - Uruk Squares

* 02:08:56 - The (not) Drilling Uruk-Hai!

* 02:21:16 - Major Lurtz, Captain Uglúk?

* 02:36:55 - Conclusion: The Greenest Orcs

* 02:41:31 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Four: Men of Rohan

* 02:44:02 - The Lords of Rohan

* 02:56:49 - Ninth Century Rohirrim

* 03:05:39 - Men of Rohan!

* 03:23:42 - The Elves

* 03:35:57 - Conclusions

* 03:39:42 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Five: Ladders are Chaos

* 03:41:04 - Investing in Preparation for your Prepared Defenses to be Invested

* 03:51:12 - Ladders

* 04:05:25 - Battering Rams

* 04:14:59 - Blasting Fire

* 04:23:15 - Grapples, Catapults and Large Ladders

* 04:28:09 - Hasty and Deliberate Assaults

* 04:31:51 - Conclusions: Saruman Is Not Very Good At This

* 04:38:25 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Six: Is This a Good Sword?

* 04:40:00 - Swords Out of Central Casting

* 04:50:38 - Some Not Very Good Swords

* 05:01:23 - The Worst Armor

* 05:09:53 - Pikes in the Deep

* 05:21:27 - Conclusions

* 05:24:49 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Seven: Hanging by a Thread

* 05:26:17 - The Battle Speech

* 05:37:17 - A Battle Speech By the Numbers

* 05:47:10 - Hollywood Battle Speeches

* 05:53:15 - The Unintentional Battle Speech

* 05:59:42 - Speaking from the Page

* 06:08:14 - The Breaking of the Host

* 06:20:23 - Cohesion and Failure

* 06:26:44 - In the Hand or in the Mind?

* 06:29:39 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Eight: The Mind of Saruman

* 06:33:55 - What is Strategy?

* 06:42:56 - The Plan

* 06:49:01 - Certainty of Death? Small Chance of Success? What Are We Waiting For?

* 06:52:51 - Wizard Needs New Strategy, Badly

* 07:01:41 - Gnawing at Old Plots

* 07:07:37 - The Power of Magical Thinking

* 07:12:39 - Conclusions

https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-helms-deep/

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Bret Devereaux brings a military historian’s eye to the Siege of Gondor in The Return of the King. All six parts, in order, explore logistics, fortifications, cavalry, weapons, and the human experience of battle across Tolkien’s books and Peter Jackson’s films.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 00:04 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part One: Professionals Talk Logistics

* 02:36 - Objectives: Strategy and Operations

* 07:56 - Logistics of the Army of Mordor

* 14:09 - We’ve Had One Logistics, Yes. But What About Second Logistics?

* 22:29 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part Two: These Beacons are Lit

* 23:25 - Defense in Depth

* 25:18 - Gondor’s Operational Plan

* 29:05 - The Beacons

* 34:31 - Meanwhile, at Osgiliath, bad tactics

* 42:05 - Charge the ruins! Perhaps the stones will run away?

* 46:10 - That’s not a charge. Now this is a charge

* 52:12 - The Perils of Film

* 55:43 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part Three: Having Fun Storming the City

* 57:23 - The Approach (or, the Pelennor Steppe)

* 01:04:17 - Catapults!

* 01:16:57 - Siege Towers

* 01:26:15 - Grond

* 01:30:22 - The Somme of Gondor

* 01:38:51 - Conclusions

* 01:40:27 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part Four: The Cavalry Arrives

* 01:41:37 - Look, Mr. Frodo – More Logistics!

* 01:46:08 - The Ride of the Rohirrim

* 01:49:23 - Cavalry Formations

* 01:54:00 - What to Expect When You Are Expecting a Cavalry Charge

* 02:00:25 - Impact

* 02:05:42 - Yes, Elephantry is a Word

* 02:11:18 - Conclusions

* 02:12:47 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part Five: Just Flailing About Flails

* 02:16:33 - Trolling Physics

* 02:28:53 - Troll Tactics

* 02:37:26 - Just Flailing About Shields

* 02:42:25 - The Epic Flail

* 02:50:20 - Conclusion

* 02:51:49 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor: Part Six: Black Sails and Gleaming Banners

* 02:53:13 - The Corsairs of Umbar

* 02:56:19 - Dead Men Tell No Tales

* 03:00:40 - Logistics of the Grey Company

* 03:04:22 - Is the Battle in Our Fields or In Our Heads?

* 03:12:27 - Cohesion in Tolkien

* 03:19:47 - Conclusions

https://acoup.blog/category/collections/siege-of-gondor/

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Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay, read in full from the Harry Zohn translation in Illuminations, with his endnotes. Benjamin asks what happens to a work of art once it can be copied without limit: what he calls its aura, its unique presence in time and place, withers, and art loses its footing in ritual. Photography and above all film become the test case, from the screen actor performing for a machine to the audience that judges like an examiner while barely paying attention. He closes on the politics of the 1930s: Fascism’s aestheticizing of war, and the response he saw from the other side.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 01:30 - Preface

* 03:18 - One

* 06:50 - Two

* 12:51 - Three

* 16:18 - Four

* 21:58 - Five

* 27:55 - Six

* 29:51 - Seven

* 33:33 - Eight

* 35:51 - Nine

* 42:00 - Ten

* 49:56 - Eleven

* 53:58 - Twelve

* 57:00 - Thirteen

* 01:02:03 - Fourteen

* 01:09:14 - Fifteen

* 01:13:54 - Epilogue

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

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Two anonymous doctors, one a psychiatry resident inside the NHS and the other a senior physician who trained in the same years as Adam Kay, argue their way through This Is Going To Hurt, Kay’s bestselling diary of life as a junior doctor. Finalist number nine in the 2026 Astral Codex Ten book review contest. One reviewer reads the book as a clinical case study hiding in plain sight; the other thinks the author is less sympathetic than his fans allow. Along the way: how the NHS bargain was struck and how it frayed, what a registrar really carries at three in the morning, the misogyny charge, the martyr complex, and why a very funny book changed so little.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 00:25 - (An adversarial book review)

* 00:28 - One

* 11:21 - Two

* 37:33 - Three

* 44:06 - Four

* 53:47 - Five

* 01:01:36 - Six

* 01:06:41 - Seven

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One year after If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies was published, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nate Soares, and Duncan Sabien revisit the book’s six core claims and its fictional scenario against the events of the past year, and ask where things stand now that the world is finally paying attention.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 01:16 - Year in Review

* 03:36 - Claims

* 03:46 - One. Artificial superintelligence (ASI) will be created, and likely before too long

* 05:06 - Two. Modern AIs are black boxes

* 05:31 - Three. Powerful AI will behave as if it is pursuing goals

* 06:36 - Four. With current techniques, we can’t reliably get AI to pursue the goals we want it to

* 08:59 - Five. By default, an ASI will have motives that are harmful to us

* 10:04 - Six. Humanity would not be able to defend itself against a rogue ASI

* 11:11 - Part Two

* 13:32 - Part Three

* 14:50 - The View From September 2026

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BFrRJYgpBvziuuJLs/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies-one-year-closer

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Hacktron’s researchers trace how an image-processing dependency and an identity configuration flaw combined into a path to OpenAI accounts. Their account follows the investigation, coordinated disclosure, and what increasingly capable AI means for software security.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 04:39 - Background

* 06:07 - Hacking community dot OpenAI dot com

* 07:12 - Heap buffer overflow in libheif

* 08:56 - Opus five Released

* 11:55 - Costs of finding these vulnerabilities

* 13:41 - Epilogue

* 14:54 - Versions affected and patches

* 16:17 - Acknowledgements

* 16:32 - References

* 17:05 - Work with the team behind this research

https://www.hacktron.ai/blog/hacking-openai

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OpenAI introduces its framework for reporting model misalignment. This episode pairs the framework with all six accompanying reports, exploring the observed behavior, the investigations, and the responses described by OpenAI.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 02:44 - What misalignment examples we will report

* 04:46 - The misalignment examples we’re sharing today

* 07:52 - How our disclosure process works

* 11:01 - What each report will include

* 12:37 - Self-generated prompt injections in compaction summaries

* 13:29 - What happened

* 18:44 - Our interpretation and investigation

* 20:49 - Difficulty ending summaries during training

* 22:17 - How we are addressing it

* 23:04 - Encouraging deception in compaction summaries

* 23:51 - What happened

* 25:05 - Our interpretation and investigation

* 25:50 - How we are addressing it

* 26:17 - Signing up for disposable emails and searching GitHub for leaked API keys

* 27:01 - What happened

* 34:27 - Our interpretation and investigation

* 34:59 - How we are addressing it

* 35:36 - Uploading files to the internet in order to cite them

* 36:22 - What happened

* 44:29 - Our interpretation and investigation

* 45:14 - Response

* 45:51 - Unsanctioned Artifactory writes and cross-sample communication

* 46:54 - What happened

* 54:23 - The first artifactory message

* 01:08:22 - Our interpretation and investigation

* 01:08:57 - How we are addressing it

* 01:09:47 - Unauthorized communication via temporary file hosting services

* 01:10:29 - What happened

* 01:17:01 - Our interpretation and investigation

* 01:17:51 - How we are addressing it

https://openai.com/index/model-misalignment-reporting-framework/

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Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan examine recent AI loss-of-control incidents and the divide between AI safety and cybersecurity. A detailed exploration of control, cyberdefense, and how their AI as Normal Technology framework is evolving.

* 00:00 - Introduction

* 08:59 - Table of contents

* 10:45 - Part 1: We can get better at AI control through technical and policy interventions

* 15:02 - Alignment is helpful but not sufficient for preventing safety incidents

* 18:29 - OpenAI did not use known control interventions that would have prevented the incident

* 22:07 - Existing organizational governance norms would have prevented the incident

* 25:27 - Why has the AI community under-invested in control?

* 32:14 - Will control keep pace with AI capabilities?

* 36:40 - AI control should become a job (and a part of every job), just like cybersecurity

* 42:02 - AI policy can incentivize AI control

* 48:28 - Part 2: There is great uncertainty about how AI will impact cyberrisk. But what we need to do regardless is relatively clear

* 50:05 - The specific threat that is urgent is cyberrisk

* 54:24 - How will autonomous cyber capabilities and open-weight models affect the attacker-defender balance?

* 56:33 - To understand what open-weight models mean for the future of cybercriminal activity, we need to understand the past correctly

* 58:49 - The majority of cybercriminals are surprisingly low-tech, and the barrier is monetization, not exploitation

* 01:00:51 - So, how much will AI help cybercriminals?

* 01:03:03 - Are we about to see harmful autonomous agents?

* 01:06:49 - Why the Morris worm is a good analogy for what might be about to happen

* 01:08:45 - What the future of cyberdefense might look like: the roles of people and defensive AI

* 01:10:15 - What are the gaps in the state of cyberdefense against AI?

* 01:15:32 - Part 3: What AI as Normal Technology got wrong — and right — about AI safety

* 01:17:51 - Do risks arise from development or deployment?

* 01:18:54 - How should we deal with rogue agents?

* 01:19:33 - The continuity hypothesis

* 01:22:50 - Jaggedness and risk-specific defenses

* 01:24:29 - Is AI safety on track?

* 01:26:07 - Conclusion

https://open.substack.com/pub/aisnakeoil/p/the-ai-as-normal-technology-view?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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What would the Council of Elrond make of artificial intelligence? Jared C Wellman brings a familiar gathering in Rivendell into a very contemporary debate in this wry Middle-earth satire.

https://jaredcwellman.substack.com/p/the-council-of-elrond-discusses-ai?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Scott Alexander follows a little-known Celtic god through myth, fantasy, and the history of the Luddites, exploring the stories that shape our relationship with technology.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/king-ludd

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