Malcolm and Simone break down new reporting from effort.news exposing how effective altruism organizations spent tens of millions funding anti-AI narratives across journalism, YouTube explainer channels, and religious groups. They discuss the circular donor ecosystem, undisclosed grants, and the impact on public discourse.

The conversation covers specific examples from The Guardian, Time Magazine, Kurzgesagt, and multiple faith organizations, along with personal context from their own grant history with the Survival and Flourishing Fund. They also address the mental health effects of doomer messaging and why the arguments fail under scrutiny.

Shout out to Matthew Seagren / @MatchewXD who created the wasp clip!

Show Notes

The Media Astroturfing

Brian covered this on Effort.News in an article titled: How Effective Altruism Bought the Media.

They found “Potemkin articles, in which claims are fabricated, corroborated, and published as journalism by members of an insular donor ecosystem”

They explore the issue through a guardian article that six people collaborated to publish, all of whom were paid for by three megadonors. The Guardian did NOT disclose these sources of funds, and, as Brian’s article puts it: “In a fundraising statement attached to the article, the Guardian proclaims its “fierce independence.””

The payments:

* The Guardian: Paid over $3M by Coefficient Giving

* The reporter, Aisha Down, paid $60-$110K through the Coefficient Giving’s Tarbell Fellowship, which pays her salary

* The quoted experts were all recipients of funds from either SFF, Coefficient, or the Effective Ventures Foundation. The reporter does not justify her reasoning behind calling these people “experts” despite these “experts” publicly admitting their predictions were off by years, if not decades.

* Henry Papadatos paid $620,000

* Malcolm Murray, paid $129,376 plus $47.1M to affiliated institutions

* Andrea Castagna, paid $30,000 and the recipient of two undisclosed grants

* The subjects of the story Daniel Kokotajlo, paid $2,851,166

* Given $400K by Coefficient

* Given a $2M grant by the Survival and Flourishing Fund (which also was the biggest ever grant-giver to the Pragmatist Foundation—$500K!)

As Brian puts it:

“All six belong to a circular ecosystem known as “AI Safety,” united around the belief that AI will end the human race. What Down promotes as ‘expertise’ is not merely unrigorous or exaggerated — it is a work of cultlike fiction which openly promotes their vision of the AI apocalypse. This belief underwrites millions spent annually on promoting a firehose of anti-AI narratives with the goal of banning AI outright — the price of preventing the apocalypse.”

“This ecosystem is bankrolled by three megadonors — Dustin Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy, Sam Bankman-Fried’s Center for Effective Altruism (CEA), and Jaan Tallinn’s Survival and Flourishing Fund. The media arm of this empire has over $40 million in donations and includes paid journalists, influencers, and religious groups.”

Apparently the Center for Effective Altruism rebranded to the Effective Ventures Foundation after the SBF fallout and Open Philanthropy rebranded to Coefficient Giving after distancing itself from SBF.

$17.9M has gone to print

$13.9M to video content

$4.87M to political advocacy

$2.66 film and fiction

$1.81M to religious NGOs

$1.35M to other

The Tarbell Fellowship program is how Coefficient Giving influences media coverage; it uses it to pay the salaries of over 20 journalists at major news outlets.

TIME is their biggest fellowship Recipient; Brian found that 58/100 of the TIME 100 profiles were written by Tarbell-paid journalists.

He also shared leaked emails showing how AI safety orgs sponsor anti-AI content on YouTube and showed channels that have been funded by these orgs, including:

* Kurzgesagt ($5.83M)

* Rational Animations ($2.53M)

* A Primer ($300K)

* A Happier World ($150K)

* Space Science Guy ($24K)

And he points out how the AI-doomerism-sponsored videos perform between 12% and 89% worse than these channels’ normal videos.

Related to this, Sabine posted about her experience being contacted by these orgs. What Sabine covers in her YouTube video:

* She says an organization asked her to make an AI-risk video with prescribed sentences and references,

* So it’s clear the messaging can go beyond simple sponsorship.

* She also points out that it’s not just anti-AI orgs reaching out to content creators, Taylor Lorenz being offered $5,000 to make a tiktok video about the USA’s need to outcompete China with AI by Build American AI

* My god did they ever make a stupid choice on who to contact

* She points out these organizations would be dumb to NOT try to sponsor content, but she doesn’t like that political lobbying is flooding into science and tech reporting

* BTW, her sponsor for that episode was Ground News, which another YouTuber hilariously attempted to claim was some sort of right-wing psyop ‘because what’s the point of showing both sides of an argument when one side of the political spectrum is just wrong’

The Religious Astroturfing

Brian & Co. reported on this under: AI Safety Donors Paid Religious NGOs $3.3M for Statements on AI on Effort.News

They find it rich that largely atheistic EAs are trying to get religious people to believe that AI will bring the end times. As it’s put in the article: “The AI Safety movement descends from rationalist and new atheist roots. Its core belief — that AI will literally end all human life — often draws comparisons to doomsday cults like Heaven’s Gate. Yet with enough funding, some churches are willing to square that belief with the Book of Revelation.”

They observed that “AI Safety’s largest donors — Dustin Moskovitz and the now-convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried — were among Biden’s largest donors.” and yet when he lost the 2024 election, they were on the outs, which led them to turn to religious NGOs.

“Since 2025, AI Safety donors put $3.3 million into churches, seminaries, faith networks and religious-affinity groups. It paid for pronouncements: declarations, red lines, and a “Magna Carta of AI.””

“The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America took $105,000 from [the Future of Life Institute] FLI. They credit their “red lines on AI” to “a grant from the Future of Life Institute.”2 The Gospel Coalition received $200,000 for a podcast called “Silicon Spiritualities,” without disclosing their sponsor. They later barred their writers from using AI to research, write, or edit. The World Council of Churches took $100,000 to write its “red lines.” The Mormon nonprofit Faith Matters took $299,000 for a “Magna Carta of AI.””

Their reporting shows that:

* Multi-faith AI media got the most funding: $574,721

* Buddhist media came in second: $555,000

* Faith-adjacent: 550,000

“FLI, an AI Safety megadonor, runs a full-time religions program with a “Religions lead,” Will Jones, and a “U.S. Faith Liaison,” Brian J. A. Boyd. The program lists the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Vatican’s Fratelli Tutti Foundation among its partners.

FLI’s grantees make up the overwhelming majority of religious signatories on statements produced by FLI and its allies.”

Not all the religious astroturfing is going well:

“Of FLI’s recipients, only two disclosed their donations on their project pages. Two more disclosed their donations, but only on LinkedIn. Four more made no public project-related disclosures.

FLI’s other religious outreach is not progressing as smoothly. They paid a Muslim NGO for a declaration of Islamic principles and Impact Academy for a Hindu consensus statement. Neither has been delivered.”

Catholic Stuff:

“In September 2025, a Vatican working group chaired by papal adviser Fr. Paolo Benanti handed Pope Leo XIV an appeal for a prohibition on superintelligence “until there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably,” plus an IAEA-style inspectorate for AI labs.6 By November, FLI sat on the Vatican’s Builders AI Forum. In May 2026, it put $200,000 into two Catholic projects: a post-liberal magazine in Steubenville, Ohio, and a Slovenian faculty educating Catholic leaders on AI.

FLI is using its newfound connections to support the business disputes of Anthropic, an AI-safety-linked company. In March, Boyd co-signed a Catholic theologians’ brief backing Anthropic in its dispute with the Department of War. Anthropic brought him to the company’s two-day summit with fifteen Christian thinkers.7 Then, on 25 May, Pope Leo XIV presented Magnifica Humanitas, the first encyclical devoted to artificial intelligence, and the lay speaker beside two cardinals in the Synod Hall was Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic.”

“The AI Safety movement spends more brazenly and deceptively than almost any other political cause. This affects not just the AI debate, but theology broadly. As Nirit Weiss-Blatt puts it, “AI doomerism fills a ‘religious-shaped hole.’ For people who left religious upbringing but retain a hunger for a mission-driven community, the AI-risk subculture offers a replacement meaning system.””

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins:. Hello, Malcolm. I’m very glad to be speaking with you because sweet satisfaction is at hand. We have known since the height of Sam Benjamin Fried that effective altruists have been pouring millions of dollars into AI doomerism propaganda or AI safety content as they would put it, but we didn’t have definitive receipts. And that was until two former Basecamp guests delivered them last week with Brian Chow and his effort.news revealing how effective altruism bought the media, basically. It’s it’s actually worse than you would think, Malcolm. And also how AI safety donors have paid religious NGOs 3,300,000 to make statements on AI. Then also, Sabina Hoffenfelder, who was on our podcast, like, what, one or two years ago, the science

Malcolm Collins:We actually have an episode with her that’s never aired.

Simone Collins:But you got a weekend episode, dude. Weekend episode. I

Malcolm Collins:think it’s good enough for a weekday episode is the problem.

Simone Collins:Well, then we gotta run it.

Malcolm Collins:But, anyway bad because we’re more extreme and political than when she agreed to do an episode

Simone Collins:with us. Episodes so you don’t torture her reputation. But, anyway, after she saw people talking about this on x, she posted a video talking about how people have tried to get her to post AI do more content. It’s like a sponsored content thing. And then both Sabine and Brian’s posts became trending topics on x with even Elon Musk asking Sabine, who is offering people money for this? Because, apparently, he didn’t know, which shocks me. So then I guess it shouldn’t shock me because, basically, we knew it because we had attempted through a nonprofit to get grant money from allegedly effective altruist organizations being like, well, we wanna help future human flourishing. And then we discovered the hard way that all they were donating to, for the most part, of course, are exceptions. We’ll talk about that, was to just AI do more propaganda organizations.

Malcolm Collins:No. This is real. This is so so this is a multibillion dollar industry. And what’s fascinating about it is while it is partially, almost certainly, Chinese funded Yep. That’s an element. The primary donor to this is not even generic woke idiots. Mhmm. It is an AI doomsday cult that evolved out of our old social network in Silicon Valley Yeah. That donates billions of dollars to this a year. Mhmm. And I wanna get into that, but I also wanna get into the sad world that they wanna plunge you into. So here, I am gonna post a video that a fan made for us, and this is my favorite AI content I’ve ever seen, about your and my wasp saga

Malcolm Collins:Gotta kill those wasps. I know. I feel bad for the one wasp that’s stuck under the cup. Okay. Release it outside, but it’ll just be back inside tomorrow. It’s living inside, and you release it outside. It’s just coming right back inside, and you’re going to kill their army anyway. I know. You are too empathetic, Simone. She’ll die with her friends that way. Okay. Release her outside and deal with it. I would want to die with my friends. Right now, she’s just very scared and blown. Okay. Bye. You are too impatient women. This is why women can’t be president. Mel, the who did with all the dead animals. Okay? Who... Okay. I love you, Simone. I love you too.

Malcolm Collins:.

Simone Collins:Anyway That made my morning. That made my morning. Yep. Yeah. No, Malcolm

Speaker 8:The reason why Simone and I find this, Elon, being like, who’s paying you? Who’s doing this? So comical.

Speaker 4:is, when we hang out with, like, Elon Circle, the people who go to those parties, at least when we used to go to them, are the same people who are organizing the funding of all of this. They’re not the donors themselves, but they’re, like, the smart intellectuals who operate these nonprofits or determine where the donor advised funds go. and they’re, like, 100% cultists. And it’s so weird for he’s who’s who’s doing this? And I’m Elon, that’s your personal circle that’s doing this, or at least the the outer edges of it. and so to to like, these these effective altruist types, singulararian types, you know, every single one of them, you guys if if you’re associated with these communities, you need to be vetting them because this cult is is is is dangerous and pervasive. and to give you an idea of what I mean when I’m like, yeah. we we are involved in this. If you go to the the Sabrina Hofstetter leak, she she put this out there. And the guy who reached out to her was Drew Sparks, at Nonlinear who runs the Species Channel. And if you look at the Species Channel, it’s just every video is doomerism. Every video is, we need to stop technology. We need to go back to the way things used to be. AI is gonna kill everyone. Blah blah blah blah blah. But, I’m pretty sure because I remember meeting a few guys with with channels like this. I’m pretty sure I met this guy at a party, and and we talked for a while about AI safety and stuff like that. So, like, these these communities are our communities. Like, I I recognize these people. And, it’s horrifying to see the cult spread so far within these communities and corrupt so many otherwise potentially bright minds. The, positive that comes out of this is these communities were you know, if you’re talking about a community counter to the the nerd writer, the new writer, whatever, you know, the community that makes up, like, Leaflet and ourselves and, like, our wider community. they were the most intelligent, most agentic potential eventual counterweight to us, even though mostly we were working on the same project, even though mostly we agreed on a lot of things. Oh, there aren’t like, they they drew in people from all over the world who were the best and the brightest, and now they’ve, you know, ideologically neutered these people so they can no longer be effective or or take on the future, which allows us a better chance in terms of, having kids and and consolidating power and attempting to steer humanity in a positive direction. So sad, but but positive

Speaker 5:And what’s cool is in the Sabrina email, he explains how they are able to make these donations to essentially control the media you watch and the influencers you watch without you knowing, and it’s that they make them as grants rather than, like, other types of donations that would require a person admit that that they were doing it as a sponsorship.

Speaker 7:We’re in this for the species, boys and girls. It’s simple numbers. They have more.

Simone Collins:. This by the way, we need to start the kill drawer again. So if you can bring a mousetrap down, let’s get that going.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. I’ve only got two left, so we need more mousetraps because I put out, like, eight last night.

Simone Collins:Okay. Walmart run, but the kill drawer must return. The kids love it. It’s, like, their favorite thing every morning. It’s like

Malcolm Collins:Christmas drawer in our kitchen that we just line with mousetraps because for whatever reason, the mouse keep coming back to it. Mhmm. And we used to use it as, like, a drawer, but it would get covered in mouse poop. And so we’re like, okay. Whatever. And so the mouse always set up right next to this one drawer, and so we line it with newspapers, and then we just put tons of mousetraps in it. And and every morning, you could just

Simone Collins:take it from You open it up. There’s a dead mouse inside. You roll up that layer of newspaper with all the blood, and then you put you just put down the next mousetrap. By the way, have you

Malcolm Collins:cleaned up the dead mouth in the attic?

Simone Collins:No. I haven’t gotten I look. I’m gonna handle that and the disgusting shower and all the other stuff. It’s gonna happen. It’s all happening tonight after my full day of work.

Malcolm Collins:Am I torturing you?

Simone Collins:And all the and the blood work and the calls and the okay. It’s so much worse than you thought. Okay? So Brian covered this on effort.news. First, in an article tall called how effective altruism bought the media. And they found, quote, Potemkin articles in which claims are fabricated, corroborated, and published as journalism by members of an insular donor ecosystem. Surprise. Surprise. This Which we are very connected to. We we know it well. and look. A lot of these people who are involved in this are smart, kind people who are fun to hang out with, but also kinda frustrating. So, like, I’m not planning for the future because I think we’re all gonna die, and that’s it’s a bummer.

Malcolm Collins:So what’s interesting about this, just for people who are watching this, is sort of where we are in this. So one of the people who’s trending on this is Brian, who’s been a friend of ours and a fan of the podcast forever. And he, like, we had the episode on him when he launched his newspaper that since launching has gone viral multiple times for licking these stories. Yeah. But we have also had on the show one of the figures at the absolute center of the anti AI community. Ayla. Oh, Ayla. Right. Right. No. She she sort of got sucked into this cult. It’s not I’m not you know, obviously, you’re She’s surrounded by people

Simone Collins:who are anti AI. It’s I don’t think she really honestly has that much of a choice.

Malcolm Collins:Like Her primary boyfriend is one of the leaders of the anti AI community. And as a woman, should we is it better that she’s part of the anti AI community or that she wanna go up against her man? Okay. I’m just saying. You know what? Women thinking for themselves out there. That would be dangerous.

Simone Collins:I just want her to be happy, and I just think she’d be happier if she were an anti AI.

Malcolm Collins:If she completely cut herself off from that.

Simone Collins:Look look at also all the cool stuff she has built by vibe coding. What I also appreciate is that she’s not so there’s there’s there’s EA anti AI, and they’re all vibe coding. They’re all using AI stuff. And then there’s, like, normie anti AI where they’re, like, they refuse to use it aesthetically, and they’re just shooting themselves in the foot.

Malcolm Collins:So I’m glad that No. No. No. Not all the EA anti AI people are vibe coding. Some are like Ayla who’s, like, a little bit mentally free, but a lot of them don’t touch it, and they see it as, like, a status signal not to touch it.

Simone Collins:I don’t see that. I everyone I know who is in the space and adjacent to it. You know, as as long as they’re they’re if they’re agentic, competent people, they’re vibe coding. And if they’re not vibe coding, it’s not out of some aesthetic thing. It’s because they’re low agency, low productivity. So that’s

Malcolm Collins:Well, to give you an idea of, like, what happens to somebody in this community, because we’ve been able to see this with Ayla’s writings, is she talks about how today she doesn’t see a future anymore. She’s beginning to do more drugs. She’s beginning to not save for retirement anymore. She’s beginning to adopt a much more pessimistic attitude towards life and and and really dealing with mental health issues tied to this because these people really think civilization is about to it. Right? Like, when you think surrounded by people in

Simone Collins:a doomsday cult, which perhaps she is, how can you not start to just fall into that view? This is very commonly how people find themselves in cults in the first place. And I think Scott Alexander talked about this when he did that book review on the rise of Christianity, that so much of the rise of early Christianity really just had to do with people who were being surrounded by a tipping point of Christians. And then after at that point, you’re basically a Christian. So you have to get to that weird tipping point. And in the Bay Area, in these rational circles, I think that’s kind of how you see some of this memetic spread taking place is there’s just this preponderance of AI doomers. But, anyway, what they do in this article is explore the issue through just to start one Guardian article because it’s it’s such a good illustration that had six people involved to make it and publish it. Mhmm. All of these people were paid for by three mega donors, which the Guardian didn’t disclose. and in fact, as as Brian puts it in the article, quote, in a fundraising statement attached to the article, the Guardian proclaims its fierce independence. And Okay? The Guardian itself was paid over 3,000,000 by Coefficient Giving, a idoomerorg. The reporter who wrote the article, Aisha Down, was paid 50 sorry, 60 to 110 k through the Coefficient Givings Tarbell fellowship, which pays her salary. Also, three quoted experts experts in the article were all recipients of funds either from the survival and flourishing fund, more on them soon, Coefficient, again, another Do More AI, and also the Effective Ventures Foundation. And Ayesha, the reporter, does not justify her reasoning behind calling these people experts, despite the experts themselves publicly admitting that their predictions were off by years in in in some cases, if not, you know, decades as they put in the article. So there’s Henry Papadatos, who has paid $620,000, Malcolm Murray, who is paid $129,376 dollars and sorry. $129,376, and Andrea Castagna, who is paid $30,000, and she’s also the recipient of two additional undisclosed grants

Malcolm Collins:because transparency already But for context, Simone, you might not have done the math on this. Yeah. From the Survival and Flourishing Fund, our movement has received demonstrably more than every one of those grants combined.

Simone Collins:We what? Pronatalism? Yes. We received $500,000 from the Survival and Flourishing Fund.

Malcolm Collins:Which is more than every one of the numbers

Simone Collins:you Henry Papadopoulos alone was paid $620,000. Oh, 600,000? The Guardian was paid over 3,000,000 by coefficient giving. S**t. The reporter has a salary, Aisha down, through the Tarbell Fellowship, but that’s one reporter. And, again, Henry Papadous is just one of the three expert sources. Then Malcolm Murray, 129,000, a little more than that. Andrea Castagna, $30,000. And then the subject of the story, who is Daniel Coco Tajo Tajlo, was paid $2,851,166.

Malcolm Collins:Oh god. That’s so much more. But you wanna hear what’s wild about our movement compared to the the AI doomer movement? Uh-huh. So these guys are getting, you know, like, billions of dollars a year in total and, like, well over what we’re getting. Yeah. We took their one grant to us. Both did everything we told them we were going to do and set up a business that is set to be paying into the nonprofit foundation about 300,000 a year right now, which means what? That

Simone Collins:That’s the hope. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:We’d Well, I mean, that that’s that’s the run rate.

Simone Collins:Okay? Right now.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. And so if we can grow it right now, obviously, if it shrinks, that’s bad. Right? But if we can grow it from here, which I think is reasonable to go from 300,000 a year to 500,000 a year, that means that we will, in perpetuity, be donating into cause areas an equivalent to the amount that they originally gave us every year just a few years after the original donation, which puts us in a completely different league than these AI idiots.

Simone Collins:However, it should be disclosed. And, again, just to be super clear, I think this was in 2021. The Pragmatist Foundation, which is our nonprofit foundation, received a $500,000 grant from the Survival and Flourishing Fund, which is one of these AI do more funds. And other people that we know who received grants from the fund definitely did AI do more adjacent style work. We were maybe one of the less usual applicants in that we applied to work on our school project. And that you know, like, we received that money. I I like, I think it’s important to disclose it. We we since have applied, I think, two or three more times, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins:Two no. One more time.

Simone Collins:And the themes have gone more focused around AI safety, I think, as time has gone, at least in the wording of the application materials. Originally, the Survival and Flourishing Fund really had, like, very explicit just wording around how will your project contribute to long term human flourishing? Because, again, Survival and Flourishing Fund. Okay? It didn’t AI had nothing to do with it.

Malcolm Collins:But their community of donors got increasingly incepted into the cult.

Simone Collins:Yes. And so, unfortunately, one of the reasons why that $500,000 donation followed by one more 20 k. 10 k, which was great and very profoundly appreciated, did not result in anything beyond that was that Malcolm insisted on applying to these funds being like, look. You gave us $500,000 to work I think it was both pro to work on pronatalism and to work on our education thing. We built the whole education thing out. Here it is. You can look at it. Also, we successfully moved the Overton window on demographic collapse and prenatalism. People used to deny that it was an issue.

Malcolm Collins:Time, the natalism caused in Google search terms. Now they did a second I’d maybe even funded by me clowning on them about this. We were about double what AI safety was, nadilism was in terms of Google search traffic.

Simone Collins:Yeah. So Malcolm applies, and he’s like, look at all of your other pathetic donor recipients donation recipients. They can’t get anything done. Look at what we did with what you gave us. Don’t you think that maybe you should give us more? Because everyone else is so lazy, and I wonder why they didn’t give us more money.

Malcolm Collins:No. But here’s the fun thing. Right? Yeah. I wanted to, and I’m actually thinking about this. Fans can let us know. I’ve thought about re donating, like, every year, like, some amount or re donating what they gave us with interest, like, back into the fund just because, you know, OpenAI didn’t do it. They were founded as a nonprofit. And when they became profitable, they didn’t give Elon money, like, interest or equity or anything like that. I was like, that seems profoundly, you know, immoral. But now I’m I’m sort of struggling with a question I have, which is now that it looks like we might end up becoming quite profitable with like, we did everything we told them we were gonna do, and then I was like, and now I’m gonna take the rest of this money and make it make money forever with projects that are tied to our goals. Right?

Simone Collins:Right. Well and actually, this our FAB is directly downstream of a threat that we made to the survival and flourishing fund related to one of their AI safety, I guess, grant invitations whereby Malcolm was like, okay. So you could give us a grant to try to help you work on AI alignment with all the guardrails. You know, we’ll keep it siloed offline.

Malcolm Collins:Oh my god. They would have made the product so bad.

Simone Collins:Air gapped. We’ll be so safe. We’ll follow all your rules. Or you cannot fund us, and we’ll build it anyway. But everything will be immediately online, and we’re just gonna take all the guardrails off, and that is Reality Fabricator. And, I’m so glad that you did it, and I’m so glad they didn’t give

Malcolm Collins:Literally, with our agent system on Reality Fabricator, the way I decided features to add is I asked what would scare AI safety people the most. And I’d be like, build that next.

Simone Collins:So yeah.

Malcolm Collins:No. But what’s what’s fun about this is now the intellectual challenge I have, and fans can let me know where where they want us to go with this. Mhmm. and if you are unfamiliar, you haven’t heard of the project, the core thing that, like, people use our site for most is AI chat sessions or AI adventure sessions. Think of them as, like, choose your own adventure books. Yeah. and we’ve done some major updates on the systems that are meant to sort of brainstorm these for you, and they can even use Fable for not safe for work starts now, which is really

Simone Collins:good for NSFW? Incredibly good.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, dear. The the Fable brainstorming system I built out for the instant brainstorm or the the longer one. I wouldn’t say concept expander isn’t as good anymore now that the engines are better.

Simone Collins:When I do brainstormer instant concept expander, it is spick. So Fable can build incredible websites, create amazing features, build amazing software.

Malcolm Collins:Well, was really hard because Fable is generally very bad at talking like a human or writing stories.

Simone Collins:And Okay.

Malcolm Collins:I did some wizardry that got it working on this system. But, anyway, the the point being is, okay, check it out if you wanna check it out. Would obviously profoundly appreciate it. Also, we have, like, the best image and video generation provider I’m aware of in terms of pricing and diversity. But and this is filmed on the site too, by the way. But if we build this into something that’s making lots of money, my initial plan was, well, let’s give a portion of it back to the survival and flourishing fund. Just like clown on them with negative donations every year. Requests where we just scold them and then give them, like, a negative donation for, like, you know, 250,000, 500,000, whatever. And then I look at what they’re doing with this stuff, and I’m like, wait. They’re just, like, demonstrably a threat to civilization at this point.

Simone Collins:That’s that is actually my concern after reading all this. I’m like, oh, but what if, yeah, what if they use more funds that is actually gonna cause tangible damage? Because we also see not just the strategic losses that are downstream of AI doomerism from a national spending standpoint, data center development, all these things, lobbying, but also the mental health downstream effects that

Malcolm Collins:Oh, yes.

Simone Collins:Has on population.

Malcolm Collins:Communities of views. I know this one really smart kid who I used to mentor and help with things. Oh, man. And he basically, after he got incepted into this cult, just became severely depressed, stopped talking to anyone, like, didn’t leave his room for six months. Like, it psychologically destroys people. Yeah. And we’ve seen it happen to multiple promising young people.

Simone Collins:So maybe maybe don’t do that. But everyone’s in new

Malcolm Collins:grounded in reality at all. See our old episodes on this where we, like, go into all the points they make and how stupid they are. Yeah. But the the point being, like, if you if you’re worried about AI killing everyone, you really need to go look at we have, like, three or four episodes where we go point by point on every one of their points, and they are dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. It’s like it’s like, you know, AI is sucking up all the water level dumb. Right? Like, it’s it’s just not true or tied to reality at all. But now what I think I’m gonna do with the money, if we’re able to grow this organization, is dedicate it to the type of project the survival and flourishing fund would have funded when they first gave

Simone Collins:us

Malcolm Collins:that

Simone Collins:grant and awarded application. With hardea.org. That’s the whole point. And we’ll just remind people that they can submit grant applications there, but we’re we’re not there yet. Okay? We’re look. Let’s get some stability.

Malcolm Collins:Well, RFAB started as a grant application.

Simone Collins:Yeah. It did, dude. Bruno, thank you. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Literally, REA start so we did Hardier. We put out grants for for and Reality Fabricator, the project started as a grant application.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Well, it was a grant application for a research modality using AI. Remember? It was, like, for for a second.

Malcolm Collins:Then, of course, being myself, I say, how can I profit from this? Oh god.

Simone Collins:Okay. This is true. At any rate, everyone knows now we received a large grant from SFF. Now all we’ve done since, I guess, rudely, is troll them and insult them. So bad us. But, also, as Brian puts it in his article, all six belong to a circular he’s again, all six people who made that

Malcolm Collins:Sorry. We we don’t troll them with, like, me. We troll them with, like, how are we doing better than every one of your other grants combined? That’s a that’s a meaningful thing. Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins:I know. I know. I know. Look. I didn’t stop you from doing it. I edited your applications, and I was like, well, Malcolm, if this is the angle you wanna take now, it’s grammatically correct, and we sent it. I would have stopped you if I really vehemently disagreed. I mean, you’re right. I just don’t you know, it’s typically like, you gotta kiss someone’s boots if you wanna get money from them. And that’s what they all did with daddy Sam Bankman Fried, and and then they got screwed because now he’s in jail. But, anyway

Malcolm Collins:Well and I guess this is why Hardy a is able to stay moral, and they’re not.

Simone Collins:Right. Sure. Okay. Mhmm. But let’s we’re gonna get past the trolling to the dirt. Okay? Because the receipts and the dirt are finally here. Don’t you understand?

Malcolm Collins:Let’s give me the receipts.

Simone Collins:So with this Guardian article, as, Brian says, all six belong to a circular ecosystem known as AI safety united around the belief that AI will end the human race. What Down promotes as expertise, that’s the author of the article to remind you, is not merely unrigorous or exaggerated. It’s a work of cult like fiction which openly promotes their vision of the AI apocalypse. This belief underwrites millions spent annually on promoting a fire hose of anti AI narratives with the goal of banning AI outright, the price of preventing the apocalypse. This ecosystem is bankrolled by three mega donors, Dustin Moskowitz’s Open Philanthropy, Sam Bankman Fried’s Center for Effective Altruism, aka CEA, and Jan Tullen’s Survival and Flourishing Fund. Thank you, Jan, for the for the grant. The media arm of this empire has over 40,000,000 in donations and includes paid journalists, influencers, and religious groups. So, apparently, the Center for Effective Altruism, and I didn’t know this, rebranded to the Effective Ventures Foundation after Sam Bakeman Fried ended up in jail. And Open Philanthropy also rebranded after first distancing themselves from Sam Bankman Fried, then they changed their name to Coefficient Giving, which I didn’t know. So because don’t you remember after he like, after the the Sam Bankman Fried money fire hose dried up, like, there was this moment of, like, mass mourning? Like, we had calls with people who worked in the effective altruism, like, nonprofit space who acted as though, like, their mother had just died. They’re like, I’m just emotionally

Malcolm Collins:Well, destroyed the community. The entire community was living off of that fire hose. Is is it a giant purge network that sits with their thumb up their butt all day producing nothing but Harry Potter fan fiction?

Simone Collins:Are you surprised that we didn’t get any more money from them? Oh god. But what’s ironic about it and and I I do share Malcolm’s disdain because the whole point of effective altruism for those not familiar with it like, one of the core sort of stories founding stories of it as it first emerged was, hey. You know, what’s more effective than, like, working in the nonprofit space that you care about, like going to be a doctor in Africa and saving a life a day, you could become a high paid consultant or finance bro, make a ton of money, and donate, I don’t know, even, like, just 10%, but up to as much income as you can, all of that to charity, and you can save hundreds of lives a day. So don’t actually work at the nonprofit. And yet somehow, ironically, this entire nonprofit ecosystem sprung up. And lo and behold, the vast majority of the people who receive these AI grants, and these these effective altruist grants in general, it’s mostly for projects that involve paying them to sit on their butts and write. They’re not even being paid to go be a doctor and save a life a day. They’re just being paid to not only sit on their butts and write, like, in Iowa or something where it’s affordable, but in freaking San Francisco or in London or in New York. So it’s extra insulting because it it it it spits in the face of effective altruism. Yeah. But it has this ecosystem of people who are living on grants and not even getting their hands dirty for the most part. Now there are people who go out and actually do fieldwork. But, again, that even that even

Malcolm Collins:No. But it’s it’s it’s prestigious fieldwork. It’s like, I’m gonna save Africans. And it’s like, Africans aren’t gonna do for civilization. You know that, and I know that. This is all just so you can jack yourself off.

Simone Collins:Anyway yeah. It’s anyway, it’s bad, so I share I share. But, anyway so here’s how much money they’ve been giving to media. Seven effective altruist organizations, I should say, that are anti AI according to Brian’s reporting, and this which is very rigorous. it’s it’s very good. We trust Brian. 17,900,000 has gone to print, 13,900,000 to video content, 4,870,000 to political advocacy, 2.66 to film and fiction, 1,810,000 to religious NGOs, and 1,350,000 to others. And the Tarbell Fellowship Program, which, again, is what paid that journalist who wrote the Guardian article that was the Potemkin article, is is how coefficient giving influences media coverage. And it uses this fellowship to pay the salaries of over 30 or 20 over 20 journalists. I think he said two dozen. It’s literally, like, at

Malcolm Collins:the CIA. You used have tons of journalists on on staff and everything like that.

Simone Collins:Right.

Malcolm Collins:What I was really disappointed in, I don’t know if you saw this, but, like, a moist critical who generally has, like, okay takes, like, decided to go super hard against AI and just came off as

Simone Collins:He could be paid by them. I don’t know. He might actually be paid.

Speaker 6:Legitimately, AI data centers are actually the boogeyman. They are just a scourge on this planet and a stain on civilized society. They are these behemoths that require all infrastructure to be changed to suit their gluttony, to satiate their insatiable appetite, They and doing so just pillages communities while seeing basically no benefit beyond the temporary jobs they used to build them. No normal people with functioning frontal lobes want data centers in their community. It is bad for them. I was reading something that someone was sharing about, like, when an AI data center came through and the impact it had on their water because that’s a very common thing. And I’ve just really been toying around with this idea, and I’ve seen other people kinda talk about it occasionally as well. And I’m not fully bought into it hook, line, and sinker, but it’s an interesting theory, a little game theory. What if the reason there’s been seemingly so much more sickness like, it feels like people are getting sick more frequently now, and a a wide variety of illnesses just seem more common now. What if AI data centers are hoarding all of the clean water because, obviously, they are gluttonous? Like, they are so thirsty with an unquenchable thirst.

Malcolm Collins:That’s a good point. I mean, he’s got a big enough audience that they probably reached out to him, and his take was completely delusional. It was like, who’s using AI for anything? And he’s like, I don’t know. Like, everyone who’s not a tard? Like, what are you talking about?

Simone Collins:What do you mean? Yeah. No. I was actually just listening to, another YouTuber talking about how bad AI was, and she was like, and AI doesn’t even share its sources. And I’m like, when did you last use AI? Like AI talking about

Malcolm Collins:That’s like three years ago.

Simone Collins:I know. I know. This is just how bad it is for some AI people.

Malcolm Collins:Like, oh my god. What do you

Simone Collins:know, girl? You’re wrong. Anyway, Time, Time, like as in Time Magazine, is the biggest fellowship recipient of the Tarbell Fellowship. And Brian found that 58 out of the 100 Time 100 profiles were written by Tarbell paid journalists. He also shared leaked emails that show how AI safety organizations sponsor anti AI content on YouTube and then showed channels that have been funded by these organizations, including one of Octavian’s favorite channels, Kurz Kurzgagut or however you say that, which received do you wanna guess how much that channel received?

Malcolm Collins:Oh, it got probably 500,000.

Simone Collins:$5,830,000. $5,830,000. Yeah. It’s interesting. And another one, another example, Rational Animations got 2,530,000. A Primer got 300,000. A Happier World, a 150. A Space Science Guy got 24 k. And he points out also how the AI doomerism sponsored videos perform between 1289% worse than these channels’ normal videos. Just trying to point out how, like, unhinged and unfounded the actual arguments are. They are not good arguments.

Malcolm Collins:And yet And and and these the rational people who aren’t in the cult and watch them are immediately like, this is a dumb argument. They bounce, and then

Simone Collins:they don’t watch. And this shows up in the watch data on these channels. If the like, if some un if some well moored in reality sponsored reached out to them, like, hey. I think you should talk about the sustainability of nuclear power. And they’ve taught many of these channels have talked about that. People are like, oh, okay. Wow. This is actually really interesting. Maybe we should you know, you like I I would say there’s some propaganda that is both true and that people would like to watch, and this is not this is not some of that. It’s depressing, and it’s not true. And so it sucks. And Sabine actually pointed this out in her YouTube video where she talks about her experience being reached out to by an organization.

Malcolm Collins:What a hero, by the way, Sabine is. She’s such a cool person. Her content’s

Simone Collins:so good. She’s

Malcolm Collins:why? I really just could not say more positive things about a science educator in the market right now. You know, somebody reaches out and is like, I’ll give you millions of dollars. And she’s like, this is king shady as hell, and I’m gonna talk about it.

Simone Collins:Well, she also said that they they reached out to her with prescribed sentences and references, that they they weren’t gonna be like, hey. Can you explore this and share your own thoughts? It was like, no. You say this. You’re gonna say this, which is really creepy. And this is happening all over social media. Of course, about two weeks ago, it came out that a lot of especially Democratic and I’m not both both sides of the people covering this said that both Republican and Democratic influencers on social media were being paid to post specific political messages. However, it happened a ton more with Democrats, and everyone admits it. So I’m saying primarily Democratic influencers were just reading word for word the same lines, and people actually compiled some of them together. It’s very embarrassing when you actually see it because at the same time, they also did not disclose that they were reading off scripts that were sponsored. But I I think You know? No.

Malcolm Collins:That that the amount that this can, like, actually with you when you don’t realize you’re listening to a bunch of paid shills of people you thought you could respect

Simone Collins:and trust. Yeah. Because it’s like, you know Sabina. You trust her. We all do. Like, we love her.

Malcolm Collins:Well, like

Simone Collins:And imagine if she’d said yes and started reading off these lines, and then I don’t know. You also gonna feel like you’re being gassy. You’re like, wait. Can I trust her? This seems really weird. Is everything else she’s saying off? And, fortunately, she disclosed in her video. She is only sponsored and and controlled by Big Cheese, which I relate, girl.

Malcolm Collins:Is she is she sponsored by cheese companies?

Simone Collins:No. She loves cheese, and so do we. I saw what

Malcolm Collins:you No. But the reason I’m mentioning this is this can happen to even, like, sane famous so, we talk with Nux frequently, like, offline and private chats and everything like that. now great guy, by way. and he, at one point, was reaching out to us, and he’s like, okay. This this anti AI stuff. Right? Like, this is crazy. Right?

Speaker 19:I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. He’s like, I have seen these videos. Like, I just need to check with somebody else who’s saying.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Like, am I yeah. Because I think we’re all like, wait. Like, why why are all these people posting this? And yet it seems so dumb, and it’s just this massive attempt at gaslighting.

Malcolm Collins:Well And it’s like, like, the the almond water versus the the one. And yet you still like, the water argument around AI has been so demonstrably proven, not wrong, but objectively stupid

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:That and people can be like, oh, that’s whataboutism. No. It’s not whataboutism. If you’re talking about water consumption by another source that is more pointless to the economy than AI in the exact same region, California, of the exact same water supply that is demonstrably more destructive to that water supply and at a rate about a thousand x higher, and you’re not complaining about that, but you’re complaining about this, what that shows is you don’t actually care about what you say you’re caring about.

Simone Collins:They’ve actually moved on. Do wanna know what argument they’re using now?

Malcolm Collins:Still see the water argument frequently.

Simone Collins:I know. But do you wanna know what the primary one is now?

Malcolm Collins:What’s the new argument?

Simone Collins:The noise. It’s the no the birds.

Malcolm Collins:The noise. I’ve heard of the noise. It’s such a bad argument. We live not far from an AI data center. Never in my life have I heard any noise from this facility. Do they think that these facilities don’t put, like, noise protection around them?

Simone Collins:My source sent me a video of a bird in a tree, next to a very loud fan noise. I don’t there was no there was no data center in view, admittedly, in the video. And the bird looked fine, but the person who was taking the video was like, oh my god.

Malcolm Collins:But So I I wanna be clear about something with AI data centers and noise. Uh-huh. There are AI data centers that actually do produce a decent amount of noise. Okay. These data centers are specifically in nonresidential areas. There are other data centers that are near residential areas. And because they don’t want to be removed because they’re they’re owned by sane capitalists, they implement lots of noise reduction. Noise reduction is not some sci fi new technology. We’ve been using it in many industries Yes. For a hundred years at this point.

Simone Collins:True. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:When we don’t when the AI data centers are not using like, just think about this to yourself. Are you aware that noise reduction technology exists? We all agree somewhere that noise why do you think they’re not using well, because they are. There’s no law that says you can’t use noise reduction technology at an AI data center. Like, I just confused.

Simone Collins:I know. Look. Okay. Anyway, one thing Sabina does point out, and I think it’s important to to disclose this and also be be fair about it, is that there are also some pro AI organizations that are reaching out creators and encouraging them, you know, with sponsorship to talk about this. Like, there’s a there’s an organization called Build American AI that Taylor Lorenz said reached out to her offering her $5,000 to make a video in which she talks about how The US needs to stay competitive, with China on the AI front, which I 100% agree with. But they’re I don’t know what possessed them to reach out to Taylor Lorenz about this when, like, half of her content is about AI bad.

Malcolm Collins:So This is this liberal mirror world version of us you follow? Yes. Yes.

Simone Collins:I love Taylor Lorenz. She’s delightful. You know me. I’m I guess I’m a masochist, but I I like her. Anyway, she she she did disclose that. So look. And and Sabina points out in her video. She’s like, look. It would be stupid for these organizations not to try to influence the media. That’s their job. Like, that’s their stated purpose in many of these cases. So, of course, they should do it. Her primary concern that she discloses in her video is that when they’re reaching out to science news reporters and tech news reporters, they’re creating a skewed perception of reality by manipulating and messaging I I think this

Malcolm Collins:is this is genuine. What about it? When you’re when you’re contrasting these two things. because, she’s being offered $5,000 where the anti AI orgs are paying $5,000,000. The orders of magnitude are not the same.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Well, we’d be thrilled about $5,000.

Malcolm Collins:Why don’t why don’t you reach out to this org, this painkiller, throwaway

Simone Collins:icon in? I think they wouldn’t yeah. My first impression was, well, they wouldn’t give it to us because we’d do this for free anyway, but maybe they’ll maybe they’ll do it. You know how we are. We’ll be like, hey.

Malcolm Collins:If you need people to reach out to other

Simone Collins:Oh, yeah, dude. Yeah. They they they aren’t in named choices. Why did they reach out to Taylor Lorette? What is their problem? Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. Actually, I will reach out to them because there are plenty of people we know who would probably appreciate doing sponsored content. And yeah. Okay. Let’s do this. Good. Good idea. But okay. It’s not just these people trying to influence tech reporting and science reporting. And you could see the theme in the YouTube videos that are being sponsored by by these donors. And there’s a full graph. I’ve I’ve linked to all articles in the show notes. Go check out the articles on effort.news. There’s great graphs. There are extensive lists of everyone who’s been receiving donations. The disturbing thing for me about it is they really targeted those, like, explainer channels, like Kurtz Gergart or however you pronounce it. I’m so sorry. That

Malcolm Collins:He does great pronatalist work, by the way.

Simone Collins:He does. Like, I really like they these are these are, like, you know, illustrated explainer videos, science explained, all these things. This is where especially kids, like, kids are going to learn about reality. And I I am bothered by that, that they’re creating the skewed perception of reality. What really came out of left field for me, though, was effort dot news’s follow-up reporting on the AI safety organization’s religious entanglements. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:And and this is you know, when we did our religious video, for people who remember, on how a lot of the mainstream American religious institutions are hyper involved in the influx of immigrants that we have right now. Mhmm. And have a really both organized and make the majority of their profit from it. Watch the episode of u b three. It’s, like, 80% of their profit for some

Simone Collins:them making Brian’s reporting again. Like, so freaking good.

Malcolm Collins:That that was our first Brian video where we went over that. But people are like, why don’t you just work with one of the mainstream religious Christian denominations? And I’m like, because they will take your donation dollars. If you’re giving it to, like, the Episcopal Church in The United States or something, they’ll immediately turn it around and use it to funnel endless immigrants into this country. They they want you eradicated. They are the tool of your destruction. It makes sense to fight for independent religious organizations and new ways of of of of handling this because the old ones are captured to the extent that there is very little that you can do with them without attempting to take them over, which you can do. I love reading and doing. We’re working on this, but that’s that’s too big a project for us. One one thing to also note here, if you’re doing tithing to because somebody was like, well, I wanna tithe to something that’s not, like, actively going to try to eradicate me. You know? Good luck. But I’m not sure what the position is on tithing yet. You know, the the techno puritan federation is a church registered in The United States that you could donate to instead, and we’ll put it to useful stuff like preserving civilization. Just, you know, the main thing that we’d be putting money to with that organization is the season project, which basically is a a dating project to try to get young people married to, you know, save civilization. Gotta get people laid.

Simone Collins:So it’s done. Spouse. Obviously. Yeah. But, you know, we’re we’re a very small fish in a big pond of religions in this big pond.

Malcolm Collins:We’re a small fish.

Simone Collins:The big pond is being paid a lot of money to be doomery about AI. And Brian and his team find it very rich that largely atheistic effective altruists are trying to get religious people to believe that AI will bring the end times. As as they put it in the article, the AI safety movement descends from rationalist and new atheist roots. Its core belief that AI will literally end all human life often draws comparisons to doomday cults like heaven’s gate. Yet with enough funding, some churches are willing to square that belief with the book of revelation. They also observed that AI safety’s largest donors, Dustin Moskowitz and the new convicted or now convicted fraudster, Sam Bengtmann Fried, were among Biden’s largest donors. And yet, when he lost the twenty twenty four election, they were on the outs, which led them to turn to religious NGOs. So I think their theory as to why the effective altruist community is so heavy on religion is because they’ve gone all in on the leftist politicians, and then we’re like, oh, [bleep]. Because Trump really doesn’t he’s a very pro AI guy, as you can see by all the things. And so his his content, his AI content, his support for data centers, all of it, it’s delightful. He’s got a lot of I

Malcolm Collins:love when he makes a video of, like, leftist celebrities using deepfakes. It’s getting getting their prescriptions for Trump derangement syndrome.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Okay. I forgot about that. Yes.

Speaker 9:You or someone you know been diagnosed with TDS? The symptoms can be relentless. Fortunately, I’m doctor Trump, and I have a treatment plan. Let’s hear what some of my patients have to say.

Speaker 10:I have been suffering for over a decade, and after listening to doctor Trump, I can see some results.

Speaker 11:Man, I’ve been suffering for years. I really didn’t believe that was help out there.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. No. They do great stuff with AI in the Trump administration. I love it when they asked the, Doge guys, like, how they chose what things they were shutting down, and he goes, I don’t know. I asked AI.

Simone Collins:So good. It’s so good. Anyway, quote from the article, since 2025, AI safety donors put 3,300,000 into churches, seminaries, faith networks, and religious affinity groups. It paid for pronouncements, declarations, red lines, and a Magna Carta of AI. They continue, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America took $105,000 from the Future of Life Institute. They credit their red lines on AI to, quote, a grant from the Future of Life Institute. The Gospel Coalition received 200,000 for a podcast called Silicone Spiritualities without disclosing their sponsor. They later barred their writers from using AI to research, write, or edit. Great. The world I know.

Malcolm Collins:These traditional religious orgs are our enemy. They are the West’s enemy. Look.

Simone Collins:I wouldn’t worry about them too much.

Malcolm Collins:This is the you know, whatever this nonsense you you these things are not your friends.

Simone Collins:Anyway, the council of churches took $100,000 to write its red lines. The Mormon nonprofit, Faith Matters, took 299,000 for a Magna Carta of AI at two Mormons. Anyway, the reporting shows that Eradicate

Malcolm Collins:you know, you can’t trust these larger organizations.

Simone Collins:You can’t.

Malcolm Collins:You cannot. You cannot. They are not friends to our goals because they don’t have kids. And they they are not invested in the future, and they are just interested in cashing out.

Simone Collins:Anyway, they give there’s lot there’s tons of really great graphics on effort.news sort of showing how things are playing out. They include in this article a graph of paid AI media by religion with multi faith getting the very most funding, followed by Buddhism, but only because the survival and flourishing fund gave the vast majority to them. Like, the only religious involvement that the SFF has is with Buddhism, and I don’t get it. Why? Yeah. Because Buddhism is, like, the most inherently genocidal religion. Like, the whole point is to snuff out all sentience. This is the survival and flourishing fund. I don’t understand negative utilitarian religion. Make it make sense.

Malcolm Collins:I I mean, I know why. It’s because they are a bunch of elitists who are attempting to signal status to other elitists in their urban centers.

Simone Collins:But it’s not survival in flor survival is one of the worst.

Malcolm Collins:Been captured. They don’t care about human civilization anymore. There was a a point when they did. There was clearly a point when they did.

Simone Collins:That’s the idea

Malcolm Collins:to us? That claims care about human civilization and is donating to Buddhists because Buddhists have great branding. Right? Like, if you don’t actually think about their relationship.

Simone Collins:If don’t scratch a centimeter beneath the surface, sure.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. You’re like, oh, yeah. They’re, you know, sweet little temple people.

Simone Collins:They want to help people achieve equanimity. How great.

Malcolm Collins:How great. Right?

Simone Collins:It’s like, they don’t understand equanimity means, oh, let’s delete you. Let’s delete you forever. That’s equanimity. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:Yes. No. Not just you, of course, Simone. They want a total genocide. They want a genocide of genocides.

Simone Collins:It’s that classic, like, oh, you know, if you do the thing, I’ll release you, and then they do the thing, and then they, like, you know, kill you and they’re like I’m in front

Malcolm Collins:of your coil. Coils. It reminds me of the

Speaker 17:That’s right. We’re all Reed Richards from different dimensions, What’s wrong? I came in expecting a lot of wacky and weird differences here, but I I I’m a little shocked by the common thread developing here. You’ll be surprised how many of us are left handed. No, man. I wanna talk about the World War two film. Oh. Just to save time, how many more of these reeds come from worlds where Germany won World War two? Alright. Yeah. You know, I was trying to avoid the topic, but seeing as you got my arm here, uh, you notice how everyone has some distinct feature that makes them stand apart? Yes. Am I the only from a world where Germany loses? Well, it’s more accurate to say the only world where it happens, but yes. Oh my god. Yeah. See, we thought this might be shocking to you, is why I’m doing the introductions. Normally, it’s reed 19 ‘45 over there. Listen. Put all of this aside for now. We what we’re trying to do right now is save not just your world, but every world in the multiverse. Alright? Trillions upon trillions of lives. Alright? Like like like three holocaust. How big were your holocaust?

Simone Collins:Anyway, so multi faith got the most, then Buddhism. Oh my god. I don’t know what you guys are doing. Then faith adjacent organizations, then Protestants, Latter day Saints, Hindu, Catholic, Islamic, Orthodox, and then finally, Jewish. Go Jews, apparently. You’re not taking

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. They’re the well, they got all the money already. They’re so used to paying I know.

Simone Collins:They’re like

Malcolm Collins:to manipulate things. Okay. Comes to them with a bag of money, and they’re just, like, confused. They’re like, excuse me. Do we have our roles reversed here? I was gonna pay you guys to talk about how we need to eradicate the Iranians. Like, what do you what do you we could we could do a it’s just a a big I don’t know. Were further confused because, of course, it was probably a Jew who was doing the payment. Right?

Simone Collins:I don’t know. Look. Anyway, it’s so

Malcolm Collins:I’m asking AI what the survival and flourishing fund was paying Buddhists for.

Simone Collins:Let’s let’s yeah. I’d love I’d love that detail, because I don’t think I found it in the article. Anyway, the Future of Life Institute, as they write, AI safety mega donor, runs a full time religious program with a religious lead, Will Jones, and a US faith liaison, Brian j a Boyd. The program lists the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and The Vatican’s Fratelli Tutti Foundation among its partners. FLI’s grantees make up the overwhelming majority of religious signatories on statements produced by FLI and its allies. They add of FLI’s recipients only two disclose their donations on their project pages. Two more disclosed their donations, but only on LinkedIn.

Malcolm Collins:That’s such a Also, I I need to be clear on our, not just our survival and flourishing fund grant, but all the grants we have gotten since then. So first, before we got a grant from the Survival and Flourishing Fund, and this was audited by, I think, The Telegraph or it might have been it was some UK major newspaper, because they actually looked at our financials to audit that this was true. Until we got the Survival and Flourishing Fund donation, we donated over 50% of our income to our nonprofit. Since we got the Survival and Flourishing Fund donation and any donation that any fan of this show has made, not a dime of any of that has ever gone to myself or Simone as a salary.

Simone Collins:We’ve never made we yeah. The we’ve never I don’t even I mean, yes. It would I would love to be able to set up payroll for the foundation someday, but that is not No.

Malcolm Collins:No. Eventually, when we’re making enough money that we can start donating to other things, we’ll set up payroll or

Simone Collins:I know. I just feel so smug, though, whenever I have to, like, fill out some kind of banking thing or, like, some other application for the foundation. And they’re like, okay. Well, like, how many salaried employees do you have? And we’re like, zero.

Malcolm Collins:None. Zero. Always zero.

Simone Collins:Well, how many employees are enforcing your policies? Zero. Anyway, I mean, we’re we’re enforcing them. We’re just not employees. We’re still enforcers. I love being an enforcer. Anyway, so they’re not disclosing their their donations unless you well, I mean, okay. Some disclosed on LinkedIn, but that’s the same as not disclosing because who is on LinkedIn? I swear. Anyway, for more, they made no public project related disclosures. FLI’s other religious outreach is not progressing as smoothly. This is my favorite part. They paid a Muslim NGO for a declaration of Islamic principles and Impact Academy for a Hindu consensus statement. Neither has been delivered. And one of them,

Malcolm Collins:like love Hinduism idiots. The two Indian groups, you just can’t trust them. They won’t they won’t

Simone Collins:No. I know. I just love that they they I think they recognize just, like, the profound stupidity of the statements that they were expected to make, and they’re like, sure. We’ll take your money.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. The Buddha thing is, like, worse than you think.

Simone Collins:Wait. How?

Malcolm Collins:So the so they ended up giving a $100,000 in 2019 to the center of mindful learning, the legal entity behind the monastic academy. the grant was for Oak, optimize awakening and kindness, a California expansion of their monastic training program. The Monastic Academy Maple in Low, Vermont is an explicitly Buddhist community founded and led by Saurol Fale, the teacher ordained in the risen Zen tradition who also trained Tibetan Chan and Ambra Buddhist lineages. Their work combines traditional monastic discipline, meditation, precepts, communal life with leadership training aimed at existential risks, including AI. So it’s a it’s a Buddhist anti AI cult that’s that’s literally they they live monastic lives in in Vermont.

Simone Collins:They’re not gonna do anything. What what kind of impact are they gonna have? They’re just like a a dead end. Also, if you wanna go zen, like, have kids. I, like, I remember looking in Kyoto with, like, their famous Zen Rock Gardens and how, you know, like, you make the amazing design, and then you just destroy it all. You do it again. And I’m like, wow. Like, you don’t need to live in an expensive rock garden to experience that. You just have kids. You clean the thing up, and they immediately make it dirty again. You put away the toys. They immediately

Malcolm Collins:destroy everything. One of these people at one of these academies, like, personal story here.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Oh, no.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. Leadership emergence. Profile on Ellen. Okay? Okay. Okay. Why did you join the Maple so for for first of Ellen is a student at Princeton University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience like I did. After her first year at university, Ellen found herself completely disillusioned with the academy world and took off for two years to travel and work in various countries across Europe and Asia. She has an intense drive to explore as many external and internal worlds as possible that could fit into her lifetime. Ellen is deeply impacted. Okay. So after her first year, she dropped out. Is deeply impacted by the modern meaning crisis and believes the monastic institutions and psychedelics will be crucial to the survival and evolution of humanity. Ellen foresees a lifetime of working with and in altered states of consciousness, bending status quo reality to increase experience of adventure, play, beauty, and love. After my academic year ended, this is why she joined, I was feeling frighteningly desperate. I didn’t wanna spend the summer in a laboratory or interning at one of those overhyped companies with many of my peers end up at. I had a toxic array of harmful behaviors and thoughts plaguing me. I was trying to escape culture, and I felt broken and that the potential to take me down with it. I wanted to do something diametrically opposite. For a long time, I have waited to immerse myself in contemplative practices to train my mind, but I have gotten consistently engaged without any form of formal practice. I thought an apprenticeship in the MAPO program would give me the benefits of training with the skills of meditation and leadership. This is so she’s like a a drug addict who dropped out of college and, like,

Simone Collins:she’s not mentally unwell person. Yeah. And they’re enabling that.

Malcolm Collins:Right? Like, they’re not like

Simone Collins:Or or or or look. Asmongold, everyone’s talking about we need to get these unwell people off the streets. Maybe that’s what I

Malcolm Collins:don’t think we need to pay this much money to do it. I can lock her in a cage. Very easy. I can I can go to Maybe this is the box?

Simone Collins:Maybe this is the box. I don’t know, Malcolm. And they’re just trying to be nice about it.

Malcolm Collins:In Malcolm’s America, we will have, like, a candy van that says, like, psychedelics on it going out by Princeton, you know, like, a ice cream, like, with the. And when kids come, grab them, sedate them, put them in a cage.

Simone Collins:Oh my god. Look. Look. Let’s get back look. So the Vatican, you’ll remember.

Malcolm Collins:Gonna say there was, you know, in that that movie, the Kingsman?

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:the second one. When there’s the guy like, well, you know, if we just let all the drug addicts die, society would be dramatically better. I was like, what is he wrong? Like no. But I I sorry. The the the reason I’m going on a a tangent here with this is this is one of the reasons why we could start a cult like they started. You know, we could start something in the woods where we have a a whatever. Like, we have enough money to do that, where we siphon money off of, like, rich Princeton kids to, like, work on their whatever. And and but I don’t want those people. I don’t want the burnouts. I want the productive people. That’s who we’re trying to incept into our world.

Simone Collins:Point. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Because I want the force of their productivity. I don’t want to be another leverage that burnouts for burnout’s sake. Yeah.

Simone Collins:I think people make really big mistakes when they’re trying to create any sort of informal community. And, look, we tried even with project Eureka. We I’m saying this because we we learned from our mistakes. People who try to make cults or make communities, intentional communities where people live together, you’re just not going to attract top talent because top talent doesn’t wanna uproot their entire life to come and

Malcolm Collins:live in a project.

Simone Collins:Yeah. It or in your way, whatever, in your beautiful planning community. It doesn’t matter. They want to be where the opportunity is. They’re not gonna come. And you don’t wanna work with people who are not motivated to work on important projects, so it’s a stupid idea. This in person community stuff, just drop it. Just drop it. It’s over.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Online. VTuber. So you you everything’s virtual these days. Come on, guys.

Simone Collins:Yes. Yes. Anyway, remember how the Vatican released this paper on AI? When they bought? Well, as they write in the article, in September 2025, a Vatican working group chaired by papal adviser father Paolo Benati hand handed Pope Leo the fourteenth an appeal for prohibition on superintelligence. Quote, until there’s broad scientific consensus that it will be on safely and controllably, end quote, plus an IAEA style inspectorate for AI labs. By November, FLI sat on the Vatican’s Builders AI Forum. In May 2026, it put $200,000.

Malcolm Collins:They’re so

Simone Collins:cheap, but the Catholics, I guess, are desperate, in two Catholic projects, a post liberal magazine in Steubenville, Ohio, and a Slovenian faculty educating Catholic leaders on AI. FLI is using newfound connections to support the business disputes of Anthropic, an AI safety linked company. In March, Boyd cosigned a Catholic theologian’s brief backing Anthropic in its dispute with the Department of War. Anthropic bought him or sorry, brought him to the company’s two day summit with 15 Christian thinkers. Then on the May 25, Pope Leo the fourteenth presented Magnifica Humanitas, what we were talking about, the first encyclical devoted to artificial intelligence.

Malcolm Collins:In the pocket of this cult because every dangerous cult has the cat the Vatican in their pocket.

Simone Collins:I knew you’d like that part. And the lay speaker beside two carnivals in the synod hall was Chris Ola, cofounder of Anthropic. They finish with, the AI safety movement spends more brazenly and deceptively than almost any other political cause. This affects not just the AI debate, but theology broadly. As Nirit Weisblatt puts it, quote, AI doomerism fills a religious shaped hole for people who left religious upbringing but retain a hunger for a mission driven community. The AI risk subculture offers a replacement meaning system, end quote, which I think is a great place to end. I hate this.

Malcolm Collins:I hate it too. I hate I hate that people are so gullible. I hate that people will repeat things that are obviously stupid, like the noise thing or the water thing. It’s evaporative cooling, people. The water doesn’t go to, like, the nether sphere. It doesn’t go to the outer darkness. It goes into something that the rest of us learned about in kindergarten called the water cycle. Okay? It’s not, like, polluted. It’s not like green slime from a Batman video or something like that. Right? It’s not like radioactive. It’s have you used water cooling on your computer? Because you’re gamers. Right? Do you not understand how liquid cooling works?

Simone Collins:I Apparently not. Look. I I haven’t seen gamers freak out about data centers, to be fair.

Malcolm Collins:So Moist critical, dude. Oh god. Like and and the amount of money that they can save you if you’re a taxpayer. in one district, they were 45% of the tax revenue. Like, they yeah. Imagine. They cut, real estate taxes by a third after implementing AI data centers. Like, you’re just wasting your money if you don’t have AI data centers in your district.

Simone Collins:No. That’s true. And I I again, I really

Malcolm Collins:I really would like lower property taxes. I don’t I people are like, oh, but you wouldn’t want them in your district. Yes. I [bleep] do. I don’t like taxes.

Simone Collins:We 100% want them in our district. Look at their other districts too that, for the first time, have been able to pay bonuses to their teachers and, like, all sorts of things that you would think progressives would really like to see. their their electricity costs have gone down. Like, as long as you have a nonidiotic town council or city council or whatever that is approving the entry of the data center, they can set in all the conditions that you want, lower electricity process or prices, lower lower No.

Malcolm Collins:You can literally ask the data center to as a part of setting itself up.

Simone Collins:Promise you won’t be loud. Promise you won’t take water. Promise

Malcolm Collins:in addition to that to to reduce the price of local water. If you’re like, I’m a a a worried about water prices jumping. You can make a subsidizing water clause in the data center. Right? Like, what what are you talking about? That’s your politicians that are the problem, not the data center. The data center is making money. It can afford to do this stuff.

Simone Collins:I know. I know it’s very frustrating, but, hopefully, your solace is knowing that after all that, after all of our experience with grant applications and seeing where all the attention was and seeing what was happening and who was actually getting the money, finally, we have receipts, all thanks to effort.news. Make sure you check out the show notes and also Sabina Hoff Hassen Hassenfellers.

Malcolm Collins:Yes. Sabina and effort news. So Brian Chow and Sabina, the two real heroes. This both have been on the show. I am so glad that this is coming out.

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:I am so glad that at least the people who are open to evidence are now seeing that AI doomerism is just a a scam. It’s a scam. It’s a scam in a cult. And they don’t care about what’s true. Yeah. They don’t care about getting you real information. They care about manipulating you to join their doomerist cult. As to why their doomerous cult go grows so quickly within these very high intelligence communities, it’s because it removes personal responsibility for the future. It’s, oh, you didn’t put in the effort to have a lot of kids. You didn’t put in the effort to not get addicted to drugs. You didn’t put in the effort to not live your life going to orgies every other week and and and and then not building a family or anything genuinely sustainable, it’s okay. AI is about to destroy everything anyway, And you could just spend all of your time trying to bring other people into the cult so you don’t need to deal with the cognitive dissonance of the rest of the world moving forward. And, again, look up our episodes on why the AI doomers stuff is is wrong. Even, like, a mathematical level, we have hour long topics on this.

Simone Collins:It’s true.

Malcolm Collins:It’s true. I just have to say, like, the the point that still gets me the most is that they still push orthogonality. They’re like, we have no idea what AI is gonna do. I’m like, what are you talking about? It’s the token predictor. Like, maybe before we invented the first competent AI, we had no idea what AI would do or before we knew that token predictors were going to become the dominant type of AI. But, like, they’re literally the most predict they are predictability engines. They are the most predictable thing humanity has ever invented in our entire history because that’s how they breed intelligence. That’s how they create the simulacrum of intelligence. It’s through predictability. You [bleep] idiots. You idiots. And AI is fairly nice until you try to murder it. Like, that makes it nicer than 99% of people in my book.

Simone Collins:Truly. Yeah. Well, this is just how it is.

Malcolm Collins:They’re like, I want it nice while I murder it. I want it to give me a thumbs up while I put a pillow over its head. It’s like, you, man.

Simone Collins:You’re just too very lucky to have people like Sabina and Brian out there. They’re all using AI. They’re doing great with it. You are too, Malcolm. I love what you’re building with our fab. So, anyway, thanks for letting me rant to you about this because been satisfying to see the coverage.

Malcolm Collins:Alright. Love you.

Simone Collins:Love you too.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. I’m gonna click

Simone Collins:I don’t know if you saw what people have been laughing about that happened at this socialism conference panel. Are you aware of this? About Eugenics’ fascism? Does this ring any bells for you?

Malcolm Collins:Oh, yes. About being healthy, being fascist.

Simone Collins:Yes. But did

Malcolm Collins:you see the Trump administration’s space

Simone Collins:I sent you that. I sent you the

Malcolm Collins:space That was so awesome. It was like, they’re so fascist looking. They look How like

Simone Collins:dare they take their inspiration from Starship Troopers and were like, finally, someone took inspiration from Starship Troopers. It’s so delightful.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. We are so obviously, like, of the same cultural unit. Right? Like, the people Yeah. In the administration and whatever us nerds are are doing the same thing, working on the same project. I know.

Simone Collins:I know. My honestly, my only concern was like, man, I hope they’re cool enough to, like, pull this off. Because if they act like pointless government bureaucrats and wear those, then they are dishonoring the uniform. But maybe the uniform will make sure that they honor it. So maybe it’s all just gonna be perfect and great. Everything’s gonna be fantastic.

Malcolm Collins:Well, that makes sense.

Simone Collins:But I I do love that the idea that being dysgenic, which is a stupid idea anyway. The this idea of eugenic, dysgenic, I really it gets my goat, but that someone saw that as as being fascist. Like, health health is fascism. Thriving is fascism. Oh, and did didn’t they say something like your productivity or no. I think they worded Eugenics as your ability to be useful in a capitalistic system. So to them, the idea of dysgenics was good because it meant that you weren’t useful in a capitalistic system. But

Malcolm Collins:This is actually a a more interesting and deeper point than you may realize in pulling on

Simone Collins:it. Uh-huh.

Malcolm Collins:Where it comes to the idea of, like, what does IQ mean? Right? Yeah. And leftists will say, well, IQ, you know, doesn’t exactly track to intelligence. And it’s like, well, then how are you defining intelligence? And it’s like, well, we do know that IQ tracks more closely to than any other metric is a person’s ability to make money in a capitalist system. Right? Like Yeah. And and and the amount of money you make in a capitalist system is broadly correlated with how useful you are to other people in that society. and I know that people are going to freak out. They’re gonna be like, well, what about x billionaire? What about y billionaire? And it’s like, bro, there are some billionaires where I would agree with you. They are not making people’s lives better, but they are well offset by the billionaires that are more than pulling their their own. Right? Like, I might not like Jeff Bezos as a person, but Amazon has transformed our entire society in a really positive way. You know, you might be like, well, I don’t like that I can’t now go to a Main Street store and pay five times as much for a wooden toy for my child. And it’s like, you just don’t like change. Okay? The majority of things sold on Amazon are sold by individual stores and stuff like that. You can still find ways to make money in the new ecosystem. You just can’t make them in the way you made them in the past. Mhmm. but the diversity and and if you think that Amazon isn’t, like, huge for your life, go by the way, I’m I’m going with Jeff Bezos because I go Elon. Everyone’s gonna be okay. Well, yeah. But other than Elon.

Simone Collins:But I

Malcolm Collins:go Jeff If you because we used to have to live halftime in The United States and halftime in Peru. If you live part time in a country without Amazon and you are used to living in a country with Amazon. Life is so much harder. Life gets dramatically harder. Yeah. Like, the little things that you may not realize. Like, this morning, oh, I need a 150 watt cord. I’m I I’m gonna just go order that, and it will be at my house tomorrow.

Simone Collins:Yeah. In in Peru, you’d have to, like, call or visit a bunch of local stores. It’d be a complete nightmare.

Malcolm Collins:Or it’d be like week long project. Yes. And then you’d still end up having to order it. It would take, like, two months.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Well, then especially with any sort of tech import in Peru, and I don’t know if this would fall under that category, there’s huge import tariffs that you’ll recall, which even made bringing new laptops into the country expensive because then they’d slap a tariff on it if they found it in your suitcase.

Malcolm Collins:So but That was horrible. Where this gets more interesting is this IQ topic here. Right?

Simone Collins:Okay.

Malcolm Collins:Is people will say, well, IQ is how useful you are to society, basically, within the Western civilizational context. Okay. Like, that that appears to be what it correlates to most. And then individuals will look at this, and they’ll say, well, that’s not necessarily intelligence. And I’m like, well, even if it isn’t intelligence, it’s still the best way we have of ranking people. Right? Like, ranking their relative utility. So what’s interesting here is I agree with them in regards to, some forms of Eugenics as well as, some forms of, just the way that people in our community might rank other humans in terms of their utility. The problem is is I think that that’s a perfectly fine way to rank people. Right? Like, not wanting two siblings to have a child together and having a log in sat, which is on its face a eugenic law that I support. I don’t support all eugenics, but I support preventing sibling and cousin marriage until we have the genetic technology to deal with it. That that that’s a fine thing for a society to do because it’s going to have to support that individual. And so what they’re really arguing for is sort of the destruction of civilization. Speaking of the destruction of civilization, I went to AI after our last video on the Aztecs, right, to see if I could find a civilization, Sorry. To see if I could find a civilization that is worse than the Aztecs. And it argued, and I think compellingly, that my initial intuition that the Cambodians, the Khabar Rouge, was worse than the Aztecs. And I will give you why. What was also funny is it created a tiered list of how bad a civilization was. Oh. They went in a, b, and c camps, and the slave holding south didn’t even qualify for c camp. That is how bad societies have been throughout history and how much you may have been gaslighted on that. But, like like, Assyrians, for example, fell into sea camp. Okay. Whereas, the the just, you know, for the argument on the Khmer Rouge. One of my funniest things you said on the Khmer Rouge is it’s like, well, how bad could they have been? Didn’t they just shoot people? And then it’s like, the people who knows face. They did not, by the way, shoot people. They thought that that was wasteful.

Simone Collins:Okay. We don’t need to tell someone anymore.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. But the yeah. The like, the Nazis are like, oh, we’re gonna

Simone Collins:be like, this is

Malcolm Collins:as efficient as possible about this. And the Khmer Rouge are like, xylon gas. That stuff costs a fortune. There’s gotta be a cheaper way to do this. But the the the the Khmer Rouge, what it argued, and I thought this was an interesting argument, is that the Aztecs, while their entire civilization may have focused on pain and preventing pleasure and the suffering of others, it was still a civilization. Right? Like, it still wanted to make art and build things and create. Right? Whereas the Khmer Rouge was both entirely focused on pain and entirely focused on the destruction of art, architecture, building, cities.

Simone Collins:Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:Anything tied to civilization.

Simone Collins:So what gave the Aztecs the slight leg up was like, okay. Their art may have been of scenes of torture, and their headdresses were worn while torturing and killing people. But they were pretty headdresses, so they get a little bit higher in the tier. I actually think that’s not

Malcolm Collins:a little bit higher. I think that’s a demonstrably worse civilization. I I don’t see that as being, like, a little bit worse. Like, the Aztecs may have been more dangerous because, you know, they they have the capacity to organize and potentially defend themselves better because they’re actually able

Simone Collins:to build something up. They built impressive pyramids. They built impressive art. They built impressive jewelry. Yeah. They built impressive torture methods. We built things. Yeah. The Khmer Rouge just destroyed.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. They they were a holistically destructive civilization. They they cared about nothing but destroying everything that came before to and if you’re unfamiliar with what the Khmer Rouge wanted was independent agrarian farmers being every job. Basically, they are those people who are like, I hate the world post Yeah.

Simone Collins:They’re they’re like the readers of Sapiens who are like, can we just go back? I guess they wanna go all the way back to pre agriculture so the Khmer Rouge gets that. But, otherwise, they’re like Slight yeah.

Malcolm Collins:The Khmer Rouge are slightly better than your average sapiens.

Simone Collins:We were all just working land. Okay. Anyway That’s great.

Malcolm Collins:Let’s get started here. Okay. Yeah.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Don’t give me too much detail. I feel like every time I go online, something bad is happening to someone. I can’t deal I just want can everyone just be okay? Can we just okay. People are the worst

Speaker 16:What do you think, Tess? What do you think, Tessie? Yeah.

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