Astral Codex Ten

Grimes

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Grimes

Article

Grimes is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between March 01, 2023 and July 21, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Also Grimes for some reason”; “all but the 3 with Grimes have fairly normal names”; “Grimes is a famous musician”. It most often appears alongside Elon Musk, China, Mark Zuckerberg.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: March 01, 2023
  • Last seen: July 21, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

OpenAI's "Planning For AGI And Beyond"
March 01, 2023 · Original source
Sam Altman posing with leading AI safety proponent Eliezer Yudkowsky. Also Grimes for some reason. Planning For AGI And Beyond (“AGI” = “artificial general intelligence”, ie human-level AI) is the latest volley in that campaign. It’s very good, in all the ways ExxonMobil’s hypothetical statement above was very good. If they’re trying to fool people, they’re doing a convincing job! Still, it doesn’t apologize for doing normal AI company stuff in the past, or plan to stop doing normal AI company stuff in the present. It just says that, at some indefinite point when they decide AI is a threat, they’re going to do everything right. This is more believable when OpenAI says it than when ExxonMobil does. There are real arguments for why an AI company might want to switch from moving fast and breaking things at time t to acting all responsible at time t + 1 . Let’s explore the arguments they make in the document, go over the reasons they’re obviously wrong, then look at the more complicated arguments they might be based off of. Why Doomers Think OpenAI Is Bad And Should Have Slowed Research A Long Time Ago OpenAI boosters might object: there’s a disanalogy between the global warming story above and AI capabilities research. Global warming is continuously bad: a temperature increase of 0.5 degrees C is bad, 1.0 degrees is worse, and 1.5 degrees is worse still. AI doesn’t become dangerous until some specific point. GPT-3 didn’t hurt anyone. GPT-4 probably won’t hurt anyone. So why not keep building fun chatbots like these for now, then start worrying later? Doomers counterargue that the fun chatbots burn timeline. That is, suppose you have some timeline for when AI becomes dangerous. For example, last year Metaculus thought human-like AI would arrive in 2040, and superintelligence around 2043. Recent AIs have tried lying to, blackmailing, threatening, and seducing users. AI companies freely admit they can’t really control their AIs, and it seems high-priority to solve that before we get superintelligence. If you think that’s 2043, the people who work on this question (“alignment researchers”) have twenty years to learn to control AI. Then OpenAI poured money into AI, did ground-breaking research, and advanced the state of the art. That meant that AI progress would speed up, and AI would reach the danger level faster. Now Metaculus expects superintelligence in 2031, not 2043 (although this seems kind of like an over-update), which gives alignment researchers eight years, not twenty. So the faster companies advance AI research - even by creating fun chatbots that aren’t dangerous themselves - the harder it is for alignment researchers to solve their part of the problem in time. This is why some AI doomers think of OpenAI as an Exxon-Mobil style villain, even though they’ve promised to change course before the danger period. Imagine an environmentalist group working on research and regulatory changes that would have solar power ready to go in 2045. Then ExxonMobil invents a new kind of super-oil that ensures that, nope, all major cities will be underwater by 2031 now. No matter how nice a statement they put out, you’d probably be pretty mad! Why OpenAI Thinks Their Research Is Good Now, But Might Be Bad Later OpenAI understands the argument against burning timeline. But they counterargue that having the AIs speeds up alignment research and all other forms of social adjustment to AI. If we want to prepare for superintelligence - whether solving the technical challenge of alignment, or solving the political challenges of unemployment, misinformation, etc - we can do this better when everything is happening gradually and we’ve got concrete AIs to think about: We believe we have to continuously learn and adapt by deploying less powerful versions of the technology in order to minimize “one shot to get it right” scenarios […] As we create successively more powerful systems, we want to deploy them and gain experience with operating them in the real world. We believe this is the best way to carefully steward AGI into existence—a gradual transition to a world with AGI is better than a sudden one. We expect powerful AI to make the rate of progress in the world much faster, and we think it’s better to adjust to this incrementally. A gradual transition gives people, policymakers, and institutions time to understand what’s happening, personally experience the benefits and downsides of these systems, adapt our economy, and to put regulation in place. It also allows for society and AI to co-evolve, and for people collectively to figure out what they want while the stakes are relatively low. You might notice that, as written, this argument doesn’t support full-speed-ahead AI research. If you really wanted this kind of gradual release that lets society adjust to less powerful AI, you would do something like this: Release AI #1
Inline links: Planning For AGI And Beyond, Metaculus, they can’t really control their AIs
Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk
September 18, 2023 · Original source
If you look at all 11 of [Elon]’s children's names, all but the 3 with Grimes have fairly normal names, at least for American kids these days.
The list is (with Grimes children in bold):
All the non-Grimes children have pretty normal names, at least by Bay Area standards (some of my friends’ kids’ names are at least as weird). So is Grimes behind the weird names, or are the other women better at reining in Elon’s trollish tendencies? I find it hard to believe the kid named “X” isn’t Elon’s fault, so good work by the non-Grimes mothers putting their foot down.
Press Any Key For Bay Area House Party
July 21, 2025 · Original source
“You probably heard that Elon Musk has fourteen kids. But those are just the ones we know of publicly. Some of them we only know of because the mothers violated NDAs. There are probably many more who kept the NDAs and no one knows about them. Some people think he has fifty, maybe a hundred children. All through IVF. Elon likes sex as much as the next straight man; why are they all IVF? If you’ve been following biotech, you already know the answer - he’s using a eugenics startup to select the best embryos. So think about it. Elon’s already super-smart. The women he has kids with are leaders in a host of different fields - Grimes is a famous musician, Ashley St. Clair is a famous influencer, Shivon Zillis is a famous venture capitalist. And Musk has enough money that he can afford to give his hundred kids a $3 billion nest egg each. Start with Musk genes, add some other form of talent, keep remixing them until you get super-embryos, give them insane amounts of starting capital. He’s building a new ruling class for humankind.”
Inline links: probably many more, a eugenics startup to select the best embryos