Open thread: 2026 Q3 (July - September)

Hi everyone, my name is Emily and I'm the CEO and cofounder of PermitPal focused on transforming the way that clean energy gets built. 

I've been involved with effective altruism for the past 10 years but haven't been very active on the forum. 

I'd love to connect with people thinking about questions like:

• How can AI be used to meaningfully accelerate clean energy deployment?
• Which bottlenecks to building clean energy are most neglected and tractable?
• How can we improve state capacity for permitting and infrastructure delivery?
• Where are the biggest opportunities to increase clean energy supply over the coming decades?

Hey everyone, my name is Diego and I'm a freelance web developer based in Italy.

After years of working for a couple of companies with dubious goals I got fed up and decided that I want to change my career and do something good for the world. With my software engineering background I'm obviously drawn to the AI safety topic (but I won't shy away from other causes like animal welfare for example).

Since by trade I make websites and apps and I don't have formal training or experience in the AI space (bar a couple of chat bots integrations), I'm now on a quest to learn how this field works and how can I best apply my skills to safeguard our future from potentially catastrophic AI development.

I've been doing a lot of reading in the past month, and I'm looking for connections that can guide me in this process. Should anyone be in need of advice regarding web development don't hesitate to drop a message, I'll be glad to help!

As for my hobbies I'm into martial arts, role playing games, and music (I play the electric bass).

Looking forward to connect with like minded people and do some good :)

Hello everyone! I'm Alex, I found my way here through recommendations from contacts involved in AI safety. 

I started thinking about how to have a more concrete impact while finishing my comp sci PhD (quantum cryptography and adversarial scenarios), so I pivoted to medicine. Stayed close to those "red team" roots by getting as much exposure as possible to CBRN-related fields, including nuclear medicine, Ebola preparedness, and got deployed in intensive care at peak-COVID.

I'm currently a postdoc scientist at Yale on AI+immunobiology, and interested in AI/bio safety as a long-term career. 

On the less serious side, I do martial arts, rock climbing and strongman, and design board games as a hobby.

Happy to connect with anyone sharing interests!

Has the forum team considered making a settings option to hide vote counts? The option to hide agree/disagree and reaction counts are something I would also appreciate.

I stayed away from this forum for over a year because of it being structured like Reddit, and have also heard concerns about vote counts anywhere influencing bias, as well as issues with like and dislike buttons in general. This post on LessWrong makes a more ambitious case for this, though I'm not campaigning here for any change affecting all users.

I understand the voting system is a necessary evil for maintaining the quality of what's read on the forum, and do think that users here are more responsible about vote count vs. agree count, as well as voicing why one personally disagrees with something, than is commonplace on Reddit. I just think it would be great for us not interested in rating and numbers in discourse to be able to opt out of seeing and indeed being influenced by them.

I do appreciate the removal of the downvote button on the front and user pages as well as the options already here for hiding usernames. Thank you for reading and considering all this! 👍