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The Pond
Personal blog · turntrout.comaiphilosophy
The Pond is a personal blog at turntrout.com about ai and philosophy. Since 2025, 11 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “I Left Google DeepMind”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Writings on AI, self-improvement, and living a good life.
Most-linked posts?
- I Left Google DeepMind7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2026-07-15
- Self-Fulfilling Misalignment Data Might Be Poisoning Our AI Models2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-03-05
What Hacker News says?
See also: https://turntrout.com/self-fulfilling-misalignment (my post) As an aside, does the Waluigi Effect actually exist? My impression is it doesn't.
Comment linking /self-fulfilling-misalignment
on “Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board”Submitted I Left Google DeepMind as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI'm one of the whistleblowers (from GDM [1]). I gave up over a million dollars (compared to quietly switching labs and continuing to work at one) to speak frankly about these issues. I hold no equity and tried to zero out my position before ever joining GDM.[2] It's wild to me that people think such whistleblowers are fronts for labs to take over or pump valuations. We are trying to call out how these labs will, by…
Comment linking /deepmind-equity-discussion
on “Everyone should slow down AI development except for me”Submitted An Opinionated Guide to Privacy Despite Authoritarianism as a story · 14 points
HN discussionMy guess is that researchers are leaving because Google has been using its AI for warfare, despite promises to both its researchers and the public that Google would not do so. There was a post on Hacker News a couple weeks about one such researcher who left: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48925271 https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind
Comment linking /why-i-left-google-deepmind
on “Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots”Submitted Reframing Impact as a story · 10 points
HN discussionWhat do you think about the recent article that's made the HN rounds here: https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind
Comment linking /why-i-left-google-deepmind
on “Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots”Submitted English Writes Numbers Backwards as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSomeone who left DeepMind over Google's agreement to provide military AI to the US government tried to get Jeff Dean to quit too: https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind Maybe this is what happens when someone with Jeff Dean's standing tries to quit? TBH, I'd rather have Jeff Dean working on the creepiest-possible tech for ICE than joining the race to automate AI research. Automating AI research is terrifyi…
Comment linking /why-i-left-google-deepmind
on “Discovery Loop”Submitted Gaming TruthfulQA: Simple Heuristics Exposed Dataset Weaknesses as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFWIW, here's an account from a guy who quit his job at Google Deepmind recently: https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind
Comment linking /why-i-left-google-deepmind
on “Pacing the frontier”Submitted Self-Fulfilling Misalignment Data Might Be Poisoning Our AI Models (2025) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI'm familiar with TurnTrout's The Pond using visual regression testing as well: https://turntrout.com/design#visual-regression-testing
Comment linking /design
on “Visual regression tests for personal blogs”Submitted Read "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" as a story · 1 points
HN discussionDirect source - https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind This may be controversial (and I will understand if the mods want to remove this comment) but this made me really wonder if westerners like him are actually aware of the ongoing genocide in Gaza (and now in West Bank and Lebanon) that is also supported by Google tech (amongst others)? I ask because if the death of 2 people in America bothered him so mu…
Comment linking /why-i-left-google-deepmind
on “Why I Left Google DeepMind”Submitted Self-Fulfilling Misalignment Data Might Be Poisoning Our AI Models as a story · 1 points
HN discussionPrimary source: https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind
Comment linking /why-i-left-google-deepmind
on “Why I Left Google DeepMind”
