TL;DR
Prime made for students and young adults
- Fast, free delivery for dorm and study essentials
- Prime Video and Amazon Music included
- Member-only deals
Astral Codex Ten’s Open Thread 456 is a weekly community post with updates on local meetups, an AI safety grantmaking survey and projects related to prediction markets and community notes. The post also flags a Boston election guide and a same-day San Francisco mail-in ballot registration deadline; it does not provide further details on those initiatives.
Astral Codex Ten published Open Thread 456, a weekly community post that combines open discussion with updates on local meetups, an AI safety grantmaking survey and several projects associated with the blog’s community. The post also highlights a Boston election voting guide and a San Francisco ballot-registration deadline described as occurring that Monday.
The post invites readers to use the thread for general discussion and questions, and points to the ACX community’s unofficial subreddit, Discord, bulletin board and in-person meetups. It says some blog content is available to subscribers, while most is free. The thread lists meetup changes in Rockville, Northampton, Eindhoven, Great Barrington, Cairo, Portland and Sofia, directing readers to the post for specifics.
The author says the Boston ACX meetup group has completed a Greater Boston general-election voting guide and that more guides may follow. Work on a Bay Area guide was still being explored. The post says the San Francisco mail-in ballot registration deadline was the end of that Monday, and names Scott Wiener for Congress as the group’s main San Francisco endorsement.
On AI funding, the author is continuing work to model, and possibly eventually automate, parts of AI grantmaking. The post asks people familiar with AI and grantmaking to complete a survey assigning utility weights to about 80 AI safety accomplishments. A second survey asks respondents to predict how the author would answer the first, with the stated aim of separating differences in worldview from random variation in how people assign weights.
How the Thread Connects Its Community
The post’s value is practical rather than a single major policy or research announcement: it serves as a coordination point for readers who participate in local meetups, election discussions and AI-related projects. The survey could contribute to the author’s ongoing effort to model how people evaluate AI safety work, though the thread does not report findings or say how the results will affect grant decisions.
The other items show how the community’s activity spans different areas. A voting guide and an endorsement offer readers election-related information, while the announced prediction-market and community-notes projects concern ways to aggregate forecasts and assessments. These are updates about projects and opportunities, not evidence that their approaches have been independently evaluated or adopted broadly.
AI safety grantmaking survey tools
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
A Weekly Forum for ACX Updates
Open Thread 456 is presented as the blog’s weekly visible open thread, intended for topics that need not fit a dedicated article. Its format combines an invitation for readers to post freely with short announcements from the author and community members. The source post does not give a publication date in the supplied text, but refers to a Monday deadline and a meetup on the coming Saturday, October 24.
The author also highlights two projects beyond the survey. Stephen Grugett, described in the post as an ACX grantee and Manifold Markets co-founder, announced MNX, a real-money prediction market focused on AI. The post says it offers futures tied to AI-company stocks, markets on company revenues and targets related to the Epoch Capabilities Index. It notes that Polymarket and MNX both priced Anthropic at around $2 trillion, despite discussion of its API value falling from $2 trillion to $1.5 trillion; the thread does not establish the basis for those figures.
Separately, the post describes Common Notes, a Goodheart Labs project characterized as “Twitter Community Notes, but for everything.” According to the thread, it combines AI-written notes, contributions and helpfulness votes from users, and a browser extension intended to display notes across websites, including the ACX blog.
“This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever.”
— Astral Codex Ten author
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
Survey Results and Project Details
The thread provides no survey results, response count, sampling plan or account of how the utility weights will be used. It also does not say whether the author intends to publish the findings or how any future grantmaking model would be tested. The proposed automation is explicitly framed as a possibility for the future.
Further details about MNX, Common Notes and the meetup changes are not included in the supplied post text. The thread gives no information on MNX’s operating rules or market volumes, and no evaluation of Common Notes’ accuracy or performance. The approximately $2 trillion valuation reference is attributed to prices on Polymarket and MNX; it is a market price reported in the post, not a confirmed valuation of Anthropic.
The post’s election information is also time-sensitive. It describes the San Francisco registration deadline as the end of the Monday on which the thread was published, but the supplied material does not specify that date or provide details of the voting guide’s recommendations beyond the Wiener endorsement.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
Meetup and Survey Follow-Up
Readers interested in the AI grantmaking project can take the primary survey and, if they have time, the alternate survey asking them to predict the author’s responses. The author says additional election guides may appear during the following week, while work on a Bay Area guide was still under consideration.
The post lists a Bay Area ACX meetup for Saturday, October 24, at 1 p.m. at Mox, 1680 Mission Street in San Francisco, and says a separate post may follow. Readers seeking details on other meetup changes, the survey links or the new projects would need to consult the original thread and any subsequent updates.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
Key Questions
What is Open Thread 456?
It is Astral Codex Ten’s weekly open discussion thread, which invites general posts and questions and includes community announcements.
What does the AI grantmaking survey ask participants to do?
The main survey asks respondents familiar with AI and grantmaking to assign utility weights to about 80 AI safety accomplishments. An alternate survey asks them to predict how the author would answer the first survey.
What is MNX?
The post describes MNX as a real-money prediction market focused on AI, with markets involving AI-company stocks, company revenues and Epoch Capabilities Index targets. It does not provide further operating details.
When and where is the Bay Area meetup?
The thread lists it for Saturday, October 24, at 1 p.m. at Mox, 1680 Mission Street, San Francisco. The supplied text does not state the year.
Did the post report results from the survey or confirm a Bay Area voting guide?
No. The thread solicits survey responses but reports no findings. It says the author was still trying to determine whether a Bay Area voting guide could be produced.
Source: rss
Halloween Picks
halloween
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
