Really huge and extremely concerning story from the Information tonight. Looks like OpenAI utilized a breakthrough in neuralese for Astra that could destroy chain of thought monitorability - though the Informations source told them that OpenAI is currently "limiting the use of the technique" in Astra. A few thoughts spring to mind: (1) what does limiting actually mean? There is a lot of room in that term. (e.g. OpenAI said they would be doing lots of monitoring before the HF incident, but that doesn't seem to have borne out in practice) (2) it seems quite likely that if OpenAI discovered this architecture and found performance/efficiency gains, that other companies are likely to find it soon too (if they haven't already), and may not choose to prioritize monitorability at the expense of efficiency. If some folks do, it may be difficult to avoid a race to the bottom (though I hope we can! and there are large selfish incentives for companies to care about monitorability). (3) The idea that Dwarkesh said about the HF incident/METR report that "I don't think this is the final warning shot we'll get. But it's probably the final one that I'll personally be able to understand" now seems much more plausible, and is a truly frightening prospect.