“Salad days” by Zephaniah Roe

... My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood To say as I said then! The UChicago AI safety group had humble beginnings. One day in 2022, after a dinner hosted by the school's EA group, a student was asking if anyone would be interested in attending the inaugural UChicago AI Alignment Research Group meeting. One other student and I said yes, and three or four more met up with us later. We walked across campus to the Woodlawn dorms, the newest building on campus but of the lowest quality. Many of the building's walls were concrete. If you are a sufficiently nerdy person, you would know this is great news because you can write on concrete with chalk, so everything vertical becomes a blackboard. We decided to do our meetings in the stairwells for privacy and lots of large open walls to write. There was no food, funding, or mentorship. We weren't a registered student organization, so we didn't have the ability to book rooms or get support from the University. There was no point in networking because nobody was important and nobody knew anyone important. This was a place and moment where the [...] --- First published: August 31st, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xuh4Hqaza25f4jryb/salad-days --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.