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They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

How a group of Silicon Valley math prodigies, AI researchers and internet burnouts descended into an alleged violent cult

In it, instead of a childhood as a miserable orphan, Harry was raised by an Oxford professor of biochemistry and knows science as well as magic; at Hogwarts he is assigned to the smart kids’ house, Ravenclaw, instead of the jocks’ Gryffindor; and he saves the world by embracing a manipulative, dark streak that might shock JK Rowling’s Potter. Wolford, the startup founder and former rationalist, described a chicken-and-egg situation: “If you take the earnestness that defines this community, and you look at civilization-ending risks of a scale that are not particularly implausible at this point, and you are somebody with poor emotional regulation, which also happens to be pretty common among the people that we’re talking about – yeah, why wouldn’t you freak the hell out? According to court filings, the car she and Bauckholt were in contained hollow-point ammunition, a night-vision monocular, a ballistic helmet, shooting targets, full-face respirator masks, handheld radios, cellphones wrapped in tin foil, a dozen unspecified electronic devices, and a diary with references to doing LSD and passages of “apparent cypher text”.

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