Deontological bars should reference the actor's beliefs

Published on May 3, 2026 3:10 PM GMT Scott Alexander has a recent piece about "deontological bars" in the context of AI safety. He describes the state of the discourse like this: I’ve been thinking about this lately because of an internal debate in the AI safety movement. Some people want to work with the least irresponsible AI labs, helping them “win” the “race” and hopefully do a better job creating superintelligence than their competitors. Others want to pause or ban AI research - the exact d