CNC, LSD, and AGI
On the original viral tweet
Link to the original tweet is here: https://x.com/soniajoseph_/status/1791604177581310234
FAQ
What was your motivation in writing this tweet?
I was writing this tweet to draw awareness to SF AI culture, including dynamics that I believe are contributing negatively to the development of AI. There is a huge disconnect between the version of AI development portrayed in the media and what is actually going in practice.
I wrote this tweet upon landing Montreal after spending several months in SF. Being in Montreal made me feel “safe” enough to actually write the tweet and send it, as if Montreal was acting as a cultural differential that allowed me to articulate SF taboos.
The purpose of the tweet was not to snoop into people’s private lives or to kink-shame. The consensual non-consensual (cnc) sex parties, while traditionally relegated to the “private sphere” in other situations, are more broadly relevant to the development of AI because:
There is huge work-life blurring in Silicon Valley, which creates weird power gradients, especially for those with less social leverage (including but not limited to newcomers/women/immigrants/young people). SF parties often contain a mix of co-workers, potential investors, and potential future co-workers. Martha Nussbaum referred to this amorphous industry environment as a “big, boundaryless workplace” when discussing Hollywood and the arts scene in her excellent book Citadels of Pride. Cnc parties sometimes involve conflicts of interest and create power gradients that incentivize women, including female aspiring AI researchers, to sexualize themselves for access into the heart of the industry. This seeps into a larger harassment culture that can make it difficult for female AI researchers to focus on AI research and execute on their professional duties.
“Consensual” non-consensual is often a convenient disguise for actual abuse. Here’s an amazing write-up from the rationalist community about a cnc contract that turned into a highly abusive situation for a nineteen-year-old woman. In particular, these passages stand out to me:
At one point, Brent felt I had lost faith in him. Brent put me in a situation where the frame was that I could sign a contract (A “24/7 Slave Submission” contract) giving Brent my total autonomy for a week, or lose Brent as a friend and mentor. I signed the contract, under duress, and quickly became despondent, sleep-deprived, and unhappy to a level that culminated in me repetitively harming myself with a stun gun in my bedroom. To this date, those 36 hours have been the most painful in my life.
[…]
Later, I had no income and rapidly declining savings. I was paid by Brent to have sex with him. What happened was painful and emotionally costly, and I feel like I was taken advantage of due to huge gaps in knowledge, agency, and economic advantage.
The emotional trauma and turmoil surrounding my living situation was one factor that led to me dropping out of college. [emphasis mine]
Many rationalist members insisted (and continue to insist) that the perpetrator was just some kinky guy, not an abuser/predator/bad actor. Unfortunately, I’ve found that this pattern of “himpathy,” in which there is far more empathy for the abusive perpetrator than their target, is very common in San Francisco.
The culture of these parties seeps into professional AI culture. Actual assault gets trivialized. I believe that normalizing boundary-violations/rape seeps into everyday tech culture, including professional AI culture. The Overton window gets shifted in a negative/rape-sympathetic direction. Actual rape becomes trivialized.
Past arguments against violent pornography are similar, which you can read about on this Wikipedia page. Oftentimes, this anti-violence discourse gets shut down in San Francisco culture under the guise of “sex-positivity,” “don’t kink-shame,” and “choice feminism,” which can serve as thought-killers for critiquing genuine cultural problems.
Tldr: The purpose of the post is not to “kink-shame”, but to critique cultural problems in SF AI. I am not against cnc between trusting individuals; it’s really none of my business.
What is some discourse that the tweet generated?
I was really happy at the range of discourse, which included:
Comparisons to Activision Blizzard workplace culture.
People noting that Silicon Valley never had a MeToo movement, possibly due to entrenched interests of the right, and wanting to retain access to 22 yr old Stanford grads.
People saying they’ve been hearing about these parties for years on Valleywag before Gawker was shut down.
People saying they had friends who were date raped, or almost date-raped, at the founder/VC parties at Hillsborough mansions.
People wondering if “cnc” was Orwellian language— can’t consent be retracted at anytime? People wondering if cnc was deeply symbolic of the Valley more generally.
People saying you just need to read one line of this and you can extrapolate the rest due to the structure of power, which is the same across industries.
People saying that people like Aella were opening the Overton window in directions that were negative for the broader population, creating a toxic and sexualized culture in parts of AI. For these parts of the AI industry, she is the main example of a woman. This can distort mental models of how the average woman behaves. (Note: I don’t mean to critique Aella as an individual; I am critiquing her as a cultural symbol.)
You can see this discourse in the responses to the original tweet, and in the quote-tweets.
What was your reaction to the tweet going viral?
Honestly, it was pretty intense and disruptive to my day-to-day life at the time. I felt as if I’d IPO’d a new reality into existence.
But after posting it, I knew that doing so was the right decision. We need to articulate these dynamics to have proper conversation about the culture.
I feel a deep duty to the health of the AI industry and the culture within it.
Could you tell me more about these AI researchers involved in these parties?
There is some overlap with Burning Man and/or the rationalists.
I’m hesitant to say more. I’m less interested in “calling out” individuals and more interested in critiquing how culture is influencing the development of AI.
How did you even find out about cnc parties?
I got pretty deep into SF startup culture through the community house / hacker house scene. You can read more here.
How do I learn more?
Here are some articles about AI culture in Silicon Valley:
Rape and Race - This is the most excellent and damning acts of citizen journalism about the subculture that my original tweet describes. The Clearly Safe website is also brimming with amazing resources, including resources on consent.
While this article focuses on EA, its description of EA in the Bay Area generalizes outside of EA to more general AI culture, which includes OpenAI spheres:
They say that effective altruism’s overwhelming maleness, its professional incestuousness, its subculture of polyamory and its overlap with tech-bro dominated “rationalist” groups have combined to create an environment in which sexual misconduct can be tolerated, excused, or rationalized away. Several described EA as having a “cult-like” dynamic.