In brief: Aella: On Sept. 16, the New York Post turned its attention to his partner’s Substack.
Nate Soares has spent years warning that superhuman AI could end humanity. On Sept. 16, the New York Post turned its attention to his partner’s Substack.
The Post’s story, by Ariel Zilber, ran under the headline “AI doomsayer’s wild life with OnlyFans star includes birthday sex parties, extreme kinks and ‘Slutcon.'” Its subjects: Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and co-author of the bestseller “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies,” and Aella, the writer and OnlyFans creator who has publicly described him as her partner. The Post said Aella “earns as much as $100,000 a month” on the platform, then devoted much of the story to years of her famously frank posts about her sex life.
Some of the evidence was less scandalous than advertised. Among the posts the Post cited was a Sept. 15 post in which Aella joked that “nate really does look like that” after “2 sleep deprived weeks working nonstop in meetings and media appearances and emails and group chat coordinations and overnight plane flights.” Damning stuff, if your concern is calendar management.
The Post also flagged Slutcon, the event Aella has been promoting as a flirting-and-sex-skills “intensive workshop,” and noted that the same Substack post pivoted from AI extinction anxiety straight into Slutcon hype. Quoting her: “My social circle is buzzing like someone just poured water into their anthill.” The Post said it had sought comment from both.
Two days after the piece ran, Aella posted that she was “getting pretty sick of people saying im a sex trafficking sex cultist,” adding, “I’ve never trafficked anyone (why is that even a rumor??).”
Pushback also came from inside the tent. Writer Scott Alexander, replying to Aella on Sept. 21, argued that it “really does damage the credibility of a movement with 60 year old voters in Ohio when it’s hosting Slutcon.” Aella replied by quoting his line about people who “at least claim that it’s some tangential lifestyle thing” that has “made them hate us and ignore everything we say,” then answered it: “I am skeptical of this.”
Why it matters, in our read: AI safety looks like it’s trying to go mainstream, and mainstream comes with tabloids. The piece had very little to say about Soares’ actual arguments and a great deal to say about his relationship. Whether that’s fair is up for debate. Whether it works is not, and the rationalists are now arguing about optics in public.
AI may or may not end the world. Slutcon may yet end the group chat.