[Pt 0] The Lucretia Books: My Experience with Sexual Harassment/Abuse as a Female AI Researcher in Silicon Valley
Twitter: @lucreti_a
This post was originally cross-posted on the EA forum here.
Thank you to the supportive EA members who encouraged me to publicly share this difficult experience, to my friends and research collaborators for your kindness, and to the courageous women who helped me in writing this post, who I hope can someday speak publicly.
To those who know me, please call me Lucretia.
The Lucretia Books are an 11k word essay about my experience with sexual harassment/abuse in Silicon Valley, including advice and resources. Each section has a distinct purpose. For the full picture, I recommend reading through the end.
Overview
1. Introduction
I was one of the women who spoke to TIME magazine about sexual harassment and abuse in EA. Here is my story without media distortions.
2. Advice for Female Founders and AI Researchers in the Valley
Silicon Valley can be a brutal place for women. This is what I wish I knew five years ago.
3. My Case Study
I am an AI researcher. I believe my AI alignment research career was needlessly encumbered by:
- 3a. My experience with the sexually abusive red pill and pickup artist sphere, which entwined with a branch of AI safety in Cambridge, MA and Silicon Valley. I describe the unethical core of red pill ideology, including the running of “rape scripts.”
- 3b. The recent retaliation by a Silicon Valley AI community to my report of harm. This community’s aggressive reaction showed many gender biases latent in AI culture.
4. Systemic Sexual Violence in Silicon Valley
I believe the male-dominated environment, nepotistic connections to investor money, extreme power disparities between wealthy AI researchers and aspiring young women in the AI and startup sectors, hacker house party culture, psychedelics misused as date rape drugs, cults of personality, substantial population of low empathy, risk-seeking, and/or narcissistic men, and lack of functional policing mechanisms make sexual violence a systemic problem in a critical X-risk industry.
5. Why I Spoke to TIME Magazine
I address some misconceptions about the original TIME article on sexual harassment, and why I spoke to TIME in the first place.
6. Helpful Books and Movies
I share learnings about sexual harassment and abuse after ~15 months of focusing on the problem, including my favorite books and movies about sexual harassment/abuse to flesh out more conceptual space. For all the seriousness of this post, these books and movies are entertaining, gorgeous, and healing!
7. Future Sequences
Depending on the reactions to this post, I would love to write a Sequence of sexual harassment and abuse from first principles.
8. Call to Action: Recovery and Litigation Funds
AGI should neither be built nor aligned in environments of deceit. We propose a call-to-action for a Recovery Fund and Sociological AI Alignment Fund / Litigation Fund to counteract the sexual predation Moloch in Silicon Valley, which is a sociological AI safety problem.
9. Appendix
- A. Excerpts from red pill literature
- B. Notes on Rape vs Consent Culture
