Post #4631605 · Elektrine

2026-09-06 15:05 UTC

Sabine Hossenfelder says she got pitched to create a series of videos about AI doom with a hint that she did not have to disclose the sponsorship (“e.g. AI job loss, AI surveillance, AI totaliterianism, AI takeover, AI-generated pandemics, AI warfare, etc.”) Someone shared a screenshot where the pitch comes from by Drew Spartz using funds from the “Center for AI Safety” in San Francisco. Hossenfelder is a physicist and science communicator who turned to her connections in the Thielsphere and started to make conspiratorial videos about how science is fake and if scientists don’t watch out they will be defunded after her last postdoc expired. We last met Drew Spartz in 2023, where he worked for an “effective organization” organization named the Nonlinear Fund. Nonlinear’s modus operandi was allegedly hiring live-in personal assistants to help them be digital nomads, having “casual romantic relationships” with them, asking them to commit crimes, then not paying them.

Replies (5)

@blakestacey@awful.systems 2026-09-06 15:24

Previously in Hossenfelder’s appearances pn awful dot systems: awful.systems/post/5317207/8451899 awful.systems/post/5930794/9070600

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@CinnasVerses@awful.systems 2026-09-06 16:15

Nonlinear Fund threatened to sue the person who said they were bad bosses with no boundaries who wasted funds! There was a Manifest bet about it. Narrator: Nonlinear did not sue.

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@lurker@awful.systems 2026-09-06 23:26

Oh hey I also know Drew Spartz, but not from the Nonlinear Fund. He runs the Documenting AGI channel (which is mentioned in this email) highlights include this racist doomer meme a post about how AI will be able to end the world in 3 months and a video about an AI Black Death in 2 years posted in 2024 I’ve shared some other posts of his here but these are the ones I could grab the fastest

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@rhamph@awful.systems 2026-09-07 00:01

It would only be moral to take the money then make videos about how ‘AI safety’ is an imaginary distraction from mundane matters of labour rights and finance capitalism.

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@maol@awful.systems 2026-09-07 21:32

From that post about Nonlinear: I reached out to some references Kat listed, which were positive to strongly positive. However I also got a strongly negative reference — someone else who I informed about the decision told me they knew former employees who felt taken advantage of around things like salary. However the former employees reportedly didn’t want to come forward due to fear of retaliation and generally wanting to get away from the whole thing, and the reports felt very vague and hard for me to concretely visualize, but nonetheless the person strongly recommended against inviting Kat and Drew. I didn’t feel like this was a strong enough reason to bar someone from a space — or rather, I did, but vague anonymous descriptions of very bad behavior being sufficient to ban someone is a system that can be straightforwardly abused, so I don’t want to use such a system. This pretty much explains how and why the workplace culture in so many TESCREAL orgs is so, so bad.

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