Gwern.net – Essays by Gwern Branwen

web

Gwern Branwen's personal website contains influential essays on AI scaling, neural networks, and AI safety, including widely-cited work on the neural network scaling hypothesis and tool AI vs. agent AI, making it a notable reference for AI safety researchers.

Metadata

Importance: 62/100homepage

Summary

Gwern.net is the personal website of Gwern Branwen, featuring long-form essays on AI scaling, psychology, statistics, and related topics. It includes influential pieces on the neural network scaling hypothesis, generative AI, and AI safety risks. The site is widely read in AI research and rationalist communities.

Key Points

•Contains the influential 'NN Scaling Hypothesis' essay, foundational to understanding AI capability growth.
•Includes 'Tool AIs Want To Be Agent AIs', a notable piece relevant to AI safety and alignment concerns.
•Covers existential risks, math errors in risk estimation, and embryo selection, relevant to long-term safety thinking.
•Features empirical self-experiments and meta-science essays promoting rigorous epistemic standards.
•Broad interdisciplinary coverage including deep learning, decision theory, behavior genetics, and epistemology.

Cited by 1 page

Page	Type	Quality
Gwern Branwen	Person	52.0

1 FactBase fact citing this source

Entity	Property	Value	As Of
Gwern Branwen	Notable For	Early advocate of AI scaling hypothesis predicting AGI by 2030; maintains gwern.net as comprehensive research archive on AI, psychology, and statistics; influential in rationalist and LessWrong communities; over 90,000 Wikipedia edits	Mar 2026

Cached Content Preview

HTTP 200Fetched Apr 7, 202614 KB

Essays · Gwern.net 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 

 
 Skip to main content 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 Newest 

 Popular 

 Notable 

 Newest: Blog 

 Statistics 

 Meta-Science 

 Decision Theory 

 Order Statistics 

 Crypto/Bitcoin 

 AI: Safety 

 Generative AI: Image 

 Generative AI: Fiction 

 Generative AI: Poetry 

 Deep Learning 

 Computer Science 

 Haskell 

 Cognition 

 Psychology 

 Behavior Genetics 

 Economics 

 Economics: Tech 

 Domestic Cats 

 Practical 

 Design 

 QS: Sleep 

 QS 

 Politics 

 Epistemology 

 Philosophy 

 Literary Criticism 

 Anime 

 Fiction: Prose 

 Fiction: Verse 

 Docs 

 Docs: Science 

 Docs: Crypto 

 Docs: Anime 

 Docs: NGE 

 Wikipedia 

 Reviews 

 Reviews: Books 

 Personal 

 
 This is the website of Gwern Branwen . I write about AI, psychology, & statistics. I am best known for my writings about AI scaling, poetry & anime neural networks ; darknet markets and Bitcoin ; blinded self-experiments ; and dual n -back & spaced repetition .

 Navigation : For information about my site’s philosophy & method, see the About page ; for the website features & implementation, see the Design page ; for information about myself, my use of other websites, and contact information, see the about-me page ; for new pages, see the Changelog ( = new), short blog posts , or new links ; or subscribe to the newsletter ( archives ).

 Features : To use dark-mode ( ) or reader-mode ( ), or disable popups ( ), or search the site ( ), use the floating toggle bar in the lower-right upper-right corner ( ); for more, see the help ( ) page. page rewrites titles to condense them and make them shorter, for more uniform solid blocks of text and to improve the layout of multi-column rendering. All the titles in a section should be similar lengths, and not be long enough to trigger wrapping! We want to put our best and most elegant foot forward to readers arriving at Gwern.net for the first time... -->

 
 
 Newest 

 
 “Elegy in a Craneyard” 

 A Strict Pindaric Meter 

 “At a Red Light” writing experiment 

 How Long Would “Weird Al” Survive In A Freezer? 

 “Apollonian #2: A Poet Teaches AIs” 

 “Spoilage” 

 Interview on risktaking & self-experiment 

 Inkhaven interview on writing ideas 

 Gwtar: static efficient single-file HTML 

 Poetry HTML Typesetting 

 “Apollonian 1: The Counted & Crowned” 

 
 
 
 Popular 

 

 
 The NN Scaling Hypothesis 

 Death Note Anonymity 

 Silk Road 1 Tutorial 

 DNM Archives (2013–2015) 

 Spaced Repetition Learning 

 Commoditize Your Complement 

 Banner Ads Considered Harmful 

 Generating Anime Faces 

 Melancholy of Subculture Society 

 Ordinary Life Improvements 

 
 
 
 Notable 

 

 
 
 Existential Risks & Math Errors 

 Danbooru2021: Anime Dataset 

 DNM Archives (2013–2015) 

 Correlation ≠ Causality 

 Embryo Selection For Traits 

 Longevity Meta-Analyses 

 Tool AIs Want To Be Agent AIs 

 Internet Research Tips 

 In Defense Of Inclusionism 

 Why So Few Matt Levin

... (truncated, 14 KB total)

Resource ID: kb-b3eec02ad0c77dbc