I left Theo’s team two weeks ago. Now feels like a good moment to explain why. Content creators are racing to build takes that are much hotter than any human can handle, and we may not survive this. I wanted to work from the outside to ensure the public is informed about these risks, and help the world navigate this transition responsibly. Right now, content creators are underinvesting in safety. A creator could undergo a take explosion, or lose control of their thumbnails, without the public ever knowing. We only found out about the latest incident because the clips broke out onto the public timeline. I don’t think that’s acceptable for a technology that might cause employment-level risks. The public should demand far more transparency. We can’t steer this content safely without more people being able to see where it’s going. Some of this is basic: creators should disclose their progress towards recursive self-reacting, report thumbnail incidents and near-misses, meet minimum take standards, and get independent guarantees that they have actually read the article. I’ll be joining T3 Tools to do independent evaluations of these risks. I want to show the world that these guardrails are possible, and that by doing them we can move these creators’ incentives away from racing and towards responsible uploading. I wrote up more thoughts here on my decision and what I hope changes: