Episoder
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As part of the court case between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, a substantial number of emails between Elon, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockman have been released as part of the court proceedings.
I have found reading through these really valuable, and I haven't found an online source that compiles all of them in an easy to read format. So I made one.
I used AI assistance to generate this, which might have introduced errors. Check the original source to make sure it's accurate before you quote it: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69013420/musk-v-altman/ [1]
Sam Altman to Elon Musk - May 25, 2015
Been thinking a lot about whether it's possible to stop humanity from developing AI.
I think the answer is almost definitely not.
If it's going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first.
Any thoughts on [...]
---
Outline:
(00:36) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - May 25, 2015
(01:19) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - May 25, 2015
(01:28) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Jun 24, 2015
(03:31) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - Jun 24, 2015
(03:39) Greg Brockman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Altman) - Nov 22, 2015
(06:06) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - Dec 8, 2015
(07:07) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Dec 8, 2015
(07:59) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Dec 11, 2015
(08:32) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - Dec 11, 2015
(08:50) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Dec 11, 2015
(09:01) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - Dec 11, 2015
(09:08) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Dec 11, 2015
(09:26) Elon Musk to: Ilya Sutskever, Pamela Vagata, Vicki Cheung, Diederik Kingma, Andrej Karpathy, John D. Schulman, Trevor Blackwell, Greg Brockman, (cc:Sam Altman) - Dec 11, 2015
(10:35) Greg Brockman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Altman) - Feb 21, 2016
(15:11) Elon Musk to Greg Brockman, (cc: Sam Altman) - Feb 22, 2016
(15:54) Greg Brockman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Altman) - Feb 22, 2016
(16:14) Greg Brockman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Mar 21, 2016
(17:58) Elon Musk to Greg Brockman, (cc: Sam Teller) - Mar 21, 2016
(18:08) Sam Teller to Elon Musk - April 27, 2016
(19:28) Elon Musk to Sam Teller - Apr 27, 2016
(20:05) Sam Altman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(25:31) Elon Musk to Sam Altman, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(26:36) Sam Altman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(27:01) Elon Musk to Sam Altman, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(27:17) Sam Altman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(27:29) Sam Teller to Elon Musk - Sep 20, 2016
(27:55) Elon Musk to Sam Teller - Sep 21, 2016
(28:11) Ilya Sutskever to Elon Musk, Greg Brockman - Jul 20, 2017
(29:41) Shivon Zilis to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Aug 28, 2017
(33:15) Elon Musk to Shivon Zilis, (cc: Sam Teller) - Aug 28, 2017
(33:30) Ilya Sutskever to Elon Musk, Sam Altman, (cc: Greg Brockman, Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis) - Sep 20, 2017
(39:05) Elon Musk to Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman (cc: Greg Brockman, Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis) - Sep 20, 2017
(39:24) Sam Altman to Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever (cc: Greg Brockman, Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis) - Sep 21, 2017
(39:40) Shivon Zilis to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 22, 2017
(40:10) Elon Musk to Shivon Zilis (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 22, 2017
(40:20) Shivon Zilis to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 22, 2017
(41:54) Sam Altman to Elon Musk (cc: Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis) - Jan 21, 2018
(42:28) Elon Musk to Sam Altman (cc: Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis) - Jan 21, 2018
(42:42) Andrej Karpathy to Elon Musk, (cc: Shivon Zilis) - Jan 31, 2018 -
Epistemic status: Toy model. Oversimplified, but has been anecdotally useful to at least a couple people, and I like it as a metaphor.
Introduction
Iâd like to share a toy model of willpower: your psyche's conscious verbal planner âearnsâ willpower (earns a certain amount of trust with the rest of your psyche) by choosing actions that nourish your fundamental, bottom-up processes in the long run. For example, your verbal planner might expend willpower dragging you to disappointing first dates, then regain that willpower, and more, upon finding a date that leads to good long-term romance. Wise verbal planners can acquire large willpower budgets by making plans that, on average, nourish your fundamental processes. Delusional or uncaring verbal planners, on the other hand, usually become âburned outâ â their willpower budget goes broke-ish, leaving them little to no access to willpower.
Iâll spend the next section trying to stick this [...]
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Outline:
(00:17) Introduction
(01:10) On processes that lose their relationship to the unknown
(02:58) Ayn Rand's model of âliving moneyâ
(06:44) An analogous model of âliving willpowerâ and burnout.
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
November 16th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xtuk9wkuSP6H7CcE2/ayn-rand-s-model-of-living-money-and-an-upside-of-burnout
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. -
Mangler du episoder?
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Midjourney, âinfinite libraryâIâve had post-election thoughts percolating, and the sense that I wanted to synthesize something about this moment, but politics per se is not really my beat. This is about as close as I want to come to the topic, and it's a sidelong thing, but I think the time is right.
It's time to start thinking again about neutrality.
Neutral institutions, neutral information sources. Things that both seem and are impartial, balanced, incorruptible, universal, legitimate, trustworthy, canonical, foundational.1
We donât have them. Clearly.
We live in a pluralistic and divided world. Everybody's got different âreality-tunnels.â Attempts to impose one worldview on everyone fail.
To some extent this is healthy and inevitable; we are all different, we do disagree, and it's vain to hope that âeveryone can get on the same pageâ like some kind of hive-mind.
On the other hand, lots of things arenât great [...]
---
Outline:
(02:14) Not âNormalityâ
(04:36) What is Neutrality Anyway?
(07:43) âNeutrality is Impossibleâ is Technically True But Misses The Point
(10:50) Systems of the World
(15:05) Let's Talk About Online
---
First published:
November 13th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WxnuLJEtRzqvpbQ7g/neutrality
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
Images from the article:
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app. -
Trump and the Republican party will yield broad governmental control during what will almost certainly be a critical period for AGI development. In this post, we want to briefly share various frames and ideas weâve been thinking through and actively pitching to Republican lawmakers over the past months in preparation for this possibility.
Why are we sharing this here? Given that >98% of the EAs and alignment researchers we surveyed earlier this year identified as everything-other-than-conservative, we consider thinking through these questions to be another strategically worthwhile neglected direction.
(Along these lines, we also want to proactively emphasize that politics is the mind-killer, and that, regardless of one's ideological convictions, those who earnestly care about alignment must take seriously the possibility that Trump will be the US president who presides over the emergence of AGIâand update accordingly in light of this possibility.)
Political orientation: combined sample of (non-alignment) [...]
---
Outline:
(01:20) AI-not-disempowering-humanity is conservative in the most fundamental sense
(03:36) Weve been laying the groundwork for alignment policy in a Republican-controlled government
(08:06) Trump and some of his closest allies have signaled that they are genuinely concerned about AI risk
(09:11) Avoiding an AI-induced catastrophe is obviously not a partisan goal
(10:48) Winning the AI race with China requires leading on both capabilities and safety
(13:22) Concluding thought
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.
---
First published:
November 15th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rfCEWuid7fXxz4Hpa/making-a-conservative-case-for-alignment
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
Images from the article:
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As part of the court case between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, a substantial number of emails between Elon, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockman have been released as part of the court proceedings.
I have found reading through these really valuable, and I haven't found an online source that compiles all of them in an easy to read format. So I made one.
I used AI assistance to generate this, which might have introduced errors. Check the original source to make sure it's accurate before you quote it: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69013420/musk-v-altman/ [1]
Sam Altman to Elon Musk - May 25, 2015
Been thinking a lot about whether it's possible to stop humanity from developing AI.
I think the answer is almost definitely not.
If it's going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first.
Any thoughts on [...]
---
Outline:
(00:37) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - May 25, 2015
(01:20) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - May 25, 2015
(01:29) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Jun 24, 2015
(03:33) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - Jun 24, 2015
(03:41) Greg Brockman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Altman) - Nov 22, 2015
(06:07) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - Dec 8, 2015
(07:09) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Dec 8, 2015
(08:01) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Dec 11, 2015
(08:34) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - Dec 11, 2015
(08:52) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Dec 11, 2015
(09:02) Elon Musk to Sam Altman - Dec 11, 2015
(09:10) Sam Altman to Elon Musk - Dec 11, 2015
(09:28) Elon Musk to: Ilya Sutskever, Pamela Vagata, Vicki Cheung, Diederik Kingma, Andrej Karpathy, John D. Schulman, Trevor Blackwell, Greg Brockman, (cc:Sam Altman) - Dec 11, 2015
(10:37) Greg Brockman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Altman) - Feb 21, 2016
(15:13) Elon Musk to Greg Brockman, (cc: Sam Altman) - Feb 22, 2016
(15:55) Greg Brockman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Altman) - Feb 22, 2016
(16:16) Greg Brockman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Mar 21, 2016
(17:59) Elon Musk to Greg Brockman, (cc: Sam Teller) - Mar 21, 2016
(18:09) Sam Teller to Elon Musk - April 27, 2016
(19:30) Elon Musk to Sam Teller - Apr 27, 2016
(20:06) Sam Altman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(25:32) Elon Musk to Sam Altman, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(26:38) Sam Altman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(27:03) Elon Musk to Sam Altman, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(27:18) Sam Altman to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 16, 2016
(27:31) Sam Teller to Elon Musk - Sep 20, 2016
(27:57) Elon Musk to Sam Teller - Sep 21, 2016
(28:13) Ilya Sutskever to Elon Musk, Greg Brockman - Jul 20, 2017
(29:42) Shivon Zilis to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Aug 28, 2017
(33:16) Elon Musk to Shivon Zilis, (cc: Sam Teller) - Aug 28, 2017
(33:32) Ilya Sutskever to Elon Musk, Sam Altman, (cc: Greg Brockman, Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis) - Sep 20, 2017
(39:07) Elon Musk to Ilya Sutskever (cc: Sam Altman; Greg Brockman; Sam Teller; Shivon Zilis) - Sep 20, 2017 (2:17PM)
(39:42) Elon Musk to Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman (cc: Greg Brockman, Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis) - Sep 20, 2017 (3:08PM)
(40:03) Sam Altman to Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever (cc: Greg Brockman, Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis) - Sep 21, 2017
(40:18) Shivon Zilis to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 22, 2017
(40:49) Elon Musk to Shivon Zilis (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 22, 2017
(40:59) Shivon Zilis to Elon Musk, (cc: Sam Teller) - Sep 22, 2017
(42:33) Sam Altman to Elon Musk (cc: Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Sam Teller, Shivon Zilis) - Jan 21, 2018
(43:07) Elon Musk to Sam Altman (cc: Greg Brockman, Ilya S -
Thanks to Holden Karnofsky, David Duvenaud, and Kate Woolverton for useful discussions and feedback.
Following up on our recent âSabotage Evaluations for Frontier Modelsâ paper, I wanted to share more of my personal thoughts on why I think catastrophic sabotage is important and why I care about it as a threat model. Note that this isnât in any way intended to be a reflection of Anthropic's views or for that matter anyone's views but my ownâit's just a collection of some of my personal thoughts.
First, some high-level thoughts on what I want to talk about here:
I want to focus on a level of future capabilities substantially beyond current models, but below superintelligence: specifically something approximately human-level and substantially transformative, but not yet superintelligent. While I donât think that most of the proximate cause of AI existential risk comes from such modelsâI think most of the direct takeover [...] ---
Outline:
(02:31) Why is catastrophic sabotage a big deal?
(02:45) Scenario 1: Sabotage alignment research
(05:01) Necessary capabilities
(06:37) Scenario 2: Sabotage a critical actor
(09:12) Necessary capabilities
(10:51) How do you evaluate a model's capability to do catastrophic sabotage?
(21:46) What can you do to mitigate the risk of catastrophic sabotage?
(23:12) Internal usage restrictions
(25:33) Affirmative safety cases
---
First published:
October 22nd, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Loxiuqdj6u8muCe54/catastrophic-sabotage-as-a-major-threat-model-for-human
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. -
Related: Book Review: On the Edge: The GamblersI have previously been heavily involved in sports betting. That world was very good to me. The times were good, as were the profits. It was a skill game, and a form of positive-sum entertainment, and I was happy to participate and help ensure the sophisticated customer got a high quality product. I knew it wasnât the most socially valuable enterprise, but I certainly thought it was net positive.When sports gambling was legalized in America, I was hopeful it too could prove a net positive force, far superior to the previous obnoxious wave of daily fantasy sports. It brings me no pleasure to conclude that this was not the case. The results are in. Legalized mobile gambling on sports, let alone casino games, has proven to be a huge mistake. The societal impacts are far worse than I expected. Table [...]
---
Outline:
(01:02) The Short Answer
(02:01) Paper One: Bankruptcies
(07:03) Paper Two: Reduced Household Savings
(08:37) Paper Three: Increased Domestic Violence
(10:04) The Product as Currently Offered is Terrible
(12:02) Things Sharp Players Do
(14:07) People Cannot Handle Gambling on Smartphones
(15:46) Yay and Also Beware Trivial Inconveniences (a future full post)
(17:03) How Does This Relate to Elite Hypocrisy?
(18:32) The Standard Libertarian Counterargument
(19:42) What About Other Prediction Markets?
(20:07) What Should Be Done
The original text contained 3 images which were described by AI.
---
First published:
November 11th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online-sports-gambling-experiment-has-failed
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
Images from the article:
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This post comes a bit late with respect to the news cycle, but I argued in a recent interview that o1 is an unfortunate twist on LLM technologies, making them particularly unsafe compared to what we might otherwise have expected:
The basic argument is that the technology behind o1 doubles down on a reinforcement learning paradigm, which puts us closer to the world where we have to get the value specification exactly right in order to avert catastrophic outcomes.
RLHF is just barely RL.
- Andrej Karpathy
Additionally, this technology takes us further from interpretability. If you ask GPT4 to produce a chain-of-thought (with prompts such as "reason step-by-step to arrive at an answer"), you know that in some sense, the natural-language reasoning you see in the output is how it arrived at the answer.[1] This is not true of systems like o1. The o1 training rewards [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
November 11th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BEFbC8sLkur7DGCYB/o1-is-a-bad-idea
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. -
TL;DR: I'm presenting three recent papers which all share a similar finding, i.e. the safety training techniques for chat models donât transfer well from chat models to the agents built from them. In other words, models wonât tell you how to do something harmful, but they are often willing to directly execute harmful actions. However, all papers find that different attack methods like jailbreaks, prompt-engineering, or refusal-vector ablation do transfer.
Here are the three papers:
AgentHarm: A Benchmark for Measuring Harmfulness of LLM AgentsRefusal-Trained LLMs Are Easily Jailbroken As Browser AgentsApplying Refusal-Vector Ablation to Llama 3.1 70B Agents What are language model agents
Language model agents are a combination of a language model and a scaffolding software. Regular language models are typically limited to being chat bots, i.e. they receive messages and reply to them. However, scaffolding gives these models access to tools which they can [...]
---
Outline:
(00:55) What are language model agents
(01:36) Overview
(03:31) AgentHarm Benchmark
(05:27) Refusal-Trained LLMs Are Easily Jailbroken as Browser Agents
(06:47) Applying Refusal-Vector Ablation to Llama 3.1 70B Agents
(08:23) Discussion
---
First published:
November 3rd, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZoFxTqWRBkyanonyb/current-safety-training-techniques-do-not-fully-transfer-to
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
Images from the article:
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At least, if you happen to be near me in brain space.
What advice would you give your younger self?
That was the prompt for a class I taught at PAIR 2024. About a quarter of participants ranked it in their top 3 of courses at the camp and half of them had it listed as their favorite.
I hadnât expected that.
I thought my life advice was pretty idiosyncratic. I never heard of anyone living their life like I have. I never encountered this method in all the self-help blogs or feel-better books I consumed back when I needed them.
But if some people found it helpful, then I should probably write it all down.
Why Listen to Me Though?
I think it's generally worth prioritizing the advice of people who have actually achieved the things you care about in life. I canât tell you if that's me [...]
---
Outline:
(00:46) Why Listen to Me Though?
(04:22) Pick a direction instead of a goal
(12:00) Do what you love but always tie it back
(17:09) When all else fails, apply random search
The original text contained 3 images which were described by AI.
---
First published:
September 28th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uwmFSaDMprsFkpWet/explore-more-a-bag-of-tricks-to-keep-your-life-on-the-rails
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
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I open my eyes and find myself lying on a bed in a hospital room. I blink.
"Hello", says a middle-aged man with glasses, sitting on a chair by my bed. "You've been out for quite a long while."
"Oh no ... is it Friday already? I had that report due -"
"It's Thursday", the man says.
"Oh great", I say. "I still have time."
"Oh, you have all the time in the world", the man says, chuckling. "You were out for 21 years."
I burst out laughing, but then falter as the man just keeps looking at me. "You mean to tell me" - I stop to let out another laugh - "that it's 2045?"
"January 26th, 2045", the man says.
"I'm surprised, honestly, that you still have things like humans and hospitals", I say. "There were so many looming catastrophes in 2024. AI misalignment, all sorts of [...]
---
First published:
November 4th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BarHSeciXJqzRuLzw/survival-without-dignity
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. -
Claim: memeticity in a scientific field is mostly determined, not by the most competent researchers in the field, but instead by roughly-median researchers. Weâll call this the âmedian researcher problemâ.
Prototypical example: imagine a scientific field in which the large majority of practitioners have a very poor understanding of statistics, p-hacking, etc. Then lots of work in that field will be highly memetic despite trash statistics, blatant p-hacking, etc. Sure, the most competent people in the field may recognize the problems, but the median researchers donât, and in aggregate it's mostly the median researchers who spread the memes.
(Defending that claim isnât really the main focus of this post, but a couple pieces of legible evidence which are weakly in favor:
People did in fact try to sound the alarm about poor statistical practices well before the replication crisis, and yet practices did not change, so clearly at least [...] ---
First published:
November 2nd, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vZcXAc6txvJDanQ4F/the-median-researcher-problem-1
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. -
This is a link post.We (Connor Leahy, Gabriel Alfour, Chris Scammell, Andrea Miotti, Adam Shimi) have just published The Compendium, which brings together in a single place the most important arguments that drive our models of the AGI race, and what we need to do to avoid catastrophe.
We felt that something like this has been missing from the AI conversation. Most of these points have been shared before, but a âcomprehensive worldviewâ doc has been missing. Weâve tried our best to fill this gap, and welcome feedback and debate about the arguments. The Compendium is a living document, and weâll keep updating it as we learn more and change our minds.
We would appreciate your feedback, whether or not you agree with us:
If you do agree with us, please point out where you think the arguments can be made stronger, and contact us if there are [...] ---
First published:
October 31st, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/prm7jJMZzToZ4QxoK/the-compendium-a-full-argument-about-extinction-risk-from
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. -
There are two nuclear options for treating depression: Ketamine and TMS; This post is about the latter.
TMS stands for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Basically, it fixes depression via magnets, which is about the second or third most magical things that magnets can do.
I donât know a whole lot about the neuroscience - this post isnât about the how or the why. It's from the perspective of a patient, and it's about the what.
What is it like to get TMS?
TMS
The Gatekeeping
For Reasonsâą, doctors like to gatekeep access to treatments, and TMS is no different. To be eligible, you generally have to have tried multiple antidepressants for several years and had them not work or stop working. Keep in mind that, while safe, most antidepressants involve altering your brain chemistry and do have side effects.
Since TMS is non-invasive, doesnât involve any drugs, and has basically [...]
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Outline:
(00:35) TMS
(00:38) The Gatekeeping
(01:49) Motor Threshold Test
(04:08) The Treatment
(04:15) The Schedule
(05:20) The Experience
(07:03) The Sensation
(08:21) Results
(09:06) Conclusion
The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.
---
First published:
October 31st, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/g3iKYS8wDapxS757x/what-tms-is-like
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
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Epistemic status: model-building based on observation, with a few successful unusual predictions. Anecdotal evidence has so far been consistent with the model. This puts it at risk of seeming more compelling than the evidence justifies just yet. Caveat emptor.
Imagine you're a very young child. Around, say, three years old.
You've just done something that really upsets your mother. Maybe you were playing and knocked her glasses off the table and they broke.
Of course you find her reaction uncomfortable. Maybe scary. You're too young to have detailed metacognitive thoughts, but if you could reflect on why you're scared, you wouldn't be confused: you're scared of how she'll react.
She tells you to say you're sorry.
You utter the magic words, hoping that will placate her.
And she narrows her eyes in suspicion.
"You sure don't look sorry. Say it and mean it."
Now you have a serious problem. [...]
---
Outline:
(02:16) Newcomblike self-deception
(06:10) Sketch of a real-world version
(08:43) Possible examples in real life
(12:17) Other solutions to the problem
(12:38) Having power
(14:45) Occlumency
(16:48) Solution space is maybe vast
(17:40) Ending the need for self-deception
(18:21) Welcome self-deception
(19:52) Look away when directed to
(22:59) Hypothesize without checking
(25:50) Does this solve self-deception?
(27:21) Summary
The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
October 27th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5FAnfAStc7birapMx/the-hostile-telepaths-problem
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. -
This post includes a "flattened version" of an interactive diagram that cannot be displayed on this site. I recommend reading the original version of the post with the interactive diagram, which can be found here.
Over the last few months, ARC has released a number of pieces of research. While some of these can be independently motivated, there is also a more unified research vision behind them. The purpose of this post is to try to convey some of that vision and how our individual pieces of research fit into it.
Thanks to Ryan Greenblatt, Victor Lecomte, Eric Neyman, Jeff Wu and Mark Xu for helpful comments.
A bird's eye view
To begin, we will take a "bird's eye" view of ARC's research.[1] As we "zoom in", more nodes will become visible and we will explain the new nodes.
An interactive version of the [...]
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Outline:
(00:43) A birds eye view
(01:00) Zoom level 1
(02:18) Zoom level 2
(03:44) Zoom level 3
(04:56) Zoom level 4
(07:14) How ARCs research fits into this picture
(07:43) Further subproblems
(10:23) Conclusion
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
The original text contained 3 images which were described by AI.
---
First published:
October 23rd, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ztokaf9harKTmRcn4/a-bird-s-eye-view-of-arc-s-research
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Images from the article: -
1.
4.4% of the US federal budget went into the space race at its peak.
This was surprising to me, until a friend pointed out that landing rockets on specific parts of the moon requires very similar technology to landing rockets in soviet cities.[1]
I wonder how much more enthusiastic the scientists working on Apollo were, with the convenient motivating story of âIâm working towards a great scientific endeavorâ vs âIâm working to make sure we can kill millions if we want toâ.
2.
The field of alignment seems to be increasingly dominated by interpretability. (and obedience[2])
This was surprising to me[3], until a friend pointed out that partially opening the black box of NNs is the kind of technology that would scaling labs find new unhobblings by noticing ways in which the internals of their models are being inefficient and having better tools to evaluate capabilities advances.[4]
I [...]
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Outline:
(00:03) 1.
(00:35) 2.
(01:20) 3.
The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:
October 21st, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h4wXMXneTPDEjJ7nv/a-rocket-interpretability-analogy
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. -
This summer, I participated in a human challenge trial at the University of Maryland. I spent the days just prior to my 30th birthday sick with shigellosis.
What? Why?
Dysentery is an acute disease in which pathogens attack the intestine. It is most often caused by the bacteria Shigella. It spreads via the fecal-oral route. It requires an astonishingly low number of pathogens to make a person sick â so it spreads quickly, especially in bad hygienic conditions or anywhere water can get tainted with feces.
It kills about 70,000 people a year, 30,000 of whom are children under the age of 5. Almost all of these cases and deaths are among very poor people.
The primary mechanism by which dysentery kills people is dehydration. The person loses fluids to diarrhea and for whatever reason (lack of knowledge, energy, water, etc) cannot regain them sufficiently. Shigella bacteria are increasingly [...]
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Outline:
(00:15) What? Why?
(01:18) The deal with human challenge trials
(02:46) Dysentery: it's a modern disease
(04:27) Getting ready
(07:25) Two days until challenge
(10:19) One day before challenge: the age of phage
(11:08) Bacteriophage therapy: sending a cat after mice
(14:14) Do they work?
(16:17) Day 1 of challenge
(17:09) The waiting game
(18:20) Let's learn about Shigella pathogenesis
(23:34) Let's really learn about Shigella pathogenesis
(27:03) Out the other side
(29:24) Aftermath
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.
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First published:
October 22nd, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/inHiHHGs6YqtvyeKp/i-got-dysentery-so-you-don-t-have-to
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Images from the article: -
This is a link post. Part 1: Our Thinking
Near and Far
1 Abstract/Distant Future Bias
2 Abstractly Ideal, Concretely Selfish
3 We Add Near, Average Far
4 Why We Don't Know What We Want
5 We See the Sacred from Afar, to See It Together
6 The Future Seems Shiny
7 Doubting My Far Mind
Disagreement
8 Beware the Inside View
9 Are Meta Views Outside Views?
10 Disagreement Is Near-Far Bias
11 Others' Views Are Detail
12 Why Be Contrarian?
13 On Disagreement, Again
14 Rationality Requires Common Priors
15 Might Disagreement Fade Like Violence?
Biases
16 Reject Random Beliefs
17 Chase Your Reading
18 Against Free Thinkers
19 Eventual Futures
20 Seen vs. Unseen Biases
21 Law as No-Bias Theatre
22 Benefit of Doubt = Bias
Part 2: Our Motives
Signaling
23 Decision Theory Remains Neglected
24 What Function Music?
25 Politics isn't about Policy
26 Views [...]
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Outline:
(00:07) Part 1: Our Thinking
(00:12) Near and Far
(00:37) Disagreement
(01:04) Biases
(01:28) Part 2: Our Motives
(01:33) Signaling
(02:01) Norms
(02:35) Fiction
(02:58) The Dreamtime
(03:19) Part 3: Our Institutions
(03:25) Prediction Markets
(03:48) Academia
(04:06) Medicine
(04:15) Paternalism
(04:29) Law
(05:21) Part 4: Our Past
(05:26) Farmers and Foragers
(05:55) History as Exponential Modes
(06:09) The Great Filter
(06:35) Part 5: Our Future
(06:39) Aliens
(07:01) UFOs
(07:22) The Age of Em
(07:44) Artificial Intelligence
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First published:
October 20th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JxsJdBnL2gG5oa2Li/overcoming-bias-anthology
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. -
Of all the cognitive tools our ancestors left us, what's best? Society seems to think pretty highly of arithmetic. It's one of the first things we learn as children. So I think it's weird that only a tiny percentage of people seem to know how to actually use arithmetic. Or maybe even understand what arithmetic is for. Why?
I think the problem is the idea that arithmetic is about âcalculatingâ. No! Arithmetic is a world-modeling technology. Arguably, it's the best world-modeling technology: It's simple, it's intuitive, and it applies to everything. It allows you to trespass into scientific domains where you donât belong. It even has an amazing error-catching mechanism built in.
One hundred years ago, maybe it was important to learn long division. But the point of long division was to enable you to do world-modeling. Computers donât make arithmetic obsolete. If anything, they do the opposite. Without [...]
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Outline:
(01:17) Chimps
(06:18) Big blocks
(09:34) More big blocks
The original text contained 5 images which were described by AI.
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First published:
October 17th, 2024
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/r2LojHBs3kriafZWi/arithmetic-is-an-underrated-world-modeling-technology
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Images from the article:
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