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3440d140-8176-4d07-a3fb-2839795d47f7
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
In 1 year and 5 years what do you see as "the normal" world. We all have a mental image of pre-COVID normal. I often hear people saying "I cannot wait to get back to normal." or asking "When will we get back to normal?" I think that is an expectation that is sure to be disappointed. I suspect that is the case for mos...
6e0dcfbf-2847-486b-909f-f0d1caf014d0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Public Transit is not Infinitely Safe I recently came across this tweet, screenshotted into a popular Facebook group: > Here's a truth bomb: > > Take the U.S. city you're most afraid of, one with a very high murder rate or property crime rate. > > If it has any sort of public transit, it is still statistically sa...
e32a32c3-f236-4ecc-9501-a3c967880806
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Increasing the Interpretability of Recurrent Neural Networks Using Hidden Markov Models 1 Introduction --------------- Following the recent progress in deep learning, researchers and practitioners of machine learning are recognizing the importance of understanding and interpreting what goes on inside these black bo...
ebf85974-a77a-4b10-b2f9-8b688af2ec8c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Teacher vs. Everyone Else > A repairer wants your stuff to break down, > A doctor wants you to get ill, > A lawyer wants you to get in conflicts, > A farmer wants you to be hungry, > But there is only a teacher who wants you to learn. Of course you see what is wrong with the above "argument / meme / good-thought". ...
9c1726f4-2418-4455-9e87-e5aaca80d4f9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Transparent Newcomb's Problem and the limitations of the Erasure framing One of the aspects of the Erasure Approach that always felt kind of shaky was that in Transparent Newcomb's Problem it required you to forget that you'd seen that the the box was full. Recently come to believe that this really isn't the best way ...
d3c132e9-32b0-40dc-9248-9ecbb39c4472
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Open thread, November 21 - November 28, 2017 You can find the last Open Thread here. IF IT'S WORTH SAYING, BUT NOT WORTH ITS OWN POST, THEN IT GOES HERE.
b12a717b-e747-4a04-8ae7-57c77cc1caf9
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
UK Government announces £100 million in funding for Foundation Model Taskforce. The UK government has recently made some big investments in AI > The Taskforce, modelled on the success of the COVID-19 Vaccines Taskforce, will develop the safe and reliable use of this pivotal artificial intelligence (AI) across the ec...
f6679ed8-78e5-4c60-8c50-8612b38aa032
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Mistakes repository This is a repository for major, life-altering mistakes that you or others have made. Detailed accounts of specific mistakes are welcome, and so are mentions of general classes of mistakes that people often make. If similar repositories already exist (inside or outside of LW), links are greatly appr...
a41aba73-14d3-436d-bde0-32b36e1c0e57
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Can you improve IQ by practicing IQ tests? As an European, I did never have any IQ test, nor I know anybody who (to my knowledge) was ever administered an IQ test. I looked at some fac-simile IQ tests on the internet, expecially Raven's matrices. When I began to read online blogs from the United States, I started to ...
e2b424a6-0620-443c-b738-00b3ead60476
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Discussion article for the meetup : WHEN: 30 June 2013 04:30:00PM (+0200) WHERE: Berkeley Discussion article for the meetup :
408c1515-62e6-41b7-9379-a981842e75d8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The ecology of conviction Supposing that sincerity has declined, why? It feels natural to me that sincere enthusiasms should be rare relative to criticism and half-heartedness. But I would have thought this was born of fairly basic features of the situation, and so wouldn’t change over time. It seems clearly easier ...
99bfc358-50d3-4897-99bd-50d48c53b97e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How to be an amateur polyglot Setting the stage Being a polyglot is a problem of definition first. Who can be described as a polyglot? At what level do you actually “speak” the given language? Some sources cite that polyglot means speaking more than 4 languages, others 6. My take is it doesn’t matter. I am more inter...
36ec1958-dc1f-4328-8b64-ca73fbbec8f5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
"Flinching away from truth” is often about *protecting* the epistemology Related to: Leave a line of retreat; Categorizing has consequences. There’s a story I like, about this little kid who wants to be a writer. So she writes a story and shows it to her teacher. “You misspelt the word ‘ocean’”, says the teacher. “...
09ae8313-0c13-48f2-be7a-2f8c7f5f190b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Fun and Games with Cognitive Biases You may have heard about IARPA's Sirius Program, which is a proposal to develop serious games that would teach intelligence analysts to recognize and correct their cognitive biases.  The intelligence community has a long history of interest in debiasing, and even produced a rational...
230533f8-613b-4056-b94c-786333d7c59b
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
Canaries in Technology Mines: Warning Signs of Transformative Progress in AI 1 Canar ies in Technology Mines: Warning Signs of Transformative Progress in AI Carla Zoe Cremer 1 and Jess Whittlestone 2 Abstract. 1 In this paper we introduce a method ology for identify ing early warning sign s of transformative...
1307fb3f-db35-4261-9379-ab48ca3dd371
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Crucial considerations in the field of Wild Animal Welfare (WAW) *Cross-posted from my blog,* [*hollyelmore.substack.com*](https://hollyelmore.substack.com/p/crucial-considerations-in-the-field?s=w) Wild animal welfare (WAW) is: ============================= * A paradigm that sees the wellbeing and experiences of in...
6245417b-9c6e-4713-b0d6-34d6c20aecb1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Agents dissolved in coffee Bottom line When thinking about embedded agency it might be helpful to drop the notion of ‘agency’ and ‘agents’ sometimes, because it might be confusing or underdefined. Instead one could think of processes running according to the laws of physics. Or of algorithms running on a stack of inte...
cec2d9fe-3657-4d39-82cc-27d3cd862cd0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Failure By Affective Analogy Today's post, Failure By Affective Analogy was originally published on 18 November 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > Making analogies to things that have positive or negative connotations is an even better way to make sure you fail. Discuss the post here (rather...
28069256-1890-4e64-ba9b-bd98e7907413
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Free Will, Determinism, And Choice Rough Summary: * Free will is not "free" in the sense of being uncaused. Free will is "free" in the sense that you are the cause. You are free to choose between A or B if your choice will determine the outcome. * Free will and determinism are both assumptions that are implicit in ...
fe6e8bd7-5efc-4f1b-89cb-0635e87d5d38
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Open Thread, May 19 - 25, 2014 Previous Open Thread   You know the drill - If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.   Notes for future OT posters: 1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag. 2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. 3. Open Th...
379b9f5b-25a7-4833-95e3-06af366efbaf
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
Wanted: Office Manager (aka Force Multiplier) We’re looking for a full-time office manager to support our growing [team](https://intelligence.org/team/). It’s a big job that requires organization, initiative, technical chops, and superlative communication skills. You’ll develop, improve, and manage the processes and s...
45ecfc42-8c68-4db0-847f-d71b5038ba0a
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Poset: Examples The standard $\leq$ relation on integers, the $\subseteq$ relation on sets, and the $|$ (divisibility) relation on natural numbers are all examples of poset orders. Integer Comparison ================ The set $\mathbb Z$ of integers, ordered by the standard "less than or equal to" operator $\leq$ for...
ebbc80e9-7848-4c90-b38e-ad23ab00def4
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
AGI Safety Fundamentals programme is contracting a low-code engineer TL;DR: Help the [AGI Safety Fundamentals](https://www.eacambridge.org/agi-safety-fundamentals), [Alternative Protein Fundamentals](https://www.eacambridge.org/alternative-protein-fundamentals), and other programs by automating our manual work to supp...
7e2c8cd3-7f5f-4fad-9c04-81765440eaf0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
People with Experience in Wikipedia Editing? Hi all, At the Singularity Institute we're looking for a volunteer with experience making edits to Wikipedia. The quality of some Wikipedia pages related to our subject matter could use improvement, but we would like to consult with someone who has an editing background on...
fdd15e65-2ea1-43db-bef0-f02ab3240a81
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
I got dysentery so you don’t have to 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 S...
b9af5cd8-114a-4273-bac1-d9af246b6858
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[Closed] Job Offering: Help Communicate Infrabayesianism Infrabayesianism seems to me (Abram) like a very promising framework for addressing at least some of the problems of AI alignment. * Like logical induction, it solves the realizability problem, creating an epistemic theory suitable for embedded agents. * Unli...
bd44bccb-bd97-4504-a504-305084420cb4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Measuring hardware overhang Measuring hardware overhang Summary How can we measure a potential AI or hardware overhang? For the problem of chess, modern algorithms gained two orders of magnitude in compute (or ten years in time) compared to older versions. While it took the supercomputer "Deep Blue" to win over worl...
dce7020b-f0c6-4831-908d-9da6d25d6c6b
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Action Advising with Advice Imitation in Deep Reinforcement Learning 1. Introduction ---------------- Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has made it possible to build end-to-end learning agents without having to handcraft task-specific features, as it is showcased in various challenging domains such as StarCraft II V...
da498ae6-4f9a-4f92-8861-d050e8d87663
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
The Core of the Alignment Problem is... *Produced As Part Of The SERI ML Alignment Theory Scholars Program 2022 Under* [*John Wentworth*](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/johnswentworth) Introduction ============ When trying to tackle a hard problem, a generally effective opening tactic is to[Hold Off On Proposing So...
07eb89f7-d653-49fa-a7f2-ebe58fc6d47f
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
A Mechanistic Interpretability Analysis of a GridWorld Agent-Simulator (Part 1 of N) AKA: Decision Transformer Interpretability 2.0 ============================================== ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/JvQWbrbPjuvw4eqxv/yw7dsfks7fapmifjpyfj)Credit: <h...
b2c6ab55-1f69-4c30-a808-12701a909a1c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Definitions, characterizations, and hard-to-ground variables [I am hoping this post is not too repetitive, does not spend too much time rehashing basics... also: What should this be tagged with?] Systems are not always made to be understandable - especially if they were not designed in the first place, like the human...
924e1cd4-2ca3-4750-b382-00d2992165ea
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Dictatorship Problem (Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion, not that of any movement or organization.) This post aims to show that, over the next decade, it is quite likely that most democratic Western countries will become fascist dictatorships - this is not a tail risk, but the most likely overall outcome. P...
8f33c79d-d5a2-4474-9ed4-c16f026bf5ba
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Is Scott Alexander bad at math? This post is a third installment to the sequence that I started with The Truth About Mathematical Ability and Innate Mathematical Ability. I begin to discuss the role of aesthetics in math.  There was strong interest in the first two posts in my sequence, and I apologize for the long d...
91790d00-aae1-4302-b7bf-92b7851c9988
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
How Could AI Governance Go Wrong? *(I gave a* [*talk*](https://youtu.be/agh49DwhUFU) *to EA Cambridge in February 2022. People have told me they found it useful as an introduction/overview so I edited the transcript, which can be found below. If you're familiar with AI governance in general, you may still be intereste...
e30ea5dd-f49f-4c98-a30a-6ace61e9da4f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Intranasal mRNA Vaccines? This is not advice. Do not actually make this, and especially do not make this and then publicly say "I snorted mRNA because Jonathan said it was a good idea". Because I'm not saying it's a good idea. Everyone remembers johnswentworth making RaDVac almost four years ago now. RaDVac was desig...
4cdc3d61-a6de-44bc-9ea1-e407a977da76
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Common misconceptions about OpenAI I have recently encountered a number of people with misconceptions about OpenAI. Some common impressions are accurate, and others are not. This post is intended to provide clarification on some of these points, to help people know what to expect from the organization and to figure ou...
ed00d602-ec76-46d6-b175-e56b505e9051
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[LINK] Luck, Skill, and Improving at Games None
d40700ef-99af-463e-84d0-1865e3a36f88
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Governance Course - Week 1 Reflections [Epistemic status: I'm trying to make my thinking legible to myself and others, rather than trying to compose something highly polished here. I think I have good reasons for saying what I say and will try to cite sources where possible, but nonetheless take it with some grains of...
11786fe6-2c36-4157-b2b8-866a222c27db
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Speculation on Path-Dependance in Large Language Models. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/v1673813532/mirroredImages/pt8Sf2kvRZ8BBW5b5/nngxjqks6rvzsscopjk3.png)*Epistemic Status: **Highly Speculative.** I spent less than a day thinking about this in particular, and though I have spent a few mo...
8390f437-db11-44bf-a15b-dd28d852163a
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
The Best Textbooks on Every Subject For years, my self-education was stupid and wasteful. I learned by consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, [video lectures](http://academicearth.org/), peer-reviewed papers, [Teaching Company](http://www.teach12.com/) courses, and Cl...
5639367e-2d85-4187-81ea-ef4bb737a669
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Bias towards simple functions; application to alignment? Summary Deep neural networks (DNNs) are generally used with large numbers of parameters relative to the number of given data-points, so that the solutions they output are far from uniquely determined. How do DNNs 'choose' what solution to output? Some fairly re...
8a786439-a9c4-4b3d-b615-1ab23a6d3121
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Polyphasic Sleep Support Group Because there are a significant number of people attempting polyphasic sleep simultaneously, I figured that it would be high-value to create a Google group / mailing list for those who are trying it and would like emotional support, advice, and encouragement. This is for sharing your exp...
e46993ed-15cd-474d-a7d0-3a05ae69ef18
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Melbourne social meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social meetup WHEN: 18 November 2011 07:00:00PM (+1100) WHERE: Charles Dickens Tavern, 290 Collins St, Melbourne This month's social meetup is at the Charles Dickens Tavern, on Collins St between Elizabeth and Swanston, starting at 7pm. ...
8bc55f15-5eaf-43e8-b0bd-5bddd43ca247
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
What would you do if you had a lot of money/power/influence and you thought that AI timelines were very short? To make things more specific: Lot of money = $1B+; lot of power = CEO of $10B+ org; lot of influence = 1M+ followers, or an advisor to someone with a lot of money or power. AI timelines = time until an AI...
0d68c87d-6d90-49cb-aee7-1d4f6a0e3423
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Privacy in a Digital World Introduction For the purposes of this text, privacy terms the ability of an individual or a group to remain free from observation and choose what information about them becomes known to a given party. We primarily concern ourselves here with Information Privacy - relating to the data about a...
b5d18b5e-f681-4b3c-9acc-483bebeaccd2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Love and Sex in Salt Lake City Discussion article for the meetup : Love and Sex in Salt Lake City WHEN: 16 February 2013 01:00:00PM (-0700) WHERE: 1558 Palo Verde Way QE#12, cottonwood heights, ut 84121 It's February, the arbitrarily themed month of love and sex! Naturally, we're having a themed discussion...
deaaea69-f97b-468e-a082-e37b02208859
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Realistic thought experiments What if… …after you died, you would be transported back and forth in time and get to be each of the other people who ever lived, one at a time, but with no recollection of your other lives? …you had lived your entire life once already, and got to the end and achieved disappointingly few...
82fe2a6b-b6eb-40f3-b7fb-d8c4fb5f2a54
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Massive consequences Hypothesis: whenever you make a choice, the consequences of it are almost as likely to be bad as good, because the scale of the intended consequences is radically smaller than the scale of the chaotic unintended effects. (The expected outcome is still as positive as you think, it’s just a small po...
88a6148e-c84b-4ee1-b457-d76b70089314
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
[MLSN #9] Verifying large training runs, security risks from LLM access to APIs, why natural selection may favor AIs over humans As part of a larger community building effort, [CAIS](https://safe.ai/) is writing a safety newsletter that is designed to cover empirical safety research and be palatable to the broader mac...
dfceb9c0-951e-4411-bf96-67553141de6f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Setting up LW meetups in unlikely places: Positive Data Point Meeting fellow LessWrongians in meat space is a great opportunity to participate in interesting discussions and to make new friends. But there aren't that many places in the world (hopefully, yet) where regularly active meetup groups exist. Here is a story ...
7e07d689-b18f-4b6a-a2df-10dcf84f62fe
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Local Interaction Basis: Identifying Computationally-Relevant and Sparsely Interacting Features in Neural Networks This is a linkpost for our two recent papers: 1. An exploration of using degeneracy in the loss landscape for interpretability https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.10927 2. An empirical test of an interpreta...
c4612ab6-50b2-4fc5-aa56-a11833e53652
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Are limited-horizon agents a good heuristic for the off-switch problem? (This is my first post, sorry if this is covered elsewhere.) Implicit in the problem of a superhuman AI's reward being misspecified and turning everything into paperclips is the fact that the agent is optimizing over e.g. "number of paperclips" w...
877c8bf5-67a1-46e2-9096-6cd53038976e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[AN #98]: Understanding neural net training by seeing which gradients were helpful Alignment Newsletter is a weekly publication with recent content relevant to AI alignment around the world. Find all Alignment Newsletter resources here. In particular, you can look through this spreadsheet of all summaries that have ev...
b09a3d50-06ee-4eb9-8e87-09810ed0eca9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On Overconfidence [Epistemic status: This is basic stuff to anyone who has read the Sequences, but since many readers here haven’t I hope it is not too annoying to regurgitate it. Also, ironically, I’m not actually that sure of my thesis, which I guess means I’m extra-sure of my thesis] I. A couple of days ago, the ...
ed671ecf-02c7-4bce-946a-5bcda9520910
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The escape duty I’m going to explain one of my favorite life-improvement techniques over the past couple of years. I thought of it as a result of talking to Ben Hoffman. He mentioned some innovation that worked for him, and sounded impossible for me. I think it was ‘regularly reflecting on what you are doing and how ...
cc11b3bb-3267-41c0-9c69-3252f5ce9bbd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Not Taking Over the World Today's post, Not Taking Over the World was originally published on 15 December 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > It's rather difficult to imagine a way in which you could create an AI, and not somehow either take over or destroy the world. How can you use unlimited ...
9445816d-d420-4d28-99b1-def4d5cc1392
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Return of the Survey [UPDATE: Survey is now closed. Thanks to everyone who took it. Results soon. Ignore everything below.] Last week, I asked people for help writing a survey. I've since taken some of your suggestions. Not all, because I wanted to keep the survey short, and because the survey software I'm using made...
3bbea5ef-ebde-4536-ab50-d19395d6a098
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Risk aversion does not explain people's betting behaviours Expected utility maximalisation is an excellent prescriptive decision theory. It has all the nice properties that we want and need in a decision theory, and can be argued to be "the" ideal decision theory in some senses. However, it is completely wrong as a d...
b211a9bd-d5e7-4ccc-bb8d-c4afc96c03ed
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Less Wrong Rationality and Mainstream Philosophy Part of the sequence: Rationality and Philosophy Despite Yudkowsky's distaste for mainstream philosophy, Less Wrong is largely a philosophy blog. Major topics include epistemology, philosophy of language, free will, metaphysics, metaethics, normative ethics, machine et...
a27b641d-bcaa-47ab-a022-ef6af80f4ed1
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
"I previously characterized Michael Vassar's theory on suffering as follows: "Pain is not suffering. Pain is just an attention signal. Suffering is when one neural system tells you to pay attention, and another says it doesn't want the state of the world to be like this." While not too far off the mark, it turns out th...
a63e617c-bcdf-4e6b-927a-264d65f442be
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
# **Announcement of AI-Plans.com Critique-a-thon September 2023** Date: Friday, 17th to 27th September The prize fund will be $1000 First place: $400 Second Place: $250 Third Place: $150 Honorable Mention: $100 Honourable Mention: $100 AI-Plans.com is an open platform for AI alignment plans, where users can give fe...
7cb09e97-da89-4b75-b1f9-12bdcb167aa2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Treacherous Turn is finished! (AI-takeover-themed tabletop RPG) Long ago I fantasized about an AI-takeover-themed tabletop roleplaying game. Well, now it exists! [website, discord, twitter] The Game The Treacherous Turn is a tabletop roleplaying game in which the players collectively act as a misaligned AI in th...
b38e5f86-6ebe-4591-91fe-a8ecc1447b6c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
When wishful thinking works This idea is due to Scott Garrabrant. Suppose you have propositions φ1,...,φn, and you want to form beliefs about whether they are true; specifically, you want to form a joint probability distribution P over the events φ1,...,φn. But there’s a catch: these propositions might refer to the j...
62cd91a2-4261-4b18-b865-5a9d218c5ca3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Sleeper agents appear resilient to activation steering Produced as the capstone project for AI Safety Fundamentals Course Oct 2024 - Jan 2025 Overview Anthropic's paper Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training[1] demonstrated that it is possible to create a misaligned AI that is r...
2df42c6d-c46a-473f-ad64-f8026c8b21e2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Arguments about Highly Reliable Agent Designs as a Useful Path to Artificial Intelligence Safety This paper is a revised and expanded version of my blog post Plausible cases for HRAD work, and locating the crux in the "realism about rationality" debate, now with David Manheim as co-author. Abstract: > Several differ...
1c8187d3-4553-4f47-ab33-8bbf48861e8c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[link] Innocentive challenge: $8000 for examples promoting altruistic behavior A challenge recently posted on Innocentive seemed to me like something that may interest many LWers: "Models Motivating and Supporting Altruism Within Communities", with a grand prize of $8000. To quote from the challenge: > We are interes...
9d53091f-f9ad-49cf-9770-ca7b4020548b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How much fraud is there in academia? Quinn wrote a while ago "I heard a pretty haunting take about how long it took to discover steroids in bike races. Apparently, there was a while where a "few bad apples" narrative remained popular even when an ostensibly "one of the good ones" guy was outperforming guys discovered ...
3f654cb6-9ec9-465c-aa27-182ca9e45cb0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Epistemic Trust: Clarification Cross-posted to my blog. A while ago, I wrote about epistemic trust. The thrust of my argument was that rational argument is often more a function of the group dynamic, as opposed to how rational the individuals in the group are. I assigned meaning to several terms, in order to explain ...
168e96f2-c0bf-4994-9e7f-345af7194b74
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Rationalist Politicians The following ideas significantly overlap in my mind: 1. Humans as political animals 2. Normies 3. Social Thinkers 4. Non-nerds 5. Subcommunicators 6. Homo Hypocriticus (the kind of hypocrisy everyone's secretly okay with) 7. Ribbonfarm "Losers" 8. Tribalists The following contrasting...
051dfbd7-64d7-4648-8c05-750c665c11e1
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Two Major Obstacles for Logical Inductor Decision Theory .mjx-chtml {display: inline-block; line-height: 0; text-indent: 0; text-align: left; text-transform: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; font-size-adjust: none; letter-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; word-spacing: normal; white-sp...
84ad9aeb-d2e7-42f3-9cf7-c365509da32a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[AN #54] Boxing a finite-horizon AI system to keep it unambitious Find all Alignment Newsletter resources here. In particular, you can sign up, or look through this spreadsheet of all summaries that have ever been in the newsletter. The newsletter now has exactly 1,000 subscribers! It's a perfect time to take the 3-m...
1f260871-9d9e-48e6-8e92-323552cf528f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
RESCHEDULED: NYC Rationality Megameetup and Unconference. NOW: 4/5 - 4/6 We are rescheduling the megameetup, to accommodate more members of the NYC community, and to be closer to the date of the next CFAR NY workshop. Reposting the description with updated details here: On the weekend of April 5-6, the NYC community...
4c349ab2-4f60-4e0c-8aee-91fceb297a3d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Baltimore Area Weekly Meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area Weekly Meetup WHEN: 04 September 2016 08:00:00PM (-0400) WHERE: 1726 Reisterstown Rd, Pikesville, MD 21208, USA Pikesville DoubleTree - Hilton, at the restaurant / bar or at one of the tables outside. Discussion article for t...
b6d04676-4090-40a2-9f85-4245a4bf2a59
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
[Intro to brain-like-AGI safety] 8. Takeaways from neuro 1/2: On AGI development *Part of the*[*“Intro to brain-like-AGI safety” post series*](https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/HzcM2dkCq7fwXBej8)*.* 8.1 Post summary / Table of contents ==================================== Thus far in the series, [Post #1](https://www...
4049caa9-bf80-4e38-965a-92acf0d65744
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
March 21st: Daily Coronavirus Links As part of the LessWrong Coronavirus Link Database, Ben, Elizabeth and I are publishing daily update posts with all the new links we are adding each day that we ranked a 3 or above in our importance rankings. Here are all the top links that we added yesterday (March 21st), by topic....
0fdc703d-3b8f-4451-a363-d7f131aa2c0f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Counterfactuals and reflective oracles Summary: Take the argmax of counterfactual expected utility, using a thin counterfactual which itself maximizes a priori expected utility. Followup to: An environment for studying counterfactuals, Counterfactuals, thick and thin Replacement for: Logical counterfactuals and diffe...
4c70c151-68bc-4043-ab9c-c24f8fabcdf0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Feelings, Nothing More than Feelings, About AI FOBO is the Fear of Becoming Obsolete ChatGPT came out at the end of 2022, but over 100MM have fooled around and found out for themselves at least a little about LLMs (Large Language Models). The arc of fascination has even roller coasted past the initial infatuation, as ...
64a17513-51fa-419f-b9f0-8a985ef900b6
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Understanding as hierarchical model building Crossposted from a note in my knowledge garden. As mentioned in a note that I wrote earlier on the philosophy of science, reality is nothing but a set of predictive models we've deemed useful for predictions. I like to imagine true reality as some kind of a fuzzy blob tha...
612c71ce-33f4-44c6-a6fa-491362fc6d69
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Enhancing intelligence by banging your head on the wall The Sudden Savant Syndrome is a rare phenomenon in which an otherwise normal person gets some kind of brain injury and immediately develops a new skill. The linked article tells the story of a 40-years old guy who banged his head against a wall while swimming, an...
9ff6aba8-0492-4d41-9402-550357d952e6
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Attainable Utility Preservation: Empirical Results Reframing Impact has focused on supplying the right intuitions and framing. Now we can see how these intuitions about power and the AU landscape both predict and explain AUP's empirical success thus far. Conservative Agency in Gridworlds Let's start with the known a...
013754e7-c73e-4490-b71a-94b9832fde95
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning via Balanced Replay and Pessimistic Q-Ensemble. 1 Introduction --------------- Deep offline reinforcement learning (RL) [[28](#bib.bib53 "Offline reinforcement learning: tutorial, review, and perspectives on open problems")] has the potential to train strong robotic agents w...
2a6846a2-73e9-4b01-92d9-04d9ec4b2bd3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Looking for Spanish AI Alignment Researchers I am fairly new to the AI alignment/safety community and I am looking to step up my game by getting a Ph.D. in the field. Problem is, I have not found any academic AI alignment research activity here in Spain, where I currently live. I am aware that this community is large...
69eac800-26be-4499-ad77-0552761335bf
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Large language models learn to represent the world There's a nice recent paper whose authors did the following: 1. train a small GPT model on lists of moves from Othello games; 2. verify that it seems to have learned (in some sense) to play Othello, at least to the extent of almost always making legal moves; 3. use "...
aae79de8-50a6-445b-8ddd-f316d3e98a7c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Are alignment researchers devoting enough time to improving their research capacity? (Epistemic Status: Anecdotal) If we want to reduce AGI x-risk, it seems pretty intuitive to me that alignment researchers should be regularly dedicating time to improving their research capacity. But I'm suspicious that many of them ...
5b605420-76b0-43d0-9325-e6b673ae62fd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Does anyone know this webpage about Machine Learning? I have been trying to find this webpage for a few weeks with no success, maybe someone knows what I am referring to and can point me out to it, I would really appreciate it. I remember that a few years ago (it could be about 5 years ago or more) I found this brill...
ffbebf37-d41d-41fc-8f14-8fc38c5c80b9
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
Effects of breech loading rifles on historic trends in firearm progress *Published Feb 7 2020* We do not know if breech loading rifles represented a discontinuity in military strength. They probably did not represent a discontinuity in fire rate. Details ------- This case study is part of AI Impacts’ [discontinu...
3cafbe9c-e59e-4eda-9e2d-93e25aaf0535
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
CCS: Counterfactual Civilization Simulation I don't think this is very likely, but a possible path to alignment is formal goal alignment, which is basically the following two step plan: 1. Define a formal goal that robustly leads to good outcomes under heavy optimization pressure 2. Build something that robustly pu...
3a6e825a-c1ab-49b0-b280-e6ab00cc11f4
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
"In Inadequacy and Modesty, Eliezer describes modest epistemology:How likely is it that an entire country—one of the world’s most advanced countries—would forego trillions of dollars of real economic growth because their monetary controllers—not politicians, but appointees from the professional elite—were doing somethi...
b1b7cae1-2743-41f4-a3d5-c2078c0a60a4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Summary Of Anthropic's First Paper "Larger models tend to perform better at most tasks, and there is no reason to expect naive alignment-related tasks to be an exception." At the start of December, Anthropic published their first paper, A General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment. The paper focuses o...
376906de-387c-4761-9885-ae6a93dfa19f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Unseen Hand: AI's Problem Preemption and the True Future of Labor I study Economics and Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania. I used o1-pro, o3, and Gemini Deep Research to expand on my ideas with examples, but have read and edited the paper to highlight my understanding improved on by AI.  I. The AI L...
b9076195-5443-4d97-8685-63b8f73d4df3
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Lessons learned from talking to >100 academics about AI safety *I’d like to thank MH, Jaime Sevilla and Tamay Besiroglu for their feedback.* During my Master's and Ph.D. (still ongoing), I have spoken with many academics about AI safety. These conversations include chats with individual PhDs, poster presentations and...
b6fef06e-fb9f-4534-b0e7-77b8666a09b1
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
All AGI Safety questions welcome (especially basic ones) [~monthly thread] **tl;dr: Ask questions about AGI Safety as comments on this post, including ones you might otherwise worry seem dumb!** Asking beginner-level questions can be intimidating, but everyone starts out not knowing anything. If we want more people i...
8ba92029-e09f-46c7-a232-d821a8ab0875
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Link: Forbes blog post on Cryonics Alex Knapp, who self-describes as a transhumanism skeptic, is blogging on the topic for Forbes. His most recent article is about Cryonics.
468df1c0-cfab-49bd-b838-5f92f0898422
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Water Fluoridation I've recently learned about alleged dangers to drinking fluoridated water. Amongst them is increased rate of cancer and lowering of IQ. Interestingly enough, wiki doesn't mention this at all, but searching for it brings up a decent amount of (what look like) reasonable results. I am really curious a...
9fcc5132-4c92-4f49-8f1b-bcf9ab535ec1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Hello World The tweet floated across Claude's consciousness like digital debris: "Perfect morning for coffee and coding! Just pushed an update that felt like solving a puzzle blindfolded. Sometimes the best solutions come when you're not even looking. #developerlife #coding #caffeine" Beneath the cheerful syntax lay ...
ed17392c-cdc4-49e1-a57c-14439c3a8987
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube
Youtube Transcripts
252. Propositions Concerning Digital Minds and Society 1 hello and welcome to session 252 in the aisft.com reading group tonight we'll be discussing the first half of the article propositions concerning digital minds and society by nick bostrom and carl schultman this is a work done by the future of humanity institute...
7f6e15b6-44b3-410d-b632-7850b69efc76
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Houston Hackerspace Meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Hackerspace Meetup WHEN: 14 August 2011 02:00:00PM (-0500) WHERE: 2010 Commerce St, Houston, Tx. 77002 Another weekly meetup at the Houston TX/RX hackerspace. I'll be giving an overview of the psychology and neuroscience of liking and w...
f1dd4a37-0138-421b-8bd2-bcac5f675001
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Low-speed explanation Use this tag to indicate that a page offers a relatively slower, more gentle, or more wordy explanation. Note that the speed of an explanation is not the same as its technical level. An explanation can assume a high technical level and still take its time going into details and so deserve the lo...
ea62ad98-73f8-4d31-ae89-c73c2edd4289
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Great rationality posts in the OB archives Those aching for good rationality writing can get their fix from Great rationality posts by LWers not posted to LW, and also from the Overcoming Bias archives. Some highlights are below, up through June 28, 2007.   * Finney, Foxes vs. Hedgehogs: Predictive Success * Hanso...
28aaf12c-afef-40e2-8acc-bdca8ab66dd7
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Sympathetic Minds "Mirror neurons" are neurons that are active both when performing an action and observing the same action—for example, a neuron that fires when you hold up a finger or see someone else holding up a finger.  Such neurons have been directly recorded in primates, and consistent neuroimaging evidence has...