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df1db045-7149-441a-b0be-9af948750912 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Discussion with Eliezer Yudkowsky on AGI interventions
Thefollowing is a partially redacted and lightly edited transcript of a chat conversation about AGI between Eliezer Yudkowsky and a set of invitees in early September 2021. By default, all other participants are anonymized as "Anonymous".
I think this Nate Soares... |
15ed29b7-b909-4b65-8dec-67ee065f3ae7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How should we model complex systems?
By "complex", I mean a system for which it would be too computationally costly to model it from first principles e.g. the economy, the climate (my field, by the way). Suppose our goal is to predict a system's future behaviour with minimum possible error given by some metric (e.g. m... |
59d0889c-fd16-426c-baf6-c2acea2d32c0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Softmax, Emmett Shear's new AI startup focused on "Organic Alignment"
> A new AI alignment player has entered the arena.
>
> Emmett Shear, Adam Goldstein and David Bloomin have set up shop in San Francisco with a 10-person start-up called Softmax. The company is part research lab and part aspiring money maker and aim... |
3f348e52-adaf-4b27-9b44-b562bb62c67b | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Inside the Mind of an Aspiring Charity Entrepreneur [Follow Along] #1 - From Layoff to Co-founding in a Breathtaking Two Months
TL;DR
-----
I want to extend a MASSIVE, heartfelt thank you to the abundant resources put together by the EA community and the wonderful EAs who are so generous with their knowledge and time... |
46ae2b59-919f-4455-8a95-9077fc5beb8e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | To MIRI-style folk, you can't simulate the universe from the beginning
To those whose formalisms still depend on simulating the universe from the beginning (those who don't, ignore this post, I'm not trying to correct connectionism here):
It doesn't matter how smart a being is; Even temporarily assuming superdetermin... |
59c45654-9b70-4443-a185-97fd39df4c3b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Progress links and tweets, 2023-03-01
The Progress Forum
* Anton Howes on what the Dutch did better than the English
* AMA with Gale Pooley & Marian Tupy, authors of Superabundance
* Ben Reinhardt AMA has concluded
Opportunities
* Lex Fridman wants to meet people, fill out this form to get coffee with him
* Ess... |
9b4505f3-f8f8-4707-8dc3-79b4351d1774 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Advice on Pursuing Technical AI Safety Research
1. Introduction
===============
This post is a collection of tips and tricks for pursuing work in technical AI Safety (gathered by chatting with numerous Alignment researchers). **A huge thanks to** [**Richard Ngo**](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/richard_ngo... |
91238695-05d4-4f09-bfc7-e81e30525cde | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Agency, LLMs and AI Safety - A First Pass
The following is an adaptation of part of my (unsuccessful) application to the Winter 2022 cohort of SERI MATS, as prompted by Victoria Krakovna's "What is your favorite definition of agency, and how would you apply it to a language model?"
This is far from a perfect treatmen... |
09b8bbba-196f-4f87-89dc-e967d2a9f752 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | February 2019 Newsletter
#### Updates
* Ramana Kumar and Scott Garrabrant argue that the AGI safety community should begin prioritizing “[approaches that work well in the absence of human models](https://intelligence.org/2019/02/22/thoughts-on-human-models/)”:
> [T]o the extent that human modelling is a good id... |
97f6136e-2693-4f78-98ac-f2699d64d95f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | If giving unsolicited feedback was a social norm, what feedback would you often give?
None |
b89d504c-3ac4-46b0-9846-0d6d459c79fa | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | My checklist for publishing a blog post
Introduction
Checklists are good. I don’t use checklists much for my job though. (My to-do list is stylistically a kanban, not a checklist—details here & here.)
But I have one exception: My checklist for publishing blog posts (an activity that I’ve been doing with some regulari... |
d01fd7f1-89bc-41f2-825a-cae72914ddf2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why don't you introduce really impressive people you personally know to AI alignment (more often)?
I have a few questions to the subset of readers who:
1. Believe technical AI alignment research is both important and hard to make significant progress in
2. Have a personal connection with a person who doesn't know m... |
65698bc5-f953-434f-b3f3-cdfa22e3dea6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | How easy is it to supervise processes vs outcomes?
A lot of AI risk models rely on the fact that we supervise outcomes like consequentialists rather than processes like CAIS.
But, how easy is it to supervise processes for AI, compared to outcomes both in:
Near term: 10 years.
Long-term: 50 years.
Crucially, is... |
eaae6965-d07f-4414-91bc-71a4ff71710c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Toward Safety Case Inspired Basic Research
Abstract
AI safety is a young science. In its early history, deep and speculative questions regarding the risks of artificial superintelligence attracted the attention of basic science and philosophy, but the near-horizon focus of industry and governance, coupled with shorter... |
4ace7d32-c016-401d-883b-99d424a57ed5 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values
[]
This e-book contains some places that ask the reader to fill in questions or comments. Please keep pen and paper handy as you read this e-book so that you can complete the exercises within.
For Peter
who convinced me
And for everyone
doing the work
I r... |
6712755d-b810-4d65-957b-4e21230bb8ec | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Princeton University- Envision Conference App Due Sunday!
Envision Conference applications due Sunday!
Interested in technology? Want to interact with a diverse group of talented students, academics and entrepreneurs? Then Envision Conference is for you! Apply today at http://envisionfuture.org
The 3rd annual Envisi... |
3a641975-afe1-4289-8a05-e5f19476c1d6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Create a Full Alternative Stack
Last time I proposed nine strategies for fighting mazes. All of them were either systemic solutions requiring coordinated and/or political action, or cultural shifts that happen one person at a time.
Now for the tenth and final proposal for how to fight mazes. The tenth is a proposed s... |
11c648df-b29a-475f-a29d-84936fbd817e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | PaLM-2 & GPT-4 in "Extrapolating GPT-N performance"
Two and a half years ago, I wrote [Extrapolating GPT-N performance](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k2SNji3jXaLGhBeYP/extrapolating-gpt-n-performance), trying to predict how fast scaled-up models would improve on a few benchmarks. One year ago, I [added PaLM to the g... |
42e4d436-28b3-49b0-af80-175612b134e9 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | What if we approach AI safety like a technical engineering safety problem
*This post has been written for the second*[*Refine*](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/5uiQkyKdejX3aEHLM/how-to-diversify-conceptual-alignment-the-model-behind) *blog post day, at the end of the first week of iterating on ideas and concretel... |
2c4a247c-e238-4bca-9f20-01ba4816fc84 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Make-A-Video by Meta AI
Meta AI (Facebook) created a text-to-video model by taking a diffusion text-to-image model, adding temporal convolutional and attention layers, and fine-tuning it with video data (without text). They also use spatial and temporal super-resolution networks. Showing, to the surprise of no one who... |
b96671a8-fd24-4c8f-9454-e2d6bf414d2e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Causal Scrubbing: a method for rigorously testing interpretability hypotheses [Redwood Research]
* Authors sorted alphabetically.
Summary: This post introduces causal scrubbing, a principled approach for evaluating the quality of mechanistic interpretations. The key idea behind causal scrubbing is to test interpreta... |
ae0b37e7-6bfe-48b6-9767-817af26c707f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Helsinki meetup Fri 5.8 18:00-
Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki meetup Fri 5.8 18:00-
WHEN: 05 August 2011 06:00:00PM (+0300)
WHERE: Yliopistonkatu 5, Helsinki, Finland
Third Helsinki meetup. Venue is Café Picnic at Yliopistonkatu 5. Time is 18:00 onwards. ~5 confirmed attendees at the time of ... |
787e29ea-9b8b-4d71-bf1a-e0bc2dcc8ed7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Finding Useful Things
There is a very important problem that seems to have no real solution. How do you find useful things that you don't yet know about? This is sort of the problem of unknown unknowns, but not quite. That is only the first part. Once you have learned of the existence of a potentially useful thing, it... |
c86ab31f-913c-4bf6-8ad8-b1c73d703ab2 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Mauhn Releases AI Safety Documentation
Mauhn is a company doing research in AGI with a capped profit structure and an ethics board (represented by people from outside the company). Whereas there is a significant amount of AI/AGI safety research, there is still a gap of how to put this into practice for organizations d... |
12c0d4a5-9432-4d75-840b-4b57379488eb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Probabilistic Oracle Machines and Nash Equilibria
Read the paper draft here.
I'm working on a a paper with Benja introducing probabilistic oracle machines and showing how they are equivalent with Nash equilibria, as I initially argued in a comment. This variant of the reflective oracles was originally suggested in Pa... |
96cb535e-99d1-426e-ab0c-a6786c77cebb | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Differential technology development: preprint on the concept
**Summary**
We have published a [preprint](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4213670) of a paper describing the concept of differential technology development and exploring when and how its implementation may be viable. This manuscript has... |
bb050e27-9f02-4953-a947-2245cad9cbba | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Impact of " 'Let's think step by step' is all you need"?
Title from: https://twitter.com/arankomatsuzaki/status/1529278581884432385.
This is not quite a linkpost for this paper.
Nonetheless, the abstract is:
> Pretrained large language models (LLMs) are widely used in many sub-fields of natural language processing ... |
6442872e-85d4-47c7-b8fa-fa9e106339b8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Common vs Expert Jargon
tldr: Jargon always has a complexity cost, but you can put effort into making a concept more accessible, and it's especially valuable to put that effort in for terms that you'd like to be used by layfolk, or that you expect to be used a lot in spaces where you expect lots of layfolk to be read... |
42a42bce-c699-4259-b333-9cf06868230f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | King and Princess
Sometimes Lily tells me that she is a princess and wants me to be the king. We'll sit together, me on the throne and her at my side, and we'll hear cases from our people. An imaginary petitioner describes the situation to me, and I relay it to Lily. We consult about the situation, consider the circum... |
59d5c918-d324-4f0f-bf2f-1ea191f48d58 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | A Problem About Bargaining and Logical Uncertainty
Suppose you wake up as a paperclip maximizer. Omega says "I calculated the millionth digit of pi, and it's odd. If it had been even, I would have made the universe capable of producing either 1020 paperclips or 1010 staples, and given control of it to a staples maximi... |
7e2138b1-c2ae-4a4c-acb5-e1a7d75d4cd9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Under-acknowledged Value Differences
I've been reading a lot of the recent LW discussions on politics and gender, and noticed that people rarely bring up or explicitly acknowledge that different people affected by some political or gender issue have different values/preferences, and therefore solving the problem invol... |
f49c5322-88f9-4ef2-a0bd-b5faa4e79954 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [META] ajax.googleapis.com
Apparently, by not unblocking scripts for "ajax.googleapis.com", I am unable to vote on LW. I generally dislike enabling scripting for domains that are used in many places -- unblocking Google APIs would unblock it everywhere, not just here -- so the result is that I am no longer voting. I s... |
484264d5-1cdd-4f53-8533-9608694845bd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Hand-writing MathML
When I write posts I use raw HTML. Yes, the modern thing to do is probably Markdown, but HTML was designed for hand-coding and still works well for that if you don't want anything especially fancy. But what if you want math?
Previously when I've wanted to do math I've written it out as fixed-width... |
4b257572-6954-4c5f-b51c-99693cfbd2ea | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "Central theme in: Immoral Mazes Sequence, but this generalizes. When looking to succeed, pain is not the unit of effort, and money is a, if not the, unit of caring. One is not always looking to succeed. Here is a common type of problem. You are married, and want to take your spouse out to a romantic dinner. You can ch... |
17404cc4-f947-4869-9d1e-ae0818cc25eb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Jaynes-Cox Probability: Are plausibilities objective?
Is the objectivity of plausibility assignments assumed in the Jaynes-Cox formulation of probability theory?
This is what I mean by “the objectivity of plausibility assignments”:
A and B are propositions. (A|B) is the plausibility of A given that B is true and is ... |
6dbb92e9-11cb-44e4-aea3-272fcc086e14 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Visualise your own probability of an AI catastrophe: an interactive Sankey plot
I wanted to help people learning about AI visualise their own probabilities of things going wrong. This Shiny app defaults to using the probabilities from Carlsmith's (2022) report from Open Philanthropy. You can enter your own probabiliti... |
f89a5155-92e1-4c7f-9bae-165b5f74668a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are Intelligence and Generality Orthogonal?
A common presupposition seems to be that intelligent systems can be classified on two axes:
* Intelligence (low to high)
* Generality (narrow to general)
For example, AlphaGo is presumably fairly intelligent, but quite narrow, while humans are both quite intelligent and... |
b342ee47-9064-4a23-9f32-b360bdf24366 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Movie posters
Life involves anticipations. Hopes, dreads, lookings forward.
Looking forward and hoping seem pretty nice, but people are often wary of them, because hoping and then having your hopes fold can be miserable to the point of offsetting the original hope’s sweetness.
Even with very minor hopes: he who has ... |
5585fd5a-0329-4b98-bc55-dcdc2aa651e4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Trying to measure AI deception capabilities using temporary simulation fine-tuning
Rationale
It is hard to ensure that a powerful AI model gives good answers just because it believes these answers are true. Deceptive models could give the expected answers for whatever instrumental reasons. And sycophants may be tellin... |
fc4a3c95-159a-48b9-af5c-49818e526afc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AXRP Episode 25 - Cooperative AI with Caspar Oesterheld
YouTube link
Imagine a world where there are many powerful AI systems, working at cross purposes. You could suppose that different governments use AIs to manage their militaries, or simply that many powerful AIs have their own wills. At any rate, it seems valuab... |
87f82894-b44f-4881-9cff-ca4534aaffbc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Festival Stats 2024
Each year ( 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2023) I put out a list of how many dance weekends, festivals, camps, and long dances contra bands and callers are doing. I don't really know why I do this, but it's about an hours work on top of that I'm already collecting for trycontra.com/events so ... |
952f0874-c46a-4801-8e7e-e51d4154646c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Outer vs inner misalignment: three framings
A core concept in the field of AI alignment is a distinction between two types of misalignment: outer misalignment and inner misalignment. Roughly speaking, the outer alignment problem is the problem of specifying an reward function which captures human preferences; and the ... |
4a39f4e6-f15f-4811-9e99-3262e3a46d6b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | My research agenda in agent foundations
Since the beginning of 2022, I've been doing independent AI alignment research in agent foundations. The stage and scope of research that I am doing is roughly equivalent to starting a PhD program.
It has been somewhat popular for people in alignment to write up research agenda... |
49c2da14-6303-494a-a20b-29f4f432a4ef | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Overcoming Individual Limitations Through Distributed Computation: Rational Information Accumulation in Multigenerational Populations..
Topics in Cognitive Science 14 (2022) 550–573
© 2022 The Authors. Topics in Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Cognitive
Science Society.
ISSN: 1756-876... |
4723e367-9716-49f0-a556-e087c3723f47 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Example: Markov Chain
The previous post in this sequence discussed how to throw away information in causal DAGs. This post provides a detailed example using a Markov chain.
Suppose we have an n-state Markov chain (CS people: picture a finite state machine with n states and random state transitions at each timestep). ... |
173d7dff-d2df-401f-98fd-49d001cc345f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | An extended rocket alignment analogy
This work was done while at Conjecture.
This post has been written for the first Refine blog post day, at the end of the week of readings, discussions, and exercises about epistemology for doing good conceptual research.
Thanks for comments by Linda Linsefors, Paul Bricman, and A... |
366a0a2d-211a-484a-853e-d691157491f3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Odds are not easier
Epistemic status: just a review of a well known math theorem and a brief rant about terminology.
Yesterday I saw another example of this: P(D) is just a normalizing constant for the posterior probability, and it's really hard (impossible?) to calculate, so let's switch to log odd probabilities, wh... |
ad3b823e-ec2f-48bb-a18e-4f9cc18e7476 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Updatelessness and Son of X
.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-space: nowrap; float: none; dir... |
64444dbb-d6cf-49eb-8586-b9ca55d4a1ca | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | My first conversation with Annie Altman
First conversation on the All Humans Are Human podcast
We talked about safety at a personal and societal level.
May have a future conversation about long-term drivers toward a mass extinction.
(recorded Monday 13 November, my voice cut off at 1h 09m for some reason).
|
668990b3-8cb9-4420-862a-0bcf64c6db51 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | P (Polynomial Time Complexity Class)
P is the [class of problems](https://arbital.com/p/problem_class) which can be solved by [algorithms](https://arbital.com/p/algorithm) whose run time is bounded by a [https://arbital.com/p/-polynomial](https://arbital.com/p/-polynomial). |
ea2830d0-f8b4-4aa4-a4c9-8d092196d4d7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "Open-Mindedness" - the video
An interesting little Flash-like video on "openmindedness" by someone named QualiaSoup (hopefully ironically).
Does anyone know how much effort is required to produce this sort of video, perhaps from a script? We need at least another thousand of these. |
7aa07972-3d0c-46f3-bd8c-a06478c90d0f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | The Parable of the Boy Who Cried 5% Chance of Wolf
*Epistemic status: a parable making a moderately strong claim about statistics*
Once upon a time, there was a boy who cried, "there's a 5% chance there's a wolf!"
The villagers came running, saw no wolf, and said "He *said* there was a wolf and there was not. Thus ... |
4951bf2f-022c-4410-acd6-e77caf56d22c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Impact of the rationalist community who someone who aspired to be "rational"
This is cross posted from my blog and originally intended to people who are not familiar with the rationalist community, or who may have heard about it from external source. If you regularly read this site, the interest may be limited. Howeve... |
1d46990e-1570-4246-a3ba-fd66b97ee477 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Suggestions for making research as trustworthy, intelligible and quickly available as possible
There's a lot of research papers out there - some good, some bad, some intelligible, some unintelligible, some disseminated quickly, some slowly. Now, with covid-19, it is more important than ever that we get to know whether... |
f4862a87-851c-4b1a-8a72-859c74e29945 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Trust in AI: Interpretability is not necessary or sufficient, while black-box interaction is necessary and sufficient
1. Introduction
----------------
Rapid advances in machine learning (ML) have spurred interest in artificial intelligence (AI) for increasingly diverse high-impact applications including medical dec... |
092cf918-6c0f-4d45-91c3-af3f6914278b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is Wittgenstein's Language Game used when helping Ai understand language?
Hello. I am a lurker, but I checked the search and didn't see anyone discussing Wittgenstein's ideas concerning the "essence" of language and his talk of "Language Games" so I thought I'd ask.
Wittgenstein is a linguistic philosopher, who in ve... |
ef6d4fd3-91c4-430e-a47e-74a489215864 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Pragmatic Image Compression for Human-in-the-Loop Decision-Making.
1 Introduction
---------------
\includegraphics
[width=]teaser.pdf
Figure 1: Images compressed 2-4x smaller than JPEG retain information for tasks like shopping for cars in a perceived price range (a), surveying car colors (b), and checking photos ... |
dd005ba1-af89-42fe-b76b-0b5c1408614e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Who was the person who escaped the Nazis a day before they cracked down?
I'm trying to find the primary source for this, but I remember one person (who may have been a physicist) left Germany (or another country) on a train. That same train the next day was stopped and thousands of Jews were arrested. He is alleged to... |
3f16a5d0-9742-4a11-9e95-db9c3d46ae09 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Intelligence, epistemics, and sanity, in three short parts
Epistemic status: Boggling. This is early, messy work.
Thanks to Edo Arad for comments and suggestions.
Part 1: A Brief Tale
You’re exploring a vast land filled with forests and brush. You thrash your sword to carve out a path and make sense of things.
... |
2f6972d2-a809-4190-97ef-9290e033d193 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Transformative AI issues (not just misalignment): an overview
If this ends up being the most important century due to advanced AI, what are the key factors in whether things go well or poorly?
More detail on why AI could make this the most important century (Details not included in email - click to view on the web)... |
74689008-ddf9-40fd-85b1-f435a601d474 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Toy model piece #3: close and distant situations
I'll build on my model of the previous post, and consider close and distant situation.
Recall that each world in W is defined by 0≤n≤100, which is the number of people smiling in it. I'll extend the model by adding another Boolean variable b, which determines, say, whe... |
79250023-8305-41c1-ba4d-78a35635f3c9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AISN #46: The Transition
Welcome to the AI Safety Newsletter by the Center for AI Safety. We discuss developments in AI and AI safety. No technical background required.
Listen to the AI Safety Newsletter for free on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
----------------------------------------
The Transition
The transition f... |
c8d2dc21-f6f0-405e-8dec-48ba0620e520 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Reflections on the cryonics sequence
Three months ago, I had a dream my mom died while cryocrastinating, and I decided to finally start the process. I quickly found that it was ridiculously hard to figure out what the process even was, and I thought, "huh, someone should really write a guide on how to do this." And lo... |
7fe76da8-7687-48fa-a3b8-87ef60ad1649 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004
*Background for non-transhumanists:*
Transhumanists are not fond of death. We would stop it if we could. To this end we support research that holds out hope of a future in which humanity has defeated death. Death is an extremely difficult technical problem, to be attacked with biotech and... |
f172ebbd-194f-40fe-b0d5-921179b84b26 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Exercise
One way readers can reinforce or make sure they've understood a concept is to do exercises. These pages give a collection of questions for this purpose. |
44e4f2d5-6b24-4c2b-9ded-25a743081165 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Sapient Algorithms
I notice my mind runs lots of cached programs. Like "walk", "put away the dishes", "drive home", "go to the bathroom", "check phone", etc.
Most of these can run "on autopilot". I don't know how to define that formally. But I'm talking about how, e.g., I can start driving and get lost in thought and... |
6e2fb731-58a1-47d5-8828-9bdf7c9e5717 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | the void
A long essay about LLMs, the nature and history of the the HHH assistant persona, and the implications for alignment.
Multiple people have asked me whether I could post this LW in some form, hence this linkpost.
~17,000 words. Originally written on June 7, 2025.
(Note: although I expect this post will be i... |
52c80f0e-425a-4d5d-80e2-2f162a58adc3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup Tip: The Greeter
Summary
A useful person to have at any meetup is a greeter who says hello to arrivals and engages them in a minute or two of conversation. This is especially useful for first time attendees, who might otherwise mill around unsure what to do or how to introduce themselves. It's even better if th... |
8ea6e9a9-cb7a-4c54-9f2c-1b30b45744a6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What is your opinion of Dr. Angelo Dilullo(meditation)?
I've listened to some of his YouTube videos, going through his book. Not sure if he makes metaphysical or unscientific claims anywhere, or if there's anything to be wary of. |
84f439bf-02c4-4ddf-b68c-a5e6ab7b653c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | An Opinionated Guide to Computability and Complexity (Post #0)
Today, I'll try to introduce certain things in this sequence I will make that I found interesting of computability and complexity theory is, and in particular show how many problems can be solved by computers, in both a philosophical and practical sense. I... |
a65af519-1c05-4713-ad95-15bded951ccc | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | [$20K in Prizes] AI Safety Arguments Competition
TL;DR—We’re distributing $20k in total as prizes for submissions that make effective arguments for the importance of AI safety. The goal is to generate short-form content for outreach to policymakers, management at tech companies, and ML researchers. This competition wi... |
b6756149-b391-4afd-a1e5-0e81cc88140a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Is the AI timeline too short to have children?
If you had asked me at any point in my adult life (until recently) whether I wanted to have children eventually, I would've said yes, without hesitation. In recent years I've been telling myself: I don't know how likely these AI doom predictions are, but I'm going to focu... |
e113c012-40ab-47f5-918e-43ef3c54c281 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Which activities do you prefer to better recover productivity?
I would like to ask you to share in the comments what do you usually do when not working that provides a rest with good quality. Personally, I found that if I enjoy something a lot it is hard to stop (like a very interesting book). And if I don't enjoy it,... |
4082d6bf-4c37-44d4-b42f-9a16633319b5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Anthropomorphizing AI might be good, actually
It is often noted that anthropomorphizing AI can be dangerous. People likely have prosocial instincts that AI systems lack (see below). Assuming AGI will be aligned because humans with similar behavior are usually mostly harmless is probably wrong and quite dangerous.
I ... |
b2e1fde9-9b85-458b-9ef3-79461cd81d24 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | What work has been done on the post-AGI distribution of wealth?
It seems like the distribution of wealth (and other forms of power) following transformative AI is very consequential for the value of the long-term future, affecting both immediate suffering and well-being and the chances of a long-term value lock-in. I'... |
89a0c5e4-93f6-4896-8049-32b60ae57be9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Briefly analyzing the 10-year moratorium amendment
This is the result of a half-day research sprint on the recently-introduced amendment to institute a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulations in the current budget reconciliation bill, with a focus on figuring out "is it likely to survive the Byrd Rule".
----... |
1d5bbf9d-ec1c-4611-8335-02c261b06415 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A game of mattering
When I have an overwhelming number of things to do, and insufficient native urge to do them, I often arrange them into a kind of game for myself. The nature and appeal of this game has been relatively stable for about a year, after many years of evolution, so this seems like a reasonable time to sh... |
0b00f0cc-5cba-4fab-997e-ee62fb045f1b | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Activism by the AI Community: Analysing Recent Achievements and Future Prospects
Activism by the AI Community
Analysing Recent Achievements and Future Prospects
Haydn Belfield
Centre for the Study of Existential Risk
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
hb492@cam.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The artificial in... |
793a723f-d547-4222-bfb5-c14bfaff63aa | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | General intelligence test: no domains of stupidity
It's been a productive conversation on my post criticising the Turing test. I claimed that I wouldn't take the Turing test as definitive evidence of general intelligence if the agent was specifically optimised on the test. I was challenged as to whether I had a differ... |
ee9289e2-8724-4b9c-b94a-3f9df9873990 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Trade Regulation Rule on Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Rulemaking.
Trade Regulation Rule on Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Rulemaking
We are pleased to submit a public comment in response to the trade regulation rule on
commercial surveillance and data security.
This comment is structured in res... |
9341cb44-ce44-426e-b639-b95beb168a10 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Anti-circumcision Essay 2 of 3: Physical and Psychological Realities
Continuation of Part One
Now in theory I could end the series here. I could say that the evidence Mason provided of men going haywire is the images Karella posted, and since I’ve already made my case that one of those images is one offensive com... |
bdbaae22-7382-4500-926c-14f5454c42a0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "AI and Efficiency", OA (44✕ improvement in CNNs since 2012)
Abstract:
> We’re releasing an analysis showing that since 2012 the amount of compute needed to train a neural net to the same performance on ImageNet1 classification has been decreasing by a factor of 2 every 16 months. Compared to 2012, it now takes 44 t... |
7ee19444-8f77-477d-ab00-a0469d8c7607 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Psychology of AI doomers and AI optimists
What is this dialogue about
This is a dialogue about complicated relationships between AI safety and psychology.
AI safety field consists of people, and people have all sorts of motivations, cognitive biases, and coping mechanisms that are interesting to explore.
This is a... |
8d45c66e-2c85-4092-b539-b38a8c2e78f2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Intuitive Explanation of Solomonoff Induction
Update: Alex Altair has now finished this tutorial!
A while ago I began writing a Solomonoff Induction tutorial, but now it's one of those Less Wrong articles I probably will never have time to write.
But, maybe a few of you can take what I've started, team up, and fi... |
44d5fce2-4e53-446a-96ec-327471a5cd8d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | When is a mind me?
xlr8harder writes:
> In general I don’t think an uploaded mind is you, but rather a copy. But one thought experiment makes me question this. A Ship of Theseus concept where individual neurons are replaced one at a time with a nanotechnological functional equivalent.
>
> Are you still you?
Presuma... |
e0814576-7f78-4b0b-8fd9-3f40888b5b01 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What Caused the Fertility Collapse?
Note: I didn't write this essay, nor do I own the blog where it came from. I'm just sharing it. The essay text is displayed below this line.
I recently put out a post on fertility collapse, The Paradox of Low Fertility, in which I claimed that the fertility collapse is mostly ... |
594d44af-0f01-43fe-83d3-9acc6c05df0d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Game theory of "Nuclear Prisoner's Dilemma" - on nuking rocks
Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote, in a place where I can't ask a follow-up question:
> * A rational agent should always do at least as well for itself as a rock, unless it's up against some other agent that specifically wants to punish particular decision algorith... |
a1d0eab2-69f5-4e5b-84ee-70876a377d4f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Experience on Meloxicam
I continue to have wrist and hand issues, though they are mostly fine as long as I minimize how much I use them. Which mostly means a lot of dictation! Still, it would be good both to understand what is wrong with them and figure out how I can resume some of the activities I enjoy that I've sto... |
9aa7147e-8b80-4e02-a5bf-15c3892b4e60 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Roadmap for a collaborative prototype of an Open Agency Architecture
Deger Turan, Tantum Collins, [davidad](https://www.alignmentforum.org/users/davidad) and [Charbel-Raphael Segerie](https://www.alignmentforum.org/users/charbel-raphael) contributed to the writing of this post.
Andrew Critch, Ben Goldhaber, Ozzie Go... |
e99a271d-fadb-488b-8ed0-8944aa4022e6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What can thought-experiments do?
Introduction
What's the difference between actually being in a situation and just thinking about the situation? In other words, what's the difference between a real-life ethical dilemma and a hypothetical ethical dilemma?
There are many differences.
* Some differences are phenomenol... |
bd75c526-cb97-446b-9af0-3c2cc80b5080 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rugby & Regression Towards the Mean
With the rugby world cup final approaching this Saturday I figured I'd publish this which I wrote towards the end of last year but never submitted.
Introduction
A couple of weeks ago England played New Zealand in Rugby Union. For those who don’t follow the sport New Zealand (the A... |
edbfc7cd-7fb9-4a16-99ba-98bb911e0881 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Solution to Sandbagging and other Self-Provable Misalignment: Constitutional AI Detectives
Inspired by Eli Tyre's idea.
Sandbagging and other "Self-Provable Misalignment" by an AI, can be spotted by an adversarial copy of itself. The adversarial copy of itself works as an "detective," and its reward is defined by h... |
02a963f5-b446-43e1-8be3-27a00b023707 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Three Kinds of Cost
Previous: Scarcity Is the Presence of Choice
Is there such a thing as a free lunch?
It’s not a trick question. Literally, can you have a free lunch?
It’s certainly possible to have a lunch you don’t have to spend money on, at least in the most direct sense. But it’s easier said than done. If ... |
da62dbbd-d70f-4311-aef6-dbb40d2191f6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Blameworthiness in Multi-Agent Settings.
1 Introduction
---------------
As we move towards an era where autonomous systems are ubiquitous, being able to
reason formally about moral responsibility will become more and more
critical. Such reasoning will be necessary not only for legal
ascription of responsibility, bu... |
ebba5545-6c6b-4662-8a4f-614bdae91394 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | [AN #163]: Using finite factored sets for causal and temporal inference
Alignment Newsletter is a weekly publication with recent content relevant to AI alignment around the world. Find all Alignment Newsletter **[resources here](http://rohinshah.com/alignment-newsletter/)**. In particular, you can look through **[this... |
d5c254b3-124f-467a-afa4-4635af12b7af | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Mental Calibration for Bayesian Updates?
Hey all,
After reading "How to Measure Anything" I've experimented a bit with calibration training and using his calibration tools, and after being convinced by his data on the usefulness of calibration in forecasting for the real world, have seen a big update in my own calibr... |
0a417936-c81d-4f6d-b4ea-89950c705f99 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Puritans would one-box: evidential decision theory in the 17th century
Evidential decision theory was used way earlier than I would have expected, and its development was motivated theologically.
Unconditional election is the Protestant (mainly Calvinist and Puritan) idea that God made the decisions of who would ... |
c1e43815-2de8-4dc3-9e1e-ceda9d649062 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | it's hard to look at reality when you've already decided what reality looks like
So here I am, posting a thing.
I have a soapbox, which may have unintentionally put myself up as a source of authority, at least to myself.
There's an SMBC comic of Zach Weinersmith comics where he's said words to the effect of “my brai... |
56f0352e-98d0-4730-a5b1-6450714c40e6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 2024 Summer AI Safety Intro Fellowship and Socials in Boston
Tl;dr: The AI Safety Student Team (a group of students at Harvard) will be running two 8-week introductory reading groups this summer (in Boston and online), as well as summer socials (in Boston). Apply to our technical fellowship here or our policy fellowsh... |
f064aad6-2d48-40dc-a022-50a4e0b3d215 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 200 COP in MI: Analysing Training Dynamics
This is the sixth post in a sequence called 200 Concrete Open Problems in Mechanistic Interpretability. Start here, then read in any order. If you want to learn the basics before you think about open problems, check out my post on getting started. Look up jargon in my Mechani... |
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