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ddb96906-331a-4098-aa82-aefb92919d9b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Technical Predictions Related to AI Safety
If you want to create a policy of nuclear safety then you need to understand:
* Manufacturing nuclear weapons requires access to uranium.
* Uranium enrichment is a big, slow activity that's difficult to hide from enemy nation-states.
* Nuclear weapons are so expensive onl... |
7ef7f822-6df8-4d3b-937c-556edc3faa4e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Searching for post on Community Takeover
I am searching for an old LessWrong post about something like "Community takeover": The idea that a successful community (Rationalist/AI Risk) could attract people from outside, who would attempt to co-opt/hijack the agenda to focus on something else.
This is inspired by the s... |
d0131424-8f5e-4e99-b276-a9a42e0dd6f0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Prokaryote Multiverse. An argument that potential simulators do not have significantly more complex physics than ours
Definitions
"Universe" can no longer be said to mean "everything", such a definition wouldn't be able to explain the existence of the word "multiverse". I define universe as a region of existence that,... |
aa71c08d-532c-49c6-bce2-8f6e700ee5ed | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | What an actually pessimistic containment strategy looks like
Israel as a nation state has an ongoing national security issue involving Iran.
For the last twenty years or so, Iran has been covertly developing nuclear weapons. Iran is a country with a very low opinion of Israel and is generally diplomatically opposed ... |
c244a51c-b409-4a62-81c6-f05baa19e08c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Fun][Link] Alignment SMBC Comic
Alt text: "We just have to create new bigotries faster than they can learn to live in harmony."
Bonus panel:
The author seems to allow sharing (there are multiple sharing buttons at the bottom). Here is the full link to the comic again: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/align
Here ... |
674d49de-4c15-416b-b5b0-aed71b1c0388 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Covid 1/13/22: Endgame
Important note, fleshed out a bit more in Omicron Post #14: From various sources, I have become convinced that rapid tests taken from nose swabs are likely to often be several days slower at detecting infections than rapid tests that use throat swabs.
So if you are testing with the goal of actu... |
fd7b7d48-5c9c-4d56-8caa-47ca60aa38ea | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is a near-term, self-sustaining Mars colony impossible?
Some argue that Elon Musk's plan to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars is effectively impossible for the foreseeable future without discontinuous tech progress. (See e.g. Jess Riedel's claim here, which Robin Hanson agrees with.)
Is there a simple explanatio... |
77c987a0-39fe-4f08-ba9f-7f7e5738f612 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Reminder: London meetup, Sunday 2pm, near Holborn
Reminder: London meetup on Sunday May 1 at 14:00 at the Shakespeares Head (official page) on Kingsway near Holborn Tube station. Note that there's more than one pub in London with that name, so make sure you get the right one. As always, we'll have a big picture of a ... |
7989abbf-1acc-41db-8b75-8d0490300484 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Research agenda: Supervising AIs improving AIs
[This post summarizes some of the work done by Owen Dudney, Roman Engeler and myself (Quintin Pope) as part of the SERI MATS shard theory stream.]
TL;DR
Future prosaic AIs will likely shape their own development or that of successor AIs. We're trying to make sure they d... |
dee1d702-2153-4616-bc97-85e53bc56e15 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Discriminator Rejection Sampling
1 Introduction
---------------
Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) (Goodfellow et al., [2014](#bib.bib6)) are a powerful tool for image synthesis.
They have also been applied successfully to semi-supervised and unsupervised learning (Springenberg, [2015](#bib.bib25); Odena, [2016... |
6dabd756-01a9-44dd-a2f5-51d873161411 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Another Argument Against Eliezer's Meta-Ethics
I think I've found a better argument that Eliezer's meta-ethics is wrong. The advantage of this argument is that it doesn't depend on the specifics of Eliezer's notions of extrapolation or coherence.
Eliezer says that when he uses words like "moral", "right", and "should... |
9c285751-6986-48ba-a159-11df76c44ea9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | First Strike and Second Strike
First-strike weapons destroy your enemy's ability to retaliate. Second-strike weapons preserve your ability to retaliate after a first strike.
Missile defense systems constitute first-strike technology. Suppose you build an effective[1] missile defense system. You could launch a pre-emp... |
efea6a7e-7804-4d36-a40c-510060857056 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Swimming Upstream: A Case Study in Instrumental Rationality
> One data point for careful planning, the unapologetic pursuit of fulfillment, and success. Of particular interest to up-and-coming AI safety researchers, this post chronicles how I made a change in my PhD program to work more directly on AI safety, overcomi... |
8fe8b0b0-e32b-4959-bf47-b1d3fc789eed | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Developmental Framework for Rationality
[A way of looking at rationality as a set of transitioning worldviews that operate under different assumptions. The short summary of progression looks like techniques → habits → introspection → feelings → multiple ontologies. Skills which appear to be at odds with one another ... |
1ed97984-ae80-47a2-bf8f-48b8c5aa246d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Stories
Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Stories
WHEN: 24 October 2016 06:15:00PM (-0700)
WHERE: 1769 15th St, San Francisco, CA
We'll be meeting to tell each other stories! Ideally, come with a story from your life (doesn't have to be about anything in partic... |
926c9c96-16be-41df-93b7-7a5bc9070a77 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | The Inter-Agent Facet of AI Alignment
*We argue that* [*intent alignment and capability robustness*](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/SzecSPYxqRa5GCaSF/clarifying-inner-alignment-terminology) *do not capture the full “chain of command” (i.e., “alignment” without any qualifier) from the programmer's intentions to a... |
43c6edf8-da7d-418f-b845-fb7bd9b0b96a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Hyderabad Meetup : July 8, 2012
There has been no Lesswrong meetup in India in 2012. I suggest having a meetup in the afternoon on Sunday, July 8 at Cafe Coffee Day, NEXT TO Airtel Showroom, Madhapur Main Road, Madhapur, Hyd (Landmark: OPPOSITE Krishe Sapphire)
Me and couple of my friends commit ourselves to be th... |
f889f989-e45e-49fc-bda5-9a277fb9f19a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Four mindset disagreements behind existential risk disagreements in ML
I've previously written that good ideas and conversations about AGI seem to have propagated through ML weirdly slowly.
A different weird phenomenon I observe is that the field's relative inaction about AGI seems less based on a confident set of be... |
a183ab5f-e5e2-46f0-b893-905814bedcba | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | To Predict What Happens, Ask What Happens
When predicting conditional probability of catastrophe from loss of human control over AGI, there are many distinct cruxes. This essay does not attempt a complete case, or the most generally convincing case, or addressing the most common cruxes.
Instead these are my best gues... |
a2ba874f-ed7d-44b9-97a5-4b3fc8ef4a80 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "Thank you for updating"
Would it be supercilious to thank someone for updating? I know I would feel uncomfortable doing it, but I often feel the urge to do so anyway.
There seems to be something vicious about thanking them. My own estimation of my own belief has not changed in these situations. I feel fairly sati... |
4e3d6f60-0f9b-4808-8a88-78a15a1d1c87 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | bumping into financial unknown unknowns
subtitle: "I think there are a few black boxes in my professional life as well."
Current problem: my finances are a little tight these days.
How I imagine personal finances is kind of like a stream. I need as much water coming in as going out. I'd like to create more value fo... |
049f54bc-6e25-4edc-8c75-cabf6f81a139 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | We Should Prepare for a Larger Representation of Academia in AI Safety
Epistemic Status: I had the idea for the post a few days ago and quickly wrote it down while on a train. I'm very curious about other perspectives.
TL;DR: The recent increased public interest in AI Safety will likely lead to more funding for and m... |
6c14f88a-58ec-46b9-b6bb-4d3d71ab04b5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI #122: Paying The Market Price
If you are Meta, and you want to attract top AI talent, you have a problem, because no one wants to work for you or on your products. So it is going to cost you. Mark Zuckerberg has decided he will pay what it takes to get at least some very good talent.
If you are the rest of us, esp... |
87994be4-9cd2-4846-8a0c-674deb50c605 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Escaping the Löbian Obstacle
Earlier this year, when looking for an inroad to AI safety, I learned about the Löbian Obstacle, which is a problem encountered by 'purely logical' agents when trying to reason about and trust one another. In the original paper of Yudkowsky and Herreshoff [1], they show that a consequence ... |
838c2daf-997b-4945-b1d7-5439d04f81bc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are funds (such as the Long-Term Future Fund) willing to give extra money to AI safety researchers to balance for the opportunity cost of taking an "industry" job?
I do not feel like I am ready to apply for funding yet, but I was wondering are funds (such as Long-Term Future Fund) willing to give extra money to AI saf... |
36164c2c-6476-43e8-962c-dd1335521bed | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How to Price a Futures Contract
All investments are risky. The techniques explained in this series are exceptionally risky. I am not a registered investor, attorney, advisor, broker, banker, lawyer, dealer or anything of the sort. All opinions expressed here are for my personal exploration. I present it to you for ent... |
432b4840-f3ff-4aec-a6bd-4028b9916556 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Roots of Progress events in Austin, November 4–6
I’ll be in Austin, TX in November for a few events:
Talk on nuclear power
“The Energy of Tomorrow: The Promise, Failure, and Possible Rebirth of Nuclear Power”:
> In the 1950s, nuclear power was seen as the energy of the future. Today, it is stagnating on the sid... |
20118e1d-0d80-4bfb-a9da-bafe802d4573 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | William Frankena's list of terminal values
"Life, consciousness, and activity; health and strength; pleasures and satisfactions of all or certain kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.; truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding, wisdom; beauty, harmony, proportion in objects contemplat... |
f1bbb07a-0b64-4f4d-8019-29883f9a9331 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | (Yet Another) Map for AI Risk Discussion
Full Size
I made this map for myself, but it quickly turned into a tool which I use to help find productive discussion - for example, in steering towards a common understanding of key divergences.
I also find that it helps me introduce the topic to friends who are not aware o... |
01b0ec11-debf-498d-a0bc-12748b4150ce | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Schelling Shifts During AI Self-Modification
Introduction
In this essay, I name and describe a mechanism that might break alignment in any system that features an originally aligned AI improving its capabilities through self-modification. I doubt that this idea is new, but I haven't yet seen it named and described in ... |
a7504bc6-e21a-41c6-b433-8b62b1a5c2c8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is my perception of reality bounded by my intelligence?
Hello all,
Here I am living in the Netherlands, 2019 AD. In my perception there is no two-way explicit communication with non-human intelligence, no space travel. Artifical intelligence is in it's infancy (at least, as seen by the general public). All my evidenc... |
531b5022-b716-4398-b931-64ba48585908 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Investing for the Long Slump
I have no crystal ball with which to predict the Future, a confession that comes as a surprise to some journalists who interview me. Still less do I think I have the ability to out-predict markets. On every occasion when I've considered betting against a prediction market - most recently... |
efd61224-faa3-47ab-a555-4467f4d4882b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Demands for Particular Proof: Appendices
Appendices to: You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof
(The main article was getting long, so I decided to move the appendices to a separate article which wouldn't be promoted, thus minimizing the size of the article landing in a promoted-article-only-re... |
b6b66a19-cea4-4e6f-9614-f3b1b82e14c1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Link] On the Height of a Field
Mark Eichenlaub posted a great little case-study about the difficulty of updating beliefs, even over trivial matters like the slope of a baseball field. The basic story of Bayes-updating assumes the likelihood of evidence in different states is obvious, but feedback between observations... |
63d2835f-5aa9-479f-bc62-190c025b6e7f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Autopoietic systems and difficulty of AGI alignment
I have recently come to the opinion that AGI alignment is probably extremely hard. But it's not clear exactly what AGI or AGI alignment are. And there are some forms of aligment of "AI" systems that are easy. Here I operationalize "AGI" and "AGI alignment" in some di... |
9397fde7-ac57-4edc-a8d8-a9b3410a13c8 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Methodology for discontinuous progress investigation
AI Impacts’ [discontinuous progress investigation](https://aiimpacts.org/discontinuous-progress-investigation/) was conducted according to methodology outlined on this page.
Details
-------
Contributions to the [discontinuous progress investigation](https://aiim... |
4fe4f715-12e7-4266-9a3c-51828aa69069 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Most Important Century: The Animation
This is a linkpost for the Rational Animations' video based on The Most Important Century sequence of posts by Holden Karnofsky.
Below, the whole script of the video.
Matthew Barnett has written most of it. Several paragraphs were written by Ajeya Cotra, during the feedback ... |
8ab18984-4e11-495a-bde2-3a6b02acc26a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is Molecular Nanotechnology "Scientific"?
Prerequisite / Read this first: Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence
Consider the statement "It is physically possible to construct diamondoid nanomachines which repair biological cells." Some people will tell you that molecular nanotechnology is "pseudosc... |
18290745-9929-4405-8f65-f6ea72c677bc | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Reflections on the PIBBSS Fellowship 2022
Last summer, we ran the first iteration of the PIBBSS Summer Research Fellowship. In this post, we share some reflections on how the program went.
Note that this post deals mostly with high-level reflections and isn’t maximally comprehensive. It primarily focusses on informat... |
16370f16-4409-4841-a2ab-ae59227fb6d0 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | It’s not obvious that getting dangerous AI later is better
Intro
=====
This post was originally intended as a follow-up post to Josh’s [Are short timelines actually bad?](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YC6ZjCQPPuKQb49TQ/are-short-timelines-actually-bad), but given the [AI pause debate](https://forum.effectivealtruis... |
c607a43c-1186-4a78-9feb-663c75fc725a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | MINE: Free tool for detecting novel associations in large data sets
I was waiting for someone more knowledgeable to post something about this, but it's been a couple days and thought I'd bring it to LW's attention.
> The maximal information coefficient (MIC) is a measure of two-variable dependence developed with the ... |
1ec93b56-3b7e-4f35-9be3-9a5b49e8e3fd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | NYU Code Debates Update/Postmortem
TL;DR
We designed an ambitious scalable oversight experimental setup, where we had people with no coding/programming experience try to answer coding questions (“Which of these two outputs is the correct output of the given function on this input?”), using LLMs that debate or are argu... |
fc35f233-b4b0-4caa-94b7-1d788a23e03e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Losing Your Religion: Analytic Thinking Can Undermine Belief
It appears that Scientific American have found out about raising the sanity waterline. Plus one successful prediction by Mr. Yudkowsky, I presume. Since I couldn't bring myself to quote any particular bit of the article, deeming all of them to be of substanc... |
4d9b94ea-72b1-45b5-8af0-446fbe33c6df | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Experimental longtermism: theory needs data
The series explains my part in the response to COVID, my reasons for switching from AI alignment work to the COVID response for a full year, and some new ideas the experience gave me. While it is written from my (Jan Kulveit's) personal perspective, I co-wrote the text with ... |
e183caa6-eabc-4bdb-ae31-671049d29b10 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Peter Thiel's AGI discussion in his startups class @ Stanford [link]
http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/24464587112/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-17-deep-thought
Some perspectives on AI risk that might be interesting. Peter is (the primary?) donor for SI, and an investor in AGI startup Vicarious Systems.
|
e1629764-333b-4081-8321-4b0a37e525e5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How to get useful work out of theologians [LINK]
I've offered theologians a new argument they can develop against physicalism. Should they pursue it, we may actually get some useful work out of them. See here.
(The intelligence explosion animation was constructed from Anna Salamon's slides for her Minicamp x-risk pre... |
c4ea2cf1-b25e-4f47-a7b8-21e11a5b1e9d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "Why Try Hard" Essay targeted at non rationalists
Hello everyone,
This is a follow-up to my last post about optimizing, which I intended to spread to nonrationalist friends of mine. Initial feedback let me know that a lot of the language was a put-off, as well as the dry style and lack of opposing counters to argume... |
3cec6874-c678-48cb-ad67-4abf21e16625 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How To: A Workshop (or anything)
Author's note: while the whole piece is a 55min read, there's a ~7min standalone essay at the top, and then a break and a shift into a different kind of content. You really actually for real can just read the 7 minutes and then stop, if that satisfies the need you had going in. Or any... |
4b3642e6-78f7-4c6f-b920-132e95ab7511 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Outer alignment and imitative amplification
Understanding the outer alignment problem
What really is outer alignment? In “Risks from Learned Optimization,” we defined outer alignment in the context of machine learning as “aligning the specified loss function with the intended goal.” But that's not a perfectly well-def... |
a290eea2-83d5-4c71-8f2c-f5760cca084d | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | [Intro to brain-like-AGI safety] 13. Symbol grounding & human social instincts
*Part of the* [*“Intro to brain-like-AGI safety” post series*](https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/HzcM2dkCq7fwXBej8)*.*
13.1 Post summary / Table of contents
=====================================
In [the previous post](https://www.alignment... |
fea07528-db6c-4296-948a-e360dd74ff55 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Hugo Awards - HP:MoR
This year I'm a supporting member of WorldCon for the first time, and I noticed that the Hugo's have a category for Best Fan Writer ("Any person whose writing has appeared in semiprozines or fanzines or in generally available electronic media during 2010."). I do believe Harry Potter and the Metho... |
6decb651-bb51-4a77-881c-642f53bec725 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Open Philanthropy's AI governance grantmaking (so far)
*Written by* [*Luke Muehlhauser*](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/lukeprog)*. To save time on formatting, I've left footnotes linked to the original source.*
---
When the Soviet Union began to fracture in 1991, the world was forced to reckon with the... |
5ab33db9-a009-4cb2-98f9-7d714a0e864f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Scoring forecasts from the 2016 “Expert Survey on Progress in AI”
Summary
-------
This document looks at the predictions made by AI experts in [The 2016 Expert Survey on Progress in AI](https://aiimpacts.org/2016-expert-survey-on-progress-in-ai/), analyses the predictions on ‘Narrow tasks’, and gives a Brier score to... |
6e7da1bd-7eb7-4732-8b58-75746e6fce67 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Bayesian Policy Optimization for Model Uncertainty
1 Introduction
---------------
At its core, real-world robotics is about operating under uncertainty.
An autonomous car must drive alongside human drivers it has never met, under road conditions which are different from the day before.
An assistive home robot must ... |
b429415b-3ba7-4cc6-8668-2974a4e184f3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Weekly LW Meetups
This summary was posted to Main on February 26th. The following week's summary is here.
Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:
* Baltimore Area Meetup: Futurology / Open Discussion: 28 February 2016 03:00PM
* Cologne meetup: 27 February 2016 05:00PM
* European Community We... |
be8d6645-bfce-420a-b5a7-5a2519ec29a0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Intrinsic Drives and Extrinsic Misuse: Two Intertwined Risks of AI
Given their advanced capabilities, future AI systems could pose significant risks to society. Some of this risk stems from humans using AI systems for bad ends (misuse), while some stems from the difficulty of controlling AI systems “even if we wanted ... |
dd43a661-e5f3-40f9-a89c-11edbc1c7e45 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Progress links and tweets, 2023-05-03
The Progress Forum
* Reflections from seeing the Starship launch firsthand
* When America received a message from the future: the 1939 World’s Fair
Announcements
* Speculative Technologies recruiting “field strategists.” “Come design a research program to unlock powerful mate... |
e16f8809-9b0d-498c-92e2-91d8df587fa4 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Simplified bio-anchors for upper bounds on AI timelines
*This is a replication and distillation of the extensive analysis made by Ajeya Cotra’s* [*Draft report on AI timelines*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KrJfoZzpSDpnrv9va/draft-report-on-ai-timelines)*. In this work, I aim at making the argument as concise and c... |
c8932b65-8d96-4704-87a0-5141ad45cb91 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Harmony Intelligence is Hiring!
Hey folks! Pleased to announce we have a new open position for a Founding Research Engineer at Harmony Intelligence. You’ll be responsible for measuring and identifying dangerous AI capabilities across various domains: cybersecurity, biosecurity, persuasion and manipulation, self-exfilt... |
269f4382-7683-4230-b3c6-30462317fab8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Cultish Countercultishness
In the modern world, joining a cult is probably one of the worse things that can happen to you. The best-case scenario is that you’ll end up in a group of sincere but deluded people, making an honest mistake but otherwise well-behaved, and you’ll spend a lot of time and money but end up with... |
e8f93a4d-4926-4cfc-8a37-f7d216c05193 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Bayesian Agent
Followup to: Reinforcement Learning: A Non-Standard Introduction, Reinforcement, Preference and Utility
A reinforcement-learning agent interacts with its environment through the perception of observations and the performance of actions. A very abstract and non-standard description of such an agent ... |
18cf70e6-6d6c-4225-80e3-cbfe0b87f422 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What should an Einstein-like figure in Machine Learning do?
Suppose you are an extremely talented but still unknown machine learning researcher (like Einstein of patent-clerk days), and you discover something very important, maybe a few tricks that allow you to train neural nets 4 orders of magnitude faster than anyon... |
56e09640-39a3-4bae-b372-7a6d70c6811e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Testing "True" Language Understanding in LLMs: A Simple Proposal
The Core Idea
What if we could test whether language models truly understand meaning, rather than just matching patterns? Here's a simple thought experiment:
1. Create two artificial languages (A and B) that bijectively map to the same set of basic con... |
b2940f97-4fde-460a-a7b1-aea19a6fe347 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Notes from a mini-replication of the alignment faking paper
Key takeaways
* This post contains my notes from a 30-40 hour mini replication of Greenblatt et al.’s alignment faking paper.
* This was a significant paper because it provided some evidence for potential catastrophic risk from AI misalignment. (more)
* My... |
13f32a9c-ed9d-4013-8478-5eb673d955fa | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | What if we solve AI Safety but no one cares
Suppose that next year, AI Safety is solved, the solution is approved by Eliezer Yudkowsky, etc.
How do we actually get people to follow this solution?
It seems to me a lot of people or companies will ignore any AI Safety solutions for the same reasons they are currently i... |
fea201ac-d42c-44d5-9153-73b2823c4798 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Mitigating existential risks associated with human nature and AI: Thoughts on serious measures.
Howdy World,
I'm a 65-year old evolutionary behavioral ecologist, pretty well-trained and still avidly teaching and learning. I specialize in the evolution of social and sexual behavior in all species, including humans. I'... |
283d7913-db0d-42df-acd2-589ae0215fd5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Geoffrey Hinton - Full "not inconceivable" quote
CBS interview with Geoffrey Hinton published March 25th, 2023:
In the last two days I've seen several people share news articles about Hinton saying it is "not inconceivable" that AI will wipe out humanity in this interview.
The articles often don't give the full con... |
5323e153-63a6-4620-af53-81b3eb23d77d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Generative, Episodic Objectives for Safe AI
Introduction
Current discourse around AI safety focuses on creating some new paradigm for training AI models to make them safe, such as assistance games (Russell 2021) or corrigibility (Soares 2014, 2018). The prevailing view seems to be that the only thing keeping current A... |
66d92384-cc04-4994-823c-d3e22c314c97 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Timeless Identity Crisis
Followup/summary/extension to this conversation with SilasBarta
So, you're going along, cheerfully deciding things, doing counterfactual surgery on the output of decision algorithm A1 to calculate the results of your decisions, but it turns out that a dark secret is undermining your efforts..... |
968a0def-5f07-4b43-a292-963c8f022220 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Singularity Wars
(This is a introduction, for those not immersed in the Singularity world, into the history of and relationships between SU, SIAI [SI, MIRI], SS, LW, CSER, FHI, and CFAR. It also has some opinions, which are strictly my own.)
The good news is that there were no Singularity Wars.
The Bay Area ha... |
b225033e-bdcf-4b87-907a-f1e15a9aa58d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | More money with less risk: sell services instead of model access
OpenAI is currently charging 100,000 times less per line of code than professional US devs.[1]
An LLM's code output is of course less reliable than a professional's. And it is hard to use a text-completion API effectively in large projects.
What should... |
7500626a-4ae2-4a1f-9140-d94dbe0aa391 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Research on how pattern-finding contributes to memorization?
I notice that I have a much easier time memorizing things when I find a pattern. Often, I fail to think to even look for a pattern. As an example, I had a hard time memorizing the unit circle until I realized that the numerator is just counting up and down f... |
45874669-947a-4cda-a700-5e1c83eba596 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | fimfiction.net LessWrong group
There is now a LessWrong group on fimfiction, to let LWers on fimfiction find each other and collect stories that might be of interest to them. (That? Which? Grammar Nazis, help!) |
1cc705fc-5c53-4d51-9270-266d6837023f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Finite Factored Sets: Polynomials and Probability
In this post, given a [finite factored set](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/kxs3eeEti9ouwWFzr) F=(S,B).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-s... |
9e868d89-3e65-4437-950f-44a79d2cf167 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Forecasting Newsletter: April 2020
A forecasting digest with a focus on experimental forecasting.
* You can sign up here.
* You can also see this post on the Effective Altruism Forum here
* And the post is archived here
The newsletter itself is experimental, but there will be at least five more iterations. Feel f... |
241ce48a-d42c-4433-9c6f-c28460984445 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Not Even Evidence
Introduction.
I've been thinking about Anthropic Arguments recently, and noticed a disturbing lack of hard hitting (as in, can be shown to be true or false given our knowledge of physics and such) thought experiments on the topic.
The self sampling assumption is as follows:
> All other things equal... |
2d094146-d10d-4d8d-b8dd-6c7dbef352cb | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "Note: Experimental, trying to repost a Twitter thread as a Lesswrong post to see if people like it (so if you like it, or don't, tell me).Let's talk a little bit about oscillating motivation, shadow values, non-coercion, and the problem of revolving productivity systems.We've all had the feeling that new productivity ... |
f4c0adc9-c282-4f33-8d0b-fcec7fda440b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Link] Book Review: ‘The AI Does Not Hate You’ by Tom Chivers (Scott Aaronson)
Scott Aaronson uploaded a review about The AI Does Not Hate You, a book by Tom Chivers.
The book:
> This is a book about AI and AI risk. But it's also more importantly about a community of people who are trying to think rationally about i... |
d96f4e7e-2a89-42cb-b3e4-33a9e12ca99b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Colonization models: a programming tutorial (Part 1/2)
Introduction
Are we alone in the universe? How likely is our species to survive the transition from a Type 0 to a Type II civilization? The answers to these questions would be of immense interest to our race; however, we have few tools to reason about these que... |
a5e693e5-46b7-4669-a095-3d1ef5a451d3 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Whole Brain Emulation: Looking At Progress On C. elgans
Being able to treat the pattern of someone's brain as software to be run on a computer, perhaps in parallel or at a large speedup, would have a huge impact, both socially and economically. Robin Hanson thinks it is the [most likely route to artificial intelligen... |
0793b70d-76e4-44a6-adbb-d35e83e8ccd1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Avoiding coronavirus spread from family members, roommates, extended family and close friends
Mostly based on this article https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
* The key variables: how many people are in a space, how much airflow is around me, and how long will you be in the environment?
... |
b0db70c0-f088-40b1-bcb7-129ecc330e37 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Washington D.C.: Meta Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Washington D.C.: Meta Meetup
WHEN: 03 January 2016 03:00:00PM (-0500)
WHERE: Reynolds Center
x-posted from list. Gathering in courtyard from 3:00pm, hard start 3:30pm - until closing (7:00 pm).
We'll be meeting to talk about the Less Wrong D... |
6962ad5c-15d7-4a47-804b-a35a1e11bd33 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace Speech
Along with other AI governance researchers, I have been interested in better understanding historical examples of widespread international cooperation.
Perhaps the most well-studied analogy can be found in the case of nuclear energy & nuclear weapons. I believe we can learn a lot f... |
eaa74684-f192-4480-84f8-8d451e28cee5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Analog rewritable tablet
I am requesting suggestions for an analog-ish rewritable tablet. Details below.
I have a paper and pencil task list for work that I repeatedly erase and write over as I complete various tasks. After a month or two, it gets hard to read and I have to copy everything onto a new list. I'm lookin... |
1c4b9e3b-e54f-435c-8663-b1cd4e2725a4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Atlanta - Filtering Ideas
Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta - Filtering Ideas
WHEN: 09 August 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: 2388 Lawrenceville Hwy. Unit L. Decatur, GA 30033
This meetup, we'll be talking about recognizing confusion, doublethink, and how to filter good and true ideas from false a... |
0d577df6-8b88-449c-b888-682e9eac27f2 | awestover/filtering-for-misalignment | Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results | id: post0
Summary: We have previously argued that scalable oversight methods can be used to provide guarantees on low-stakes safety – settings where individual failures are non-catastrophic. However, if your reward function (e.g. honesty) is compatible with many possible solutions then you also need to avoid having fr... |
24d7e1a8-a9c9-464d-8bf5-eb31357955c2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Slopworld 2035: The dangers of mediocre AI
None of this article was written with AI assistance.
Introduction
There have been many, many, many attempts to lay out scenarios of AI taking over or destroying humanity. What they tend to have in common is an assumption that our doom will be sealed as a result of AI becomi... |
482a805c-d770-480d-95ab-82116354afa3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Guide For LLM-Assisted Web Research
It's hard to imagine doing web research without using LLMs. Chatbots may be the first thing you turn to for questions like: What are the companies currently working on nuclear fusion and who invested in them? What is the performance gap between open and closed-weight models on the... |
c120385c-b5bd-4b29-96d6-d6b82e3f1d24 | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "Eliezer Yudkowsky's original Sequences have been edited, reordered, and converted into an ebook!
Rationality: From AI to Zombies is now available in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI versions on intelligence.org (link). You can choose your own price to pay for it (minimum $0.00), or buy it for $4.99 from Amazon (link). The contents... |
4a5e50a4-efc3-471d-845d-359ba46d9034 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Prescriptive vs. descriptive and objective vs. subjective definitions
Imagine you're writing a Field Guide to Boats, and you want to know what you should include in your field guide. Barges? Rafts? These things?
You want something like a dictionary definition of boat. A descriptive definition that includes anything... |
b7ace1c4-9cc3-43db-bd7a-0e2b8d79ddb1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : SLC, UT: Free Will and Rationality Checklists
Discussion article for the meetup : SLC, UT: Free Will and Rationality Checklists
WHEN: 15 September 2012 03:00:00PM (-0600)
WHERE: Calvin S Smith Library, 810 East 3300 South, Salt Lake City, UT
We'll be in the back conference room
3:00 Greetings, Introductio... |
ef28c47f-e4d7-4d1e-88d8-c887409d2966 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Decision Theory
*(A longer text-based version of this post is also available on MIRI's blog* [*here*](https://intelligence.org/2018/10/31/embedded-decisions/)*, and the bibliography for the whole sequence can be found* [*here*](https://intelligence.org/embedded-agency)*.)*
 high risk atte... |
d66beef8-0366-41fd-87f1-cce818f91b27 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Universality Unwrapped
Introduction
Informally, a universal system is universal with respect to any computation; and it is a universal system with respect to a given computation if it understands every set of beliefs that can be ascribed to the computation. The intuition is that the system can reverse engineer most or... |
bf801667-91d7-446b-bef8-bb46616212d7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Apply to MATS 7.0!
Applications are open for the ML Alignment & Theory Scholars (MATS) Winter 2024-25 Program, running Jan 6-Mar 14, 2025. First-stage applications are due Oct 6!
MATS is a twice-yearly, 10-week AI safety research fellowship program operating in Berkeley, California, with an optional 4-month extension... |
7b9e27f8-97c3-4248-87eb-9a78ab9ad546 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Romantic idealism: true love conquers almost all
More romantic people tend to be vocally in favor of more romantic fidelity in my experience. If you think about it though, faith in romance is not a very romantic ideal. True love should overcome all things! The highest mountains, the furthest distances, social classes,... |
dc73e349-4d31-41ff-af13-648203cd6c3b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Editing Advice for LessWrong Users
Who am I?
I'm an editor who does feedback requests for LessWrong. Many of these feedback requests are for proofreading/clarity of language, so I have lots of experience reading community draft posts and helping improve them. I want to share some high level takeaways - low effort self... |
80780dbd-a86e-4966-a9d4-18716332e885 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | CAIS-inspired approach towards safer and more interpretable AGIs
Epistemic status: a rough sketch of an idea
Current LLMs are huge and opaque. Our interpretability techniques are not adequate. Current LLMs are not likely to run hidden dangerous optimization processes. But larger ones may.
Let's cap the model size at... |
2b367ab4-ce92-41f0-9dd8-91ac8b4d41a0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why Glen Weyl is a technocrat
In 2019 Glen Weyl wrote the article Why I Am Not A Technocrat where he asserted that while he isn't a technocrat the rationality community is technocratic. I think he suffers from a case of projection because he fails to understand the problem of technocracy.
Weyl presents the challenge ... |
ad2d622d-b498-4be9-acc5-011c24a7c916 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Detached Lever Fallacy
This fallacy gets its name from an ancient sci-fi TV show, which I never saw myself, but was reported to me by a reputable source (some guy at an SF convention). Anyone knows the exact reference, do leave a comment.
So the good guys are battling the evil aliens. Occasionally, the good guys ha... |
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