id stringlengths 36 36 | source stringclasses 15
values | formatted_source stringclasses 13
values | text stringlengths 2 7.55M |
|---|---|---|---|
06df8cce-2a37-4592-8982-92818617b94f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Closed Beta Users: What would make you interested in using LessWrong 2.0?
None |
fc223c12-b1dc-4dca-989b-07d98731c024 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info | AI Safety Info | What is imitation learning?
Imitation learning is the process of learning by observing the actions of an expert and then copying their behavior. It is also sometimes called [apprenticeship learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship_learning).
Unlike [reinforcement learning (RL)](/?state=89ZS&question=What... |
d7539061-8ace-456a-9de3-ec507906311a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Agentic Growth
Personal growth is paramount. A north star to chase indefinitely.
However, most of this growth is reactionary. In the same way, we wouldn’t commend a knee for jerking at a doctor’s strike, we shouldn't see this reactionary response as growth.
The connotation of growth is overwhelmingly positive, yet w... |
ae31e455-f0e7-4e00-a57a-eda398023007 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What progress have we made on automated auditing?
One use case for model internals work is to perform automated auditing of models:
https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/cQwT8asti3kyA62zc/automating-auditing-an-ambitious-concrete-technical-research
That is, given a specification of intended behavior, the attacker pro... |
d2cec6d8-1ddd-4534-8bdf-675793882050 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Hypothetical: what would you do?
Let’s pretend I have a semi rigors model that lays out why RLHF is doomed to fail and also that it negatively affects model performance (including why it does so)
Let’s go further into lala land and pretend that I have an architectural plan that does much better, very transparent, st... |
b55530be-3527-47a7-bd16-686d6607c8e2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Futarchy's fundamental flaw
Say you’re Robyn Denholm, chair of Tesla’s board. And say you’re thinking about firing Elon Musk. One way to make up your mind would be to have people bet on Tesla’s stock price six months from now in a market where all bets get cancelled unless Musk is fired. Also, run a second market wher... |
443d5d14-3ebd-412c-b877-a67656cf0a72 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Extended Quote on the Institution of Academia
From the top-notch 80,000 Hours podcast, and their recent interview with Holden Karnofsky (Executive Director of the Open Philanthropy Project).
What follows is an short analysis of what academia does and doesn't do, followed by a few discussion points by me at the end. I... |
47297a73-12e9-46aa-ba28-535c171c6b12 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | What are the coolest topics in AI safety, to a hopelessly pure mathematician?
I am a mathematics grad student. I think that working on AI safety research would be a valuable thing for me to do, *if* the research were something I felt intellectually motivated by. Unfortunately, whether I feel intellectually motivated b... |
6a0efd0b-3706-4eb4-949c-0f42d176de9a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | New Feature: Collaborative editing now supports logged-out users
If you've ever used our collaborative editing features before, you may be familiar with our link-sharing functionality, which previously only allowed users who had existing LessWrong accounts (and were logged in) to collaborate on posts. Now, link-shari... |
a32aea79-25e8-423b-b5db-be424df7be04 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | No, Newspeak Won’t Make You Stupid
In George Orwell's book 1984, he describes a totalitarian society that, among other initiatives to suppress the population, implements "Newspeak", a heavily simplified version of the English language, designed with the stated intent of limiting the citizens' capacity to think for the... |
ae4dc1ef-5f10-4db2-aec5-418070c0309a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Escalator Action
Epistemic Status: Slow ride. Take it easy.
You Memba Elevator Action? I memba.
A recent study (link is to NY Times) came out saying that we should not walk on escalators, because not walking is faster.
From the article:
> The train pulls into Pennsylvania Station during the morning rush, the doors ... |
81c23e0b-1673-4535-b42b-487b3c4f9ca6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Analyzing DeepMind's Probabilistic Methods for Evaluating Agent Capabilities
Produced as part of the MATS Program Summer 2024 Cohort. The project is supervised by Marius Hobbhahn and Jérémy Scheurer
Update: See also our paper on this topic admitted to the NeurIPS 2024 SoLaR Workshop.
Introduction
To mitigate risks ... |
34fbef9f-d17b-43f2-b5f0-010489c668ae | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Problem of Thinking Too Much [LINK]
This was linked to twice recently, once in a Rationality Quotes thread and once in the article about mindfulness meditation, and I thought it deserved its own article.
It's a transcript of a talk by Persi Diaconis, called "The problem of thinking too much". The general theme is... |
35e44cab-2157-46e3-a9e5-9610fc09d441 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Training Regime Day 9: Double-Crux
Introduction
Argument A is a crux for Alice on position P if finding out that A is false causes Alice to substantially chance their view on P. If Alice thinks P, Bob thinks not P, Alice thinks A, Bob thinks not A, and A/not A are both cruxes for Alice and Bob respectively, then A is ... |
c157205e-8545-4fae-ba28-bcd7cd035d21 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | What Machines Shouldn’t Do (Scott Robbins)
right
welcome everyone to uh today's ai tech
agora
um today our speaker is scott robbins uh
before passing the word to him i see
that we have quite a lot of new faces
here
so i will give a very quick introduction
into
[Music]
who we are so i'm arkady i'm a postdoc
at the delf... |
c0ef7988-28aa-46b1-a292-c0da78289855 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The $125,000 Summer Singularity Challenge
From the SingInst blog:
Thanks to the generosity of several major donors†, every donation to the Singularity Institute made now until August 31, 2011 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $125,000.
Donate now!
(Visit the challenge page to see a progress bar.)
... |
8d378418-e79d-4a16-a100-41de129e008c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Review Report of Davidson on Takeoff Speeds (2023)
I have spent some time studying Tom Davidson’s Open Philanthropy report on what a compute-centric framework says about AI takeoff speeds. This research culminated in a report of its own, which I presented to Davidson.
At his encouragement, I’m posting my review, whi... |
7696c7bb-baa1-4661-b12b-e935014e39da | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Mandating Information Disclosure vs. Banning Deceptive Contract Terms
Economists are very into the idea of mutually beneficial exchange. The standard argument is that if two parties voluntarily agree to a deal, then they must be better off with the deal than without it, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed. And if the ... |
fd6e4fa1-b291-429d-94dc-f2c7c864424e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Defining "optimizer"
I've been thinking about how to define "optimizer".
My attempted definition of "optimizer" is, "something such that there is a method of describing a change to it to concretely describe a system that scores unusually highly on another function, for a wide range of functions, in a way that's sign... |
9791bc08-a458-40a8-839b-cb1321cb7210 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | This is Water by David Foster Wallace
Note: It seems like great essays should go here and be fed through the standard LessWrong algorithm. There is possibly a copyright issue here, but we aren't making any money off it either. What follows is a full copy of "This is Water" by David Foster Wallace his 2005 commencement... |
f75c6734-629e-44f9-b729-a0199dcdec87 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Act into Fear and Abandon all Hope
|
2083396e-276a-4e7c-ba35-ad10b2d0d207 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [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. In particular, you can look through this spreadsheet of all summaries that have ever been in ... |
365274b8-0466-4aa0-ad59-d8efa1f6cd01 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Main paths to impact in EU AI Policy
Epistemic status
================
* This is a tentative overview of the current main paths to impact in EU AI Policy. There is significant uncertainty regarding the relative impact of the different paths below
* The paths mentioned below were cross-checked with four experts workin... |
9062a179-9041-44bb-9876-589a5b90abd8 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | [Linkpost] ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead
[Geoffrey Hinton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hinton)—a pioneer in artificial neural networks—just left Google, as reported by the *New York Times*: [‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead](https://www.nytime... |
3fc54709-b8c8-45c0-a6d1-f635708ea9a2 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Stephen Hsu on Cognitive Genomics
Stephen Hsu is Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies and Professor of Theoretical Physics [at Michigan State University](http://www.epi.msu.edu/seminars/hsu.html). Educated at Caltech and ... |
c29be186-59db-4c68-91aa-a4af252719e7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What we could learn from the frequency of near-misses in the field of global risks (Happy Bassett-Bordne day!)
I wrote an article how we could use such data in order to estimate cumulative probability of the nuclear war up to now.
TL;DR: from other domains we know that frequency of close calls is around 100:1 to actu... |
84e46cb2-7ebd-4874-8a3f-7371714566a0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The nihilism of NeurIPS
> "What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?" F. SHERWOOD HOWLAND in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995.
> "Once upon a time on Tralfamadore the... |
0d138574-1325-4b52-af20-599e6a594f1c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Generalising Logic Gates
Logic circuits traditionally consist of a directed, acyclic graph. Each node can take a value of 0 or 1. The nodes can have 0, 1, or 2 inputs. 0-input nodes are the "input" for the whole system. 1-input nodes are always NOT gates, they output 0 if they are input 1 and vice versa. 2-input nodes... |
33be54e6-fc40-4a26-a490-e39d5d62789e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Blackmail Equation
This is Eliezer's model of blackmail in decision theory at the recent workshop at SIAI, filtered through my own understanding. Eliezer help and advice were much appreciated; any errors here-in are my own.
The mysterious stranger blackmailing the Countess of Rectitude over her extra-marital affa... |
00992ade-3e05-4485-9c8f-0a2e483ef8c8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Training Regime Day 15: CoZE
Note: this is going to be short because I spent some time doing COVID-19 preparations, which I encourage you do to also. I think that it is better for my commitment to post at least one thing a day, even if it's bad. I anticipate heavily revising this later, when I have more time.
Introd... |
750bc32f-54fb-4491-8b2c-9c02428020f0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Proceedings of ILIAD: Lessons and Progress
tl;dr
This post is an update on the Proceedings of ILIAD, a conference journal for AI alignment research intended to bridge the gap between the Alignment Forum and academia. Following our successful first issue with 9 workshop papers from last year's ILIAD conference, we're l... |
0383dc18-e783-4171-ae81-e27895e2954b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Communication Requires Common Interests or Differential Signal Costs
> If a lion could speak, we could not understand her.
>
> —Ludwig Wittgenstein
In order for information to be transmitted from one place to another, it needs to be conveyed by some physical medium: material links of cause and effect that vary in re... |
e5a949ed-b27b-47d8-b2bf-57a85ad28122 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Suffering as attention-allocational conflict
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." Wh... |
7676e6c1-a826-4e29-bd79-40f27885c052 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Be Logically Informative
What's the googolplexth decimal of pi? I don't know, but I know that it's rational for me to give each possible digit P=1/10. So there's a sense in which I can rationally assign probabilities to mathematical facts or computation outcomes on which I'm uncertain. (Apparently this can be modeled ... |
25a53757-7e8d-4fac-aa9e-0d046be2188f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Pretending to be Wise
Today's post, Pretending to be Wise was originally published on 19 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> Trying to signal wisdom or maturity by taking a neutral position is very seldom the right course of action.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments ... |
2385a9ba-a925-4f4c-b279-0b2cdfc5a70b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Newcomb Variant
There are two boxes. If you open a box, you get to keep the contents.
Omega is an omniscient oracle. Omega predicts what will happen if you open the first box and observe that it contains $100.
* If Omega predicts that you will open the second box, then Omega puts $0 in both boxes.
* If Omega predi... |
dfb29ef2-714e-460b-81e1-c5facbcc3a2a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Robin Hanson's lists of Overcoming Bias Posts
I have created a list of Overcoming Bias posts for Robin Hanson available here. Additionally, using the links inside each posts, I have created a set of graphs (available here) such that if post A has a link to post B, then there is an arc from B to A. Enjoy! (There are al... |
3985a431-42a1-485b-9804-23582cb7a84d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Less Wrong NH Meet-up
Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meet-up
WHEN: 25 August 2015 07:00:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: 269 Pearl St, Manchester NH 03104
The third NH meet-up is Tuesday, 8/25, in Manchester, NH at 7 pm at a private residence. Light refreshments will be provided.
Have you read Ratio... |
0b51c2e9-0aa5-4dd5-a500-0e6cdf367337 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Social awkwardness as an application of analysis paralysis
That day I was walking in the dull corridors of the university. I stumbled upon this research poster on Alpha Centauri, the kind which they only display in dull corridors. Shortly after, my double-PhD physics teacher (the kind they put in dull corridors) walke... |
feaa54dc-7848-4543-9ea2-2750941b0479 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Paper: LLMs trained on “A is B” fail to learn “B is A”
This post is the copy of the introduction of this paper on the Reversal Curse.
Authors: Lukas Berglund, Meg Tong, Max Kaufmann, Mikita Balesni, Asa Cooper Stickland, Tomasz Korbak, Owain Evans
Abstract
We expose a surprising failure of generalization in auto-r... |
b9562748-57be-410b-bc74-ebd26f02269e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | AIXI-style IQ tests
"Measuring universal intelligence: Towards an anytime intelligence test"; abstract:
>
> In this paper, we develop the idea of a universal anytime intelligence test. The meaning of the terms “universal” and “anytime” is manifold here: the test should be able to measure the intelligence of any bi... |
c73f8e10-1084-4b26-a093-240278e63cc5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Help make the orca language experiment happen
Context: I think there’s a ~17% chance that average orcas are >=+6std intelligent.
TLDR: I have an experiment proposal for testing how quickly orcas might be able to learn a well-designed language and for getting a better model of how smart they are. I think making that e... |
eeecf976-ad77-4187-936d-6022c8ef2632 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Three Types of Constraints in the Space of Agents
[Epistemic status: a new perspective on an old thing that may or may not turn out to be useful.]
TDLR: What sorts of forces and/or constraints shape and structure the space of possible agents? What sort of agents are possible? What sort of agents are likely? Why do we... |
03b28225-a392-4642-8920-a6e9122c7690 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [MLSN #7]: an example of an emergent internal optimizer
As part of a larger community building effort, CAIS is writing a safety newsletter that is designed to cover empirical safety research and be palatable to the broader machine learning research community. You can subscribe here or follow the newsletter on twitter ... |
76f5b070-78db-4bc9-8bf6-7a9d9cca0c52 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Alignment 101 - Ch.2 - Reward Misspecification
Overview
========
1. **Reinforcement Learning**: The chapter starts with a reminder of some reinforcement learning concepts. This includes a quick dive into the concept of rewards and reward functions. This section lays the groundwork for explaining why reward design is ... |
cceaf20b-44ca-4972-a71f-f66d24c1e81e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Juneberry Cake
The Juneberries are ripe, and the kids got pretty excited about picking some at the park:
This is not a berry I knew about growing up. In gardens there were strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries, and there were mulberries on street trees, but when I saw these berries I assumed they... |
4e3fb831-950a-444d-aef9-24382a23ba5a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are LLMs sufficient for AI takeoff?
I have an intuition, and I may be heterodox here, that LLMs on their own are not sufficient, no matter how powerful and knowledgeable they get. Put differently, the reasons that powerful LLMs are profoundly unsafe are primarily social: e.g. they will be hooked up to the internet to ... |
0b1bb474-81b7-42fd-aa77-26de2312692e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Relative likelihood
Relative likelihoods express how *relatively* more likely an observation is, comparing one hypothesis to another. For example, suppose we're investigating the murder of Mr. Boddy, and we find that he was killed by poison. The suspects are Miss Scarlett and Colonel Mustard. Now, suppose that the [p... |
ee8f307d-e2db-4c66-a0e3-6e4db277343a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Shah and Yudkowsky on alignment failures
This is the final discussion log in the [Late 2021 MIRI Conversations](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/n945eovrA3oDueqtq) sequence, featuring Rohin Shah and Eliezer Yudkowsky, with additional comments from Rob Bensinger, Nate Soares, Richard Ngo, and Jaan Tallinn.
The discussion b... |
26aaf148-2a58-4a91-9af2-39dd2df3a0e9 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Contending Frames: Evaluating Rhetorical Dynamics in AI
Contending Frames Evaluating Rhetorical Dynamics in AI
CSET Issue Brief
AUTHORS Andrew Imbrie Rebecca Gelles James Dunham Catherine Aiken
May 2021
Center for Security and Emerging Technology | 1 Executive Summary The narrative of an artificial intelligence ... |
44fd9620-bf4f-4d9b-aa3e-6c164f7b733f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Very Concrete Model of Learning From Regrets
Warning 1: This post is written in the form of Java-like pseudocode.
If you have no knowledge of programming, you might have trouble understanding it.
(If you do, it still does not guarantee you will understand, but your chances are better.)
Warning 2: I have more t... |
acba58ee-4ca2-4d72-9185-d7f7b53be053 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Shanghai Less Wrong Meetup #2 Wednesday May 11th, 7pm
John Teddy has asked me to post the following meetup on Less Wrong:
> Shanghai Lesswrong Meeting #2
>
> Wednesday May 11th, 7pm, XuHui District, Shanghai, China (private residence not listed, please contact John Teddy)
> The first meeting was a success. There are... |
3f4cd3df-c9bf-4838-a8a6-aa107fb0ee1f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Building AI Research Fleets
From AI scientist to AI research fleet
Research automation is here (1, 2, 3). We saw it coming and planned ahead, which puts us ahead of most (4, 5, 6). But that foresight also comes with a set of outdated expectations that are holding us back. In particular, research automation is not just... |
f112119c-2db4-463a-b3b7-66a7289f47fb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | On The Effectiveness of Ferriss
Tim Ferriss has been systematically quoted on Less Wrong.
How to make money to donate utilons and show you care is a persistent topic on Less Wrong.
No one here seems to either have tried, or accessed the feasibility of Tim Ferrissing life (for instance accessing by checking for peopl... |
ca83c240-c715-407b-85b5-b1374910fd8f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | NeurIPSorICML_q243b-by Vael Gates-date 20220318
# Interview with AI Researchers NeurIPSorICML\_q243b by Vael Gates
\*\*Interview with q243b, on 3/18/22\*\*
\*\*0:00:00.0 Vael:\*\* Cool. Alright. So my first question is, can you tell me about what area of AI you work on in a few sentences?
\*\*0:00:09.0 Interviewee:... |
d45f4de7-f367-4244-8f4e-63d52b31ebc4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Vienna Meetup #2
Discussion article for the meetup : Vienna Meetup #2
WHEN: 13 April 2013 04:00:00PM (+0200)
WHERE: Schottengasse 2, 1010 Innere Stadt (1.Bez)
WHEN: 13 April 2013 16:00
WHERE: Cafe Im Schottenstift (Schottengasse 2)
Agenda: we will be discussing developments since last meeting, future pro... |
a3d30eb2-3554-438e-aaa3-5cd2833b2755 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Tech Industry is the Biggest Blocker to Meaningful AI Safety Regulations
If you enjoy this, please consider subscribing to my Substack.
My latest reporting went up in The Nation yesterday:
It’s about the tech industry’s meltdown in response to SB 1047, a California bill that would be the country’s first signific... |
3532a30c-b953-4818-b066-df803131463b | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | [linkpost] Ten Levels of AI Alignment Difficulty
*This is a linkpost for* [*https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EjgfreeibTXRx9Ham/ten-levels-of-ai-alignment-difficulty*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EjgfreeibTXRx9Ham/ten-levels-of-ai-alignment-difficulty)
We don't know how hard AI alignment will turn out to be. There ... |
29ead165-088e-4522-98e8-1efabf8244ad | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Better thinking through experiential games
A few years ago I came across The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Doerner (previously mentioned on LW) which discusses cognitive failures in people dealing with "complex situations".
One section (p.1 28) discusses a little simulation game, where participants are told to "steer"... |
f89638f5-ba7d-4541-88ca-561511b063d8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Shared AI Wins
Today's post, Shared AI Wins was originally published on December 6, 2008. A summary:
> AIs do have enormous difficulties in communicating. That's why decreasing those difficulties is important. Collections of AIs that are able to share data, like ems, are more likely to succeed at makin... |
78ab3053-46e6-437e-91dc-3ab1a156d374 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Problems of evil
(Cross-posted from Hands and Cities)
I.
I wasn’t raised in a religious household, but I got interested in Buddhism at the end of high school, and in Christianity and a number of other traditions, early in college. Those were the days of the New Atheists, and of intricate wrangling over theistic apol... |
2a0b7320-a1d9-4abb-a128-92b052d79e61 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Request to AGI organizations: Share your views on pausing AI progress
A few observations from the last few weeks:
* On March 22, FLI published an [open letter](https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/) calling for a six-month moratorium on frontier AI progress.
* On March 29, Eliezer Yudkowsky... |
e4a87d40-ad81-45fa-b62f-26f0fa7eb203 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Kamelo: A Rule-Based Constructed Language for Universal, Logical Communication
Introduction
Natural languages are messy, ambiguous, and often inefficient for transmitting structured ideas. Kamelo is a proposal for a constructed language designed to address these issues by building words from logical, compositional un... |
5d0d20fd-7eee-48ca-8d2f-b2881acca439 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is taking bacopa good for life extension?
I've heard it reduces memory erasures, but I wonder if you think it seems overall net positive or negative in terms of identity preservation |
1511453d-e758-49df-82a5-78ba44374c08 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Where did the 5 micron number come from? Nowhere good. [Wired.com]
This article describe's a scientist's attempt to figure out where the 5 micron number, and general belief that most respiratory diseases weren't airborne, came from. She eventually traces it back to a particular number developed for a very different pu... |
9e0f7f1e-06f2-48a8-9c1b-fdfe67c62f83 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Scenario analysis: semi-general AIs
Are there any essays anywhere that go in depth about scenarios where AIs become somewhat recursive/general in that they can write functioning code to solve diverse problems, but the AI reflection problem remains unsolved and thus limits the depth of recursion attainable by the AIs? ... |
4e21b3ea-3f47-4a31-80d3-ffff6d5a2dab | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Purposeful Anti-Rush
Why do we rush?
Things happen; Life gets in the way, and suddenly we find ourselves trying to get to somewhere with less time than it's possible to actually get there in. So in the intention to get there sooner; to somehow compensate ourselves for not being on time; we rush. We run; we get clums... |
51840831-f8ac-46c7-a9d9-3901056b1df7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : London social meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : London social meetup
WHEN: 01 June 2014 02:00:00PM (+0100)
WHERE: Shakespeare's Head, Holborn, WC2B 6BG
Your regularly scheduled meetup. Join us from 2pm to talk about the sorts of things that your other friends will look funny at you for talking abo... |
291ed511-2675-4fb1-bf10-2c83deca8879 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How to solve the misuse problem assuming that in 10 years the default scenario is that AGI agents are capable of synthetizing pathogens
Introduction
As artificial intelligence continues to revolutionize scientific research, the world is facing an unprecedented challenge in biosecurity. While AI's ability to democra... |
8cf28091-79b9-4db3-b0a3-3d67e76b3dee | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Cancer scientist meets amateur (This American Life)
This American Life episode 450: "So Crazy It Just Might Work". The whole episode is good, but act one (6:48-42:27) is relevant to LW, about a trained scientist teaming up with an amateur on a cancer cure.
It's downloadable until 19 Nov 2011 or so, and streamable the... |
e33a92bd-bf22-4821-8ecb-363f42055ea5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] The Weak Inside View
Today's post, The Weak Inside View was originally published on 18 November 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> On cases where the causal factors creating a circumstance are changing, the outside view may be misleading. In that case, the best you can do may just be to take t... |
031c70cf-9574-4916-b1a9-4eb217d14e39 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI Benefits Post 3: Direct and Indirect Approaches to AI Benefits
This is a post in a series on "AI Benefits." It is cross-posted from my personal blog. For other entries in this series, navigate to the AI Benefits Blog Series Index page.
This post is also discussed on the Effective Altruism Forum.
For comments on t... |
09847cc3-4a95-47f5-a2d2-f0af9a2618c5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Compromise: Send Meta Discussions to the Unofficial LessWrong Subreddit
After a recent comment thread degenerated into an argument about trolling, moderation, and meta discussions, I came to the following conclusions:
1. Meta conversations are annoying to stumble across, I'd rather not see them unless I think it's i... |
fda9b3e4-6a82-4c76-8bb1-8174cd3eb5fe | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Requesting feedback/advice: what Type Theory to study for AI safety?
TL;DR:
Requesting feedback or advice on questions of what math to study (or what projects to engage in) in order to learn how to prove things about programs and to analyze the difficulty/possibility of proving things about programs. Ulterior motive: ... |
b807ec12-c847-4e89-92f3-5847805c8476 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Vote for MIRI to be donated a share of reddit's advertising revenue
http://www.reddit.com/donate?organization=582565917
"Today we are announcing that we will donate 10% of our advertising revenue receipts in 2014 to non-profits chosen by the reddit community. Whether it’s a large ad campaign or a $5 sponsored head... |
4751e02c-2fa1-42d2-ad85-a2a8b32f5011 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why do patients in mental institutions get so little attention in the public discourse?
Scott writes in My IRB nightmare about how his colleague took people freedom away and justified it with tests that aren't validated for the purpose of diagnosis and that have a warning THIS IS JUST A SCREENING TEST IT IS NOT INTEND... |
4030e49a-1895-469d-887f-4cf1565ecedd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Shouldn't it matter to the victim?
(Cross-posted from Hands and Cities)
This post describes what I see as a basic but powerful objection to treating certain deontological distinctions as justified via some intrinsically important moral difference they reflect or respond to. In brief, the objection is that the distinc... |
86893ec4-18e1-4b53-9aa3-0ab70702cda1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | More podcasts on 2023 AI survey: Cognitive Revolution and FLI
Two new discussions of the 2023 ESPAI:
Possibly I have a podcasting facial expression.
(If you want to listen in on more chatting about this survey, see also: Eye4AI podcast. Honestly I can’t remember how much overlap there is between the different ones... |
d051ca16-9847-477b-89ed-0f3bc4c9a316 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Neural Network And Newton's Second Law
When Isaac Newton formulated his Second Law (𝐹 = 𝑚𝑎), observation and experimentation were crucial. Drawing on experiments, many influenced by Galileo and others, he concluded that force causes changes in motion, or acceleration. This process involved solving both forward and ... |
f6999af3-5e55-4764-8bb0-17eb2c021429 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Personal Ruminations on AI's Missing Variable Problem
My thinking differs somewhat from that of others. My worrying is more about potential outcome scenarios and their respective likelihoods, akin to a predictive modeling AI. I often find myself wrestling with potentialities that cannot be definitively proven unless t... |
bb5e4ae6-f0d2-4b21-b2d6-5c740a006156 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | April Coronavirus Open Thread
Last month’s Coronavirus Open Thread did a fantastic job at being a place for coronavirus-related information and questions that didn’t merit a top level post, but at almost 400 comments, many of which were great at the time but are now obsolete, it’s getting a little creaky. So for the n... |
0ea6b789-3649-4abd-9dc3-1605615cefe3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Eudaimonic Utilitarianism
Eliezer Yudkowsky on several occasions has used the term “Eudaimonia” to describe an objectively desirable state of existence. While the meta-ethics sequence on Less Wrong has been rather emphatic that simple universal moral theories are inadequate due to the complex nature of human values, o... |
886e5547-3efc-42c4-a96c-c8bc2d010435 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Renormalization Roadmap
At PIBBSS, we’ve been thinking about how renormalization can be developed into a rich framework for AI interpretability. This document serves as a roadmap for this research agenda – which we are calling an Opportunity Space[1] for the AI safety community. In what follows, we explore the technic... |
69f31947-8795-4052-8371-e36c89e70391 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Startups as a Rationality Test Bed?
What attributes make a task useful for rationality verification?
After thinking it over I believe I have identified three main components. The first is that the task should be as grounded in the real world as is possible. The second is that the task should be involve a wide variet... |
9c0f43a0-49c1-4291-9d50-56f16d311d24 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | A Small Negative Result on Debate
Some context for this [new arXiv paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.05212) from my group at NYU:
* We're working toward [sandwiching](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/PZtsoaoSLpKjjbMqM/the-case-for-aligning-narrowly-superhuman-models) experiments using our [QuALITY long-document Q... |
63486998-a446-4a79-a443-aa9c6c3364ae | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Entropy and Temperature
Eliezer Yudkowsky previously wrote (6 years ago!) about the second law of thermodynamics. Many commenters were skeptical about the statement, "if you know the positions and momenta of every particle in a glass of water, it is at absolute zero temperature," because they don't know what temperatu... |
b134a1d4-0d91-4e97-b016-49e3afc29a50 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Two Stupid AI Alignment Ideas
Epistemic status: this is not my field. I am unfamiliar with any research in it beyond what I've seen on LW. These are the best ideas I could come up with when stopping to think about the problem, and aren't things I've seen on LW, but I don't imagine that they're original and I would h... |
bd5d64a6-8133-441a-99cd-f4be169a7e2b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Solving Pascal’s Wager using dynamic programming
In Infinite Ethics Nick Bostrom argues against using discount factors to resolve problems created by the temporal and spatial infinities that arise in moral theories. While this argument is compelling in the context of aggregative consequentialism it is less compelling ... |
608de7a8-e7e0-4991-a42f-6fdc8bb97a9c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Thinking like a Scientist
I've been often wondering why scientific thinking seems to be so rare. What I mean by this is dividing problems into theory and empiricism, specifying your theory exactly then looking for evidence to either confirm or deny the theory, or finding evidence to later form an exact theory.
This... |
d7c98f46-f9af-4199-b691-69ebb917ff38 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Capabilities and alignment of LLM cognitive architectures
Epistemic status: Hoping for help working through these new ideas.
TLDR:
Scaffolded[1], "agentized" LLMs that combine and extend the approaches in AutoGPT, HuggingGPT, Reflexion, and BabyAGI seem likely to be a focus of near-term AI development. LLMs by thems... |
b7ecb436-a2f3-40cb-9071-f061d4253e7e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI #56: Blackwell That Ends Well
Hopefully, anyway. Nvidia has a new chip.
Also Altman has a new interview.
And most of Inflection has new offices inside Microsoft.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction.
2. Table of Contents.
3. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Open the book.
4. Clauding Along. Claude co... |
d7f1d093-2f53-4c15-9ff7-0a35f668917e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Isomorphic agents with different preferences: any suggestions?
In order to better understand how AI might succeed and fail at learning knowledge, I'll be trying to construct models of limited agents (with bias, knowledge, and preferences) that display identical behaviour in a wide range of circumstance (but not all). ... |
09fa7986-97c7-4e23-8a93-fa30edc4802a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Monthly Roundup #25: December 2024
I took a trip to San Francisco early in December.
Ever since then, things in the world of AI have been utterly insane.
Google and OpenAI released endless new products, including Google Flash 2.0 and o1.
Redwood Research and Anthropic put out the most important alignment paper of t... |
b9148778-d61a-427f-9cba-6999035ec86f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Delayed Gratification vs. a Time-Dependent Utility Function
Ideally, a utility function would be a rational, perfect, constant entity that accounted for all possible variables, but mine certainly isn't. In fact, I'd feel quite comfortable claiming that no humans at the time of writing do.
When confronted with the fac... |
2e294846-5129-4de9-9a4b-f1d22023131d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Value of Information: 8 examples
ciphergoth just asked what the actual value of Quantified Self/self-experimentation is. This finally tempted me into running value of information calculations on my own experiments. It took me all afternoon because it turned out I didn’t actually understand how to do it and I had a har... |
9e28cae7-6b91-41b3-911c-899182a89498 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | o3
See livestream, site, OpenAI thread, Nat McAleese thread.
OpenAI announced (but isn't yet releasing) o3 and o3-mini (skipping o2 because of telecom company O2's trademark). "We plan to deploy these models early next year." "o3 is powered by further scaling up RL beyond o1"; I don't know whether it's a new base mod... |
e8d50b59-760d-4bc2-b28c-6f8a5d2b8997 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Anthropic Observations
Dylan Matthews had in depth Vox profile of Anthropic, which I recommend reading in full if you have not yet done so. This post covers that one.
ANTHROPIC HYPOTHESIS
The post starts by describing an experiment. Evan Hubinger is attempting to create a version of Claude that will optimize in part... |
f6093273-f2ab-4c5a-b1c3-36dce3e89cae | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | On Systems - Living a life of zero willpower
(This post is about the mindset of thinking in systems and routines. This post is mostly from my perspective, but the technique is super subjective. I’ve written up a lesson plan more aimed more at teaching the tools for how to find systems for your problems)
Introduction... |
0458ea51-95ac-4634-aae8-131248610abc | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Response to Oren Etzioni's "How to know if artificial intelligence is about to destroy civilization"
Oren Etzioni recently wrote a [popular article titled "How to know if artificial intelligence is about to destroy civilization."](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615264/artificial-intelligence-destroy-civilization-c... |
4562a425-0360-447f-85b3-f8a8c1b95808 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | MIRI’s 2019 Fundraiser
(Crossposted from the MIRI blog)
MIRI’s 2019 fundraiser is now live, December 2–31!
Over the past two years, huge donor support has helped us double the size of our AI alignment research team. Hitting our $1M fundraising goal this month will put us in a great position to continue our growth in... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.