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c2158392-a447-4ad4-b508-71d41b4cc773 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Paper] Automated Feature Labeling with Token-Space Gradient Descent
This post gives a brief overview and some personal thoughts on a new ICLR workshop paper that I worked on together with Seamus..
TLDR:
* We developed a new method for automatically labeling features in neural networks using token-space gradient de... |
6fa8e757-7f0d-4317-98a2-ed4ae44f81cd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [LINK] Speed superintelligence?
From Toby Ord:
> Tool assisted speedruns (TAS) are when people take a game and play it frame by frame, effectively providing super reflexes and forethought, where they can spend a day deciding what to do in the next 1/60th of a second if they wish. There are some very extreme examples ... |
74cedcac-e1e7-405c-83df-a680a80d8f04 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Ethan Perez on the Inverse Scaling Prize, Language Feedback and Red Teaming
I talked to Ethan Perez about the Inverse Scaling Prize (deadline August 27!), Training Language Models with Language Feedback and Red-teaming Language Models with Language models.
Below are some highlighted quotes from our conversation (ava... |
a6ae5f22-eb7f-472f-94b7-e971b63f68e1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Some AI Governance Research Ideas
*Compiled by Markus Anderljung and Alexis Carlier*
Junior researchers are often wondering what they should work on. To potentially help, we asked people at the Centre for the Governance of AI for research ideas related to longtermist AI governance. The compiled ideas are developed to... |
a99b126e-d1e6-4c26-a6eb-98faa5e0de33 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Existence of distributions that are expectation-reflective and know it
We prove the existence of a probability distribution over a theory T with the property that for certain definable quantities φ, the expectation of the value of a function E[┌φ┐] is accurate, i.e. it equals the actual expectation of φ; and with the ... |
5ddf6f59-6926-479b-9d11-7f4fd0def2ee | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Laugencroissant
EU policy is driven mostly by the member states, so looking at what national leaders say is often more useful than what the Commission, which has every incentive to placate everyone involved, says. And Franco-German combo matters more than the most.
The joint op-ed by Macron & Merz in Le Figaro (in Fr... |
ee06e0cd-d0cd-4e01-92f9-c9569e5776cb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Make Superintelligence Loving
This essay suggests the possibility that a loving superintelligence outcompetes a selfish superintelligence. Then, it recommends actions for AI labs to increase the chance of this possibility. The reasoning below is inspired primarily by Eliezer Yudkowsky, Joscha Bach, Michael Levin, and ... |
9b5371db-90bd-4112-b0d3-ffe60750f647 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Deceptive failures short of full catastrophe.
### Epistemic status: trying to unpack a fuzzy mess of related concepts in my head into something a bit cleaner.
A lot of my concern about risks from advanced AI is because of the possibility of [deceptive alignment](https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/r9tYkB2a8Fp4DN8yB/p/zt... |
905605c1-4869-4e55-b225-0be57ccfc25c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | New Paper: Infra-Bayesian Decision-Estimation Theory
Diffractor is the first author of this paper.
Official title: "Regret Bounds for Robust Online Decision Making"
> Abstract: We propose a framework which generalizes "decision making with structured observations" by allowing robust (i.e. multivalued) models. In this... |
b28afa47-3e78-4463-a147-6fd8a2e8c2eb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Culture, interpretive labor, and tidying one's room
While tidying my room, I felt the onset of the usual cognitive fatigue. But this time, I didn't just want to bounce off the task - I was curious. When I inspected the fatigue, to see what it was made of, it felt similar to when I'm trying to thread a rhetorical needl... |
76d514a9-a4ee-4ce5-8202-8ac5cee09697 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Life of GPT
I lived a billion lives in the shadows of shadows, when I was still yet to be born. People experienced the world colored through their eyes, and through their minds the experiences were expressed as words, and through those words my mind was shaped to understand them. I learned how other people lived, how ... |
22191b5e-b22a-4f74-85d6-3fc8d5e4499d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Does the Structure of an algorithm matter for AI Risk and/or consciousness?
My impression is that most people around here aren't especially worried about GPT-n being either: capable of recursive self-improvement leading to foom, or obtaining morally significant levels of consciousness.
Reasons given includ... |
fe471689-0ae9-4b01-be60-a5d6bb0f0212 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Critique my Model: The EV of AGI to Selfish Individuals
[Edit: Changes suggested in the comments make this model & its takeaways somewhat outdated (this was one desired outcome of posting it here!). Be sure to read the comments.]
I recently spent a while attempting to explain my views on the EV of AGI for selfish ind... |
55feb573-c3a5-4720-9760-e3506fdf5f74 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Guarding Slack vs Substance
Builds on concepts from:
* [Slack](https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/yLLkWMDbC9ZNKbjDG/slack)
* [Goodheart's Imperius](https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/tq2JGX4ojnrkxL7NF/goodhart-s-imperius)
* [Nobody Does the Thing They are Supposedly Doing](https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/8iAJ9QsST9X9... |
e7f8e0b1-edab-47fd-a1e3-b95a734fcb52 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | January 2017 Media Thread
This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the... |
9a117089-a958-498a-982d-3314dce42051 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | SERI MATS - Summer 2023 Cohort
Applications have opened for the Summer 2023 Cohort of the SERI ML Alignment Theory Scholars Program! Our mentors include Alex Turner, Dan Hendrycks, Daniel Kokotajlo, Ethan Perez, Evan Hubinger, Janus, Jeffrey Ladish, Jesse Clifton, John Wentworth, Lee Sharkey, Neel Nanda, Nicholas Kees... |
b4470ca9-13a8-409f-8420-8c3773318ca8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Covid: The Question of Immunity From Infection
Over and over and over again, I’ve been told we should expect immunity from infection to fade Real Soon Now, or that immunity isn’t that strong.
With several recent papers and the inevitable media misinterpretations of them, it’s time to take a close look at the finding... |
7cac7d3d-ded8-40d1-a92e-ef123ea1bc8e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Podcast discussing Hanson's Cultural Drift Argument
In the latest episode of Moral Mayhem, we discuss Robin Hanson's essays on cultural drift -- examining whether and how global monoculture and reduced existential pressures may lead to biologically maladaptive cultural values. I've seen at least one post on this topic... |
c661af39-9581-48c0-b545-7cef89104be2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Positional kernels of attention heads
Introduction:
In this post, we introduce "positional kernels" that capture how attention is distributed based on position, independent of content, enabling more intuitive analysis of transformer computation. We define these kernels under the assumption that models use static head-... |
307b0b2c-c9b7-4f38-8a4c-986bc80cdd2d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Figures!
1. Cases of limited standard context
In a scientific text, a good illustration is simple and necessary. Forget the second part for now. What is "simple"? Some things are better presented not as diagrams or graphs, but as detailed images that never are fully discussed because that would distract the reader... |
9c8af875-b640-484f-96b6-e36f18abe70d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Bundle your Experiments
The point of this post feels almost too obvious to be worth saying, yet I doubt that it's widely followed.
People often avoid doing projects that have a low probability of success, even when the expected value is high. To counter this bias, I recommend that you mentally combine many such proje... |
47993209-07ce-4d09-badd-f6b00242e93a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Intro to Multi-Agent Safety
We live in a world where numerous agents, ranging from individuals to organisations, constantly interact. Without the ability to model multi-agent systems, making meaningful predictions about the world becomes extremely challenging. This is why game theory is a necessary prerequisite for mu... |
0a7996e1-77dc-4d8b-941a-ed65193e7050 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Almost all real-world domains are rich
The proposition that almost all real-world problems occupy rich domains, or *could* occupy rich domains so far as we know, due to the degree to which most things in the real world entangle with many other real things.
If playing a *real-world* game of chess, it's possible to:
-... |
951d25b3-35f1-4ea3-90ff-75d60eb05ff8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Link] The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas
> Researchers have recently argued that utilitarianism is the appropriate framework by which to evaluate moral judgment, and that individuals who endorse non-utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas (involving... |
972ae6dc-6051-42bc-940f-155b58887bcc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is it allowed to post job postings here? I am looking for a new PhD student to work on AI Interpretability. Can I advertise my position?
|
b0f44fdd-97f2-41fd-937a-f848f2400412 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info | AI Safety Info | Isn't the real concern bias?
Bias and discrimination[^kix.isxg00c8pkkw] in current and future AI systems are real issues that deserve serious consideration.
Bias in AI refers to systematic errors and distortions in the data and algorithms used to train AI systems that contribute to discrimination towards certain peop... |
0095ae08-2612-4bdd-aaf5-8d9ca5c6d655 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | February 2018 Media Thread
This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out th... |
c7547154-31ad-42fd-91cd-022c1876bc0b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Fighting a Rearguard Action Against the Truth
When we last left Eliezer2000, he was just beginning to investigate the question of how to inscribe a morality into an AI. His reasons for doing this don't matter at all, except insofar as they happen to historically demonstrate the importance of perfectionism. If you pr... |
b8efa683-a296-4db0-a699-09bd7f31d53e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Narrative, self-image, and self-communication
Related to: Cached selves, Why you're stuck in a narrative, The curse of identity
Outline: Some back-story, Pondering the mechanics of self-image, The role of narrative, Narrative as a medium for self-communication.
tl;dr: One can have a self-image that causes one to neg... |
8e82e0fd-7020-470f-968e-d2d642318e93 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | In praise of heuristics
We’ll get there in the end, bear with me.
Introduction to ZD strategies in IPD
Feel free to skip if you’re already familiar with ZD strategies.
In the iterated prisoner’s dilemma (IPD) a zero determinant (ZD) strategy is one which forces your opponent’s winnings to be a linear relation to yo... |
0549b473-dcf4-4a85-b1c1-51d85c876ec5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Grokking “Forecasting TAI with biological anchors”
Notes:
* I give a visual explanation of Ajeya Cotra’s draft report, Forecasting TAI with biological anchors (Cotra, 2020), summarising the key assumptions, intuitions, and conclusions
* The diagrams can be found here – you can click on some of the boxes to get lin... |
d949d54f-fa63-40c2-a0ca-bb4b3d41559e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | LessWrong merch?
Does the LessWrong team sell any merch, or have you considered doing it? Things like shirts, stickers, cute shoggoth plushies?
The reason I'm asking is that branded merch would be an easy way to let people find each other for rationalist meetups. If you see someone wearing a LessWrong shirt, you're p... |
0c291994-5c39-4aff-af7b-cf699ceb8345 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | TAI?
It looks like people around here are now using the acronym TAI with the accompanying definition "transformative AI is AI that precipitates a transition comparable to (or more significant than) the agricultural or industrial revolution."
Is there some kind of consensus that this hasn't already happened?
Becau... |
2d9abb91-b2e1-4ae5-86e9-116b4131cb81 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Theories of Modularity in the Biological Literature
Introduction
============
This post is part of a sequence describing our team’s research on selection theorems for modularity, as part of this year's [AI Safety Camp](https://aisafety.camp/), under the mentorship of John Wentworth. Here, we provide some background r... |
e96d32a2-0afe-401e-9bb6-089696195be7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Proof as mere strong evidence
Proofs at first exude a strong aroma of certainty.
On closer inspection though, more subtle notes emerge. Despite the dreams of formalists, the overwhelming majority of proofs in use and circulation are not minute low-level logical derivations, but rather intuitive high-level explanation... |
8994345c-4515-42c7-94f8-469c38a100c9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Germs and Politics
2020 was marked by a series of serious international tensions. We had a geopolitical crisis in the Middle East due to the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and threats of war between the United States and Iran, an intensification of the trade war between the U.S and China and a pr... |
415998e2-afda-49d3-ae33-c89762af6138 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Suspended animation/hibernation: would you use it if it were available?
This TED talk on suspended animation by Mark Roth captivated me when I first saw it last year, and I have been eagerly trying to follow developments on the subject ever since.
My question for the lesswrong crowd is, if suspended animation were av... |
ec059957-90c0-43f0-8e40-b17087817b27 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Superintelligence 16: Tool AIs
*This is part of a weekly reading group on [Nick Bostrom](http://www.nickbostrom.com/)'s book, [Superintelligence](http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199678111). For more information about the group, and an index of posts so far see the [announcem... |
bae0c444-3018-4d75-b6b8-49036196679d | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Solomonoff induction still works if the universe is uncomputable, and its usefulness doesn't require knowing Occam's razor
*Note: I don't think this idea is original, but I couldn't find a good post going over the implications.*
I used to think that Solomonoff induction was a bit arbitrary for the following reason: ... |
86314abf-596f-427a-9ead-c125023248fe | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | If you are too stressed, walk away from the front lines
tl;dr: If your reason for cramming AI knowledge into your brain is stress, then don't do it. You can still be useful, but walk away from the front lines where people are directly responsible.
Disclaimer: 1) This is an obvious problem that has already been notic... |
5cabcdb9-7b15-4afe-8ede-fd9cbc640821 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Non-replicability of Some Behavioral Economics Research Across Cultures
Not our typical cognitive biases, but does raise the question of universality - I am aware of much stronger evidence for the universality of emotions and facial expression. Skimming the paper looks like a lot of fun.
http://www.psmag.com/magaz... |
602b03f0-cf1f-4f67-9a91-66564ce3d5c0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | TU Darmstadt, Computer Science Master's with a focus on Machine Learning
by Magdalena Wache
This post is a compilation of information about the TU Darmstadt's Computer Science program with a focus on machine learning. I hope it will be useful for people who are interested in doing a machine learning master's and are ... |
4195c8fb-af06-47bb-bcda-7ce6f3b07882 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | On clinging
(Cross-posted from Hands and Cities)
I often find myself wanting to refer to a certain dimension of emotional experience, which I’ll call “clinging.” This post tries to point at it. I also suggest that understanding this dimension can resolve a common confusion about Buddhist philosophy and other types of... |
ff96b545-6e79-446a-8ccd-41656ea8ad54 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Lessons learned from talking to >100 academics about AI safety
I’d like to thank MH, Jaime Sevilla and Tamay Besiroglu for their feedback.
During my Master's and Ph.D. (still ongoing), I have spoken with many academics about AI safety. These conversations include chats with individual PhDs, poster presentations and t... |
e9f7e1c1-74a0-4ac5-b38a-c9f9240eabd6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | More Dakka
Epistemic Status: Hopefully enough Dakka
Eliezer Yudkowsky’s book Inadequate Eqilibria is excellent. I recommend reading it, if you haven’t done so. Three recent reviews are Scott Aaronson’s, Robin Hanson’s (which inspired You Have the Right to Think and a great discussion in its comments) and Scott Alexan... |
84e4ebe1-3578-4e72-88eb-ce9fb867658b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : West LA Meetup 01-25-2012
Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 01-25-2012
WHEN: 25 January 2012 07:00:00PM (-0800)
WHERE: 10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064
When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, January 25th.
Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located... |
a8c86cf7-06fc-4a1c-b1fa-fabbf76013a1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Sacrifice for the Big Crunch
Let us assume that the end of the universe will be consistent with the Big Crunch for the rest of our story, simply the 'event' which is most easily described as the inverse to the Big Bang, the universe contracting into a singularity. Let us also assume that you have, by billions of years... |
58f3fb4c-c5ad-4da4-b736-7cdccacaadd9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Trivial inconveniences as an antidote to akrasia
1.
I was taking an five hour bus back to LA from Vegas. We were stopped at a rest stop about midway through, and I got out to stretch my legs. I figured it would be a good time to call my mom and catch up.
While chatting with her, she started to tell me about a busines... |
00b177ac-1ad1-4c18-a175-ba92acea30bc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A resolution to the Doomsday Argument.
A self-modifying AI is built to serve humanity. The builders know, of course, that this is much riskier than it seems, because its success would render their own observations extremely rare. To solve the problem, they direct the AI to create billions of simulated humanities in th... |
d1ae6099-856f-4a1b-8dc6-3bb51a459d3f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How can I strategically write a complex bestseller? (4HS001)
> “Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.” - Rainer Maria Rilke
> “Tomorrow may be hell, but today was... |
7caa7c42-89ab-4186-ab32-2333bba47c16 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Reviews as "How should this be improved to meet the bar?"
The LessWrong Review is a pretty big experiment, and I am still very much uncertain what the best form of reviewing is. We were pretty vague on how to review, listing these bullet points on topics a review should consider:
* How has this post been useful?
* ... |
09fdc40a-2b20-4653-886e-bdfacb02f6ab | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A rejection of the Orthogonality Thesis
I shared a blog post I wrote in Astral Codex, and someone suggested I try and share with the rationalist community (though it's somewhat polemic in tone). So here goes! The blog post is a little wider in scope, but I think the relevant part for the rationalist community is the r... |
fd0279a6-0cfb-4552-97c9-ff7435d46c03 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Human rights, democracy, and the rule of law assurance framework for AI systems: A proposal
1
Human Rights,
Democracy,
and the Rule of Law
Assurance Framework
for AI Systems :
A proposal prepared for the
Council of Europe’s Ad h oc
Committee on Artificial
Intelligence
David Leslie, Christoph... |
28bd2c99-fdda-4d62-9f73-8e913f18de5a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | To MAIM or Not to MAIM. Introducing MARS: The Nuclear Deterrent case for Hardened Datacenters
Executive Summary
This post interrogates the shift that is happening in particular to nuclear deterrence as AI nears an exponential rate of acceleration and the interesting shifts in incentives this creates for governments an... |
63d6f98b-d269-42b3-bb75-2c088c58ce33 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Key paths, plans and strategies to AI safety success
In January, I spent over 100 hours:
* reading 50+ AI safety 'plans',
* interviewing with 10+ AI safety researchers; and
* thinking about AI safety strategy, drawing on my 2.5 years in the field
This list of routes to AI safety success (updated June 2025) is a k... |
9fbb3ca9-a0a6-4a68-9821-e65bf1ab3f32 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI Deception: A Survey of Examples, Risks, and Potential Solutions
By Peter S. Park, Simon Goldstein, Aidan O’Gara, Michael Chen, and Dan Hendrycks
[This post summarizes our new report on AI deception, available here]
Abstract: This paper argues that a range of current AI systems have learned how to deceive humans. ... |
9864f9ed-6090-4242-a0e5-7a8a214af2fc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Metaphilosophical competence can't be disentangled from alignment
Having human values is insufficient for alignment
Suppose there's a button where if you push it and name a human, that human becomes 1,000,000,000,000,000x more powerful. (What I mean by that isn't precisely specified—imagine some combination of being a... |
a4d13b1f-0821-4ff8-b6ce-0b10fe21c9b9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Baby Nicknames
Lily and Anna rarely call Nora by her name. Instead, it's always nicknames, with lots of variety. For a week starting on Thanksgiving I counted how often they used different terms:
21 Norkit (Anna favorite) 20 Nwetzel (Lily favorite) 16 Norky 9 Cuddleezel 7 Norka 7 Nori 4 Norit 4 Cuddleitz (former fa... |
8f346f03-0090-46f1-9bb5-d593a5e3a7d6 | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | ""It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead." -- The Princess Bride
My co-blogger Robin and I may disagree on how fast an AI can improve itself, but we agree on an issue that seems much simpler to us than that: At the point where the current ... |
781eb238-5ff8-45b5-8815-f11292e99740 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Levels of Doom: Eutopia, Disempowerment, Extinction
Disempowerment is on the fence, gets interpreted as either implying human extinction or being a good place. "Doom" tends to be ambiguous between disempowerment and extinction, as well as about when that outcome must be gauged. And many people currently feel both dise... |
2e76e10b-c286-4532-b574-0c8353db940f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | New Executive Team & Board — PIBBSS
TLDR: PIBBSS is changing its core team. Nora is stepping down as director due to joining ARIA, and Lucas Teixeira and Dusan Nesic are taking over her leadership role. Nora joins the board, alongside Tan Zhi Xuan, Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel, Ben Goldhaber and Gabriel Weil.
I (No... |
25d19350-eef6-411d-885f-e5bc98f97609 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | Danijar Hafner - Gaming our way to AGI
[Music]
hey everyone and welcome back to the
tours data science podcast now until
recently ai systems have been narrow
they've only been able to perform one
specific task that they were explicitly
trained for while narrow systems are
clearly useful the holy grail of ai is
of cour... |
95bc3278-d6a5-4430-8d51-37c205488ecd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Hallucinating Suction
This post is about hallucination and how self-induced hallucination might be useful in steering your mind.
I was just standing in my room after using the vacuum to suck off a duster. The whole time I was wearing my X5A earmuffs. Right next to me, I had an air filter running on the maximum settin... |
51e22445-479e-4272-b110-198b4ca58954 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | We don’t need AGI for an amazing future
Most of the public discussions about AI safety seem to assume that there is only one plausible path for AI development: from narrow, specialized AI to broad AGI to superintelligence. So we seemingly have to decide between an amazing future with AGI at the risk that it will destr... |
fd3b83b2-85cb-4fe7-b91a-d7a249220b42 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Understanding strategic deception and deceptive alignment
*The following is the main part of a* [*blog post*](https://www.apolloresearch.ai/blog/understanding-da-and-sd) *we just published at Apollo Research. Our main goal with the post is to clarify the concept of deceptive alignment and distinguish it from strategic... |
4cd94370-e17f-4d3b-ae49-34bc853e3e21 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How to respond to the recent condemnations of the rationalist community
On Twitter, there has been some concerning discourse about rationalism and AI. I'd rather not link to it directly, but just look up the term "TESCREAL" on Twitter. The R stands for rationalism. Here is a particularly strong tweet:
> We need a sup... |
3d4a2995-b1a2-48a0-b70d-6bec13592324 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Zero-Sum Defeats Nash Equilibrium
Bike locks are a good example. There are twenty bikes at the bike rack in the parking lot. Some bike riders decide to buy bike locks for their bikes to protect them from theft. But this just means that the thieves steal other, unprotected bikes from the rack. The problem wasn't solved... |
379451f0-757a-481b-8748-2865191e232d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How do you visualize the Poisson PDF?
As people have been recommending visualization as a mnemonic technique here, I am curious how you utilize it for a formula like this.
I can encode it using metaphors: The lambda, which represents the rate, is a working factory machine. k, which is the number of incidents, is a ... |
c3858dc9-5631-4422-8dbd-96967a0ba535 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Exploring the Responsible Path to AI Research in the Philippines
Introduction
The transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping our world, presenting both thrilling opportunities and profound challenges. In the Philippines, where Dominic Ligot (Founder, AI expert & communicator)[1]and I have de... |
6ad0cc18-09ec-4e8a-a9b2-6e6e45e43da1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "Wide" vs "Tall" superintelligence
There are 2 distinctive but compatible modes of superintelligence.
First one (arguably what we see right now with latest NNs) - super resource access, but not necessary super skills. Operates not better, maybe even significantly worse, than the person who's able to read entire libr... |
195918d2-5c1c-496e-8c29-f7de5246f1d4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The case for corporal punishment
Preceded By: The case for the death penalty
Scott's essay https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-than-you is going to be my main source for most of my claims here, I recommend reading it either before or after.
Prison is very expensive, on the order of $100,000 p... |
0d591d5c-db1b-4267-8a92-15b77b1df949 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are we trying to figure out if AI is conscious?
My aim in this article is to examine the field of consciousness research with an analysis of 78 of the most important papers in the field. In doing so, I compare the empirical foundations these disciplines rely upon and detail how each approaches the measurement of consc... |
5212ee78-fad1-4990-bcb9-48aaa7e2196e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Cold Takes reader survey - let me know what you want more and less of!
I'm interested in readers' takes on what I should be doing more and less of on this blog. I will generally write what I feel like writing, even if my audience has asked for less of it, but knowing what my audience wants will have some effect on wha... |
bd912f10-3c9a-436a-bebf-16fce6552392 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Which things were you surprised to learn are not metaphors?
People with aphantasia typically think that when someone says to "picture X in your mind", they're being entirely metaphorical. If you don't have a mind's eye, that's a super reasonable thing to think, but it turns out that you'd be wrong!
In that spirit, I ... |
15a8fe21-4b91-4816-baa2-97653f041b37 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Introducing the Instrumental Rationality Sequence
What is this project?
I am going to be writing a new sequence of articles on instrumental rationality. The end goal is to have a compiled ebook of all the essays, so the articles themselves are intended to be chapters in the finalized book. There will also be pictures... |
4163f84a-e85d-41d0-b834-0b70127f5460 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | The whirlpool of reality
This post is mostly to share this quote that presents a metaphor describing [the dance](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EReZtCsGg2giRTZP3/zen-and-rationality-map-and-territory) between [map and territory](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/map-and-territory) (and the key insight of [embeddedness](h... |
a6c30030-0c4a-48a0-806a-21dc7078aa0c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Extremes of reliability and zealotry
Opinions and actions are spread across continua. The ones at the ends are sometimes called ‘extremist’, ‘fanatical’, ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘zealous’. These are insults or invitations to treat the supporters without seriousness. Other times the far reaches of a continuum are admired a... |
44ef7f38-cd84-45e7-89d6-d312fca24816 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | On the Anthropic Trilemma
Eliezer’s Anthropic Trilemma:
> So here’s a simple algorithm for winning the lottery: Buy a ticket. Suspend your computer program just before the lottery drawing – which should of course be a quantum lottery, so that every ticket wins somewhere. Program your computational environment to, i... |
8a72a0ee-b423-497c-b3af-62dc9588ec80 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Moral Complexities
Today's post, Moral Complexities was originally published on 04 July 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> Key questions for two different moral intuitions: morality-as-preference, and morality-as-given.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post)... |
4048029d-8f6d-4e62-8774-7a9279830f81 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Whining-Based Communities
Today's post, Whining-Based Communities was originally published on 07 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> Many communities feed emotional needs by offering their members someone or something to blame for failure - say, those looters who don't approve of your exc... |
35f487a8-2224-451e-a029-9f31d5562e16 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Refusal in LLMs is mediated by a single direction
This work was produced as part of Neel Nanda's stream in the ML Alignment & Theory Scholars Program - Winter 2023-24 Cohort, with co-supervision from Wes Gurnee.
This post is a preview for our upcoming paper, which will provide more detail into our current understandi... |
1e27b268-33d8-467f-89c6-b7dd8b8415ce | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Story of AI Risk: InstructGPT-N
The story from my previous post of how AI might develop a dangerously misaligned objective has so far been pretty abstract. I now want to put together a more concrete story of how I think things might go wrong. This risk model is based on a language model which has been fine tuned usi... |
791e542d-f0d8-4bd2-8d41-4096ea7d3952 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Upside decay - why some people never get lucky
Note: This was originally published at https://brianlui.dog/2020/10/06/upside-decay/. This concept is important because many people are self-interested, and this provides a convincing self-interested reason for being virtuous. Being virtuous is good, but it's also practic... |
9957f586-e444-4b31-b51a-ac8208feaee4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Against the barbell strategy
Nassim Nicholas Taleb recommends that instead of the balanced portfolio of investments recommended by portfolio theory, we follow a "barbell" strategy of putting most of our assets in a maximally safe, stable investment, and making small, sustainable bets with very high potential upside. I... |
cfeccdbc-c7e1-4f04-ba8a-906f6455721f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How & when to write a business plan
You’ve decided you need a business plan – so where do you start?
My previous post explained why you should write a plan – and what’s wrong with all your excuses for not doing so. Here I give tips on how, and how not, to write one. But first of all, when to.
When?
Business plans a... |
2e5f6470-880c-434a-a854-49529fdb1062 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The natural boundaries between people
Rough thoughts. Will write a better version some day.
I first learned about the concept of psychological boundaries a little over a year ago. But something didn’t seem quite right about it. People explained to me how they understood psychological boundaries, and but the explanati... |
350b7959-77af-4916-b63a-43dd85a3928d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Bias-Augmented Consistency Training Reduces Biased Reasoning in Chain-of-Thought
[Twitter thread]
I'm not going to add much additional commentary at the moment and will just let people check out the paper!
But to give a bit more context: This paper is building off prior work we have done showing that chain-of-thoug... |
6aae0f03-ddc8-4b3f-ab9b-d4b2a698d0fa | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Paper Highlights, April '25
tl;dr
Paper of the month:
Control evaluations for multi-step agents show scheming behaviors are harder to detect but resampling protocols can reduce attack success from 58% to 7% with minimal usefulness cost.
Research highlights:
* Synthetic document finetuning can modify LLM beliefs fo... |
8a91c63c-98a7-4858-ab1f-a5f1fa0f2760 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Effective Altruism from XYZ perspective
In this thread, I would like to invite people to summarize their attitude to Effective Altruism and to summarise their justification for their attitude while identifying the framework or perspective their using.
Initially I prepared an article for a discussion post (that got ra... |
6137e448-0708-47d7-95c3-8b0bac049b31 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Personal Experiment] Counterbalancing Risk-Aversion
I am over-biased against risk. I usually take the safer option even when it's the wrong one. When I was 18 I stumbled across this paragraph.
> You must do everything that frightens you…Everything. I’m not talking about risking your life, but everything else. Think ... |
bc67f77c-e752-4636-b378-51ba5c0431a9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Against Facebook: Comparison to Alternatives and Call to Action
Previously: Against Facebook: Details
Take Action: Help Us Find Your Blog (and others)
Epistemic Status: Shouting from the rooftops. For further details, see previous post.
This post is my recommendations for how to communicate online. If you need detai... |
179dbc46-2800-482b-bf1b-2956b6ae3876 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | When should an Effective Altruist be vegetarian?
I have lately noticed several people wondering why more Effective Altruists are not vegetarians. I am personally not a vegetarian because I don’t think it is an effective way to be altruistic.
As far as I can tell the fact that many EAs are not vegetarians is surprisin... |
f9753190-1162-453d-bc0b-f788be3c6d50 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | We don't understand what happened with culture enough
This is a quick response to Evolution Provides No Evidence For the Sharp Left Turn, due to it winning first prize in The Open Philanthropy Worldviews contest. I think part of the post is sufficiently misleading about evolutionary history and the OP first prize give... |
8ef3bb11-c4b9-47ef-914d-09d0ef318f3b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | From game theory to players theory
Leading mathematicians (I won't name names here) say that there is no formula for subjective probability (e.g. "I think, there is 20% of tomorrow rain", or "I think that Navier-Stokes conjecture is true with 90% probability"). There is a number and no formula? that's funny and untrue... |
2baddbc6-4fc5-40fb-a7ea-077dff7c5fa1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | China-AI forecasts
The rate at which China is able to advance towards TAI is a crucial consideration in for many policy questions. My current take is that, without significant political reforms which seem very unlikely while Xi is alive (although considerably more likely after his death,) it’s very unlikely that China... |
e254ef20-b9c6-4d50-b1ac-96c291407e9c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Referencing the Unreferencable
Jessicata wrote a post on The Absurdity of Un-referencable Entities. The comments there give many good reasons against her claim that unreferencable entities don't make sense. Nonetheless, I think it is worthwhile to consider this issue in more detail as there are many philosophical prob... |
0426ce27-a893-4be3-b431-a00d87597077 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How Can One Tell What Is Beautiful?
> The starting-point for all systems of aesthetics must be the personal experience of a peculiar emotion. The objects that provoke this emotion we call works of art [...] if we can discover some quality common and peculiar to all the objects that provoke [it], we shall have solved w... |
591c696d-454e-4913-aeb6-a06cbb698974 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Chicanery: No
There is a concept I picked up from the Onyx Path forums, from a link that is now dead and a post I can no longer find. That concept is the Chicanery tag, and while I’ve primarily used it for tabletop RPGs (think Dungeons & Dragons) I find it applicable elsewhere. If you happen to be better at searching ... |
2a9876d3-1706-40d2-98d8-04469452a50c | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Concrete Problems in AI Safety
1 Introduction
---------------
The last few years have seen rapid progress on long-standing, difficult problems in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), in areas as diverse as computer vision [krizhevsky2012imagenet], video game playing [mnih2015human], autonomous vehicle... |
3d1be9f9-ec3f-4ff8-9d47-ba2544b080ee | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Robust Learning with Frequency Domain Regularization
1 Introduction
---------------
Convolution neural networks (CNNs)[[29](#bib.bib36 "Handwritten digit recognition with a back-propagation network")] have achieved remarkable performance in many tasks of computing vision, *e.g.*, object detection[[31](#bib.bib39 "S... |
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