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cb823abb-9b77-435d-9f8a-259d0588577a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] 3 Levels of Rationality Verification Today's post, 3 Levels of Rationality Verification was originally published on 15 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > How far the craft of rationality can be taken, depends largely on what methods can be invented for verifying it. Tests seem usefully s...
7ba47aaf-0ee6-4b17-abbb-b091c1f2cc11
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Academia as a happy place? A conversation between pchvykov and jow on alternative research environments. This post is based on an audio transcript that we have edited with the help of Claude. We planned this as an experiment for ourselves in "thinking in public". Also, pchvykov is now organizing a "mindful research" r...
3469207d-3e3a-41f7-adca-156c8de41718
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Understanding and avoiding value drift I use [the shard theory of human values](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iCfdcxiyr2Kj8m8mT/the-shard-theory-of-human-values) to clarify what value drift is, how it happens, and how it might be avoided by a highly intelligent agent—even if that agent doesn't have any control over ...
439b7d4b-7c34-460a-9c7d-225cbcc73c58
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Agentic Mess (A Failure Story) **This story is also available** [**as a YouTube video**](https://youtu.be/6edrFdkCEUE)**.** A network of specialized open-source agents emerges --------------------------------------------------- Developed by open-source communities, “agentic” AI systems like AutoGPT and BabyAGI begin...
0ce253ff-fe06-436f-b72e-0eafa3f4f8b9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Rationality outreach vs. rationality teaching Epistemic status: Exploratory and in testing I'm reasonably confident there are a lot of smart/curious people who would like to learn rationality, that is, how to think better and correlate the contents of your mind better to reality. Framing rationalist outreach as esta...
59cd24a6-5332-48d8-ab68-164958a20006
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : LW Cologne meetup Discussion article for the meetup : LW Cologne meetup WHEN: 26 September 2015 05:00:00PM (+0200) WHERE: Marienweg 43, 50858 Köln The next cologne meetup will be next Saturday (9/26), which is incidentially Petrov day (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jq/926_is_petrov_day/), 5 pm at my house (Marie...
ee41b96f-3c51-4d6d-8599-19069935b308
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Atlanta Lesswrong Meetup: How to Increase Your Brainpower Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta Lesswrong Meetup: How to Increase Your Brainpower WHEN: 23 February 2014 07:00:00PM (-0500) WHERE: 491 Lindbergh Place NE Apt 618 Atlanta, GA 30324 Dual N-back, transcranial electrical stimulation, nootrop...
4df8af92-2aec-4a98-b293-6a43eb808798
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Language models are not inherently safe *Giving my take on a popular*[[1]](#fnq63qsorwxs)*topic;* [*writing a thousand ways to Rome*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q924oPJzK92FifuFg/write-a-thousand-roads-to-rome)*. Broad lines likely right, less sure of details.* For some time I've had the thought "intelligent age...
bcc9272f-7400-496f-9d5d-abbb794f9f39
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
The MAGICAL Benchmark for Robust Imitation The MAGICAL Benchmark for Robust Imitation Sam Toyer Rohin Shah Andrew Critch Stuart Russell Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California, Berkeley {sdt,rohinmshah,critch,russell}@berkeley.edu Abstract Imitation Learning (IL) algorithms ...
39550f54-fa52-4cf5-8e73-74d8d3567605
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Impossibility results for unbounded utilities Some people think that they have unbounded utility functions. This isn't necessarily crazy, but it presents serious challenges to conventional decision theory. I think it probably leads to abandoning probability itself as a representation of uncertainty (or at least any ho...
a76eab8f-bc6f-4283-9c35-6e2409f625a0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
My intentions for my metaethics sequence Recently a friend of mine told me that he and a few others were debating how likely it is that I've 'solved metaethics.' Others on this site have gotten the impression that I'm claiming to have made a fundamental breakthrough that I'm currently keeping a secret, and that's what...
dc27c3bc-e7de-4f18-8fb6-30d59f23a72b
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
DeepMind’s generalist AI, Gato: A non-technical explainer Summary ======= DeepMind’s recent paper, [*A Generalist Agent*](https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/A%20Generalist%20Agent/Generalist%20Agent.pdf), catalyzed a wave of discourse regarding the speed at which current artificial intelligence systems are...
23acab76-9ef5-4864-b5ee-1684661ccd2c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Cryo with magnetics added This is great, by using small interlocking magnetic fields, you can keep the water in a higher vibrational state, allowing a "super-cooling" without getting crystallization and cell rupture Subzero 12-hour Nonfreezing Cryopreservation of Porcine Heart in a Variable Magnetic Field "invented ...
9ff59f48-e094-47f7-8adb-aac2b78ad82c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Desiderata for an AI I think a main focus of alignment work should be on redesigning AI from the ground up. In doing so, I think we should keep in mind a set of desirable characteristics to aim for in a better AI. Most of my ideas here aren't original to me, so I'll add some links to sources. For lots more background...
4cf9fb8c-c290-4022-b255-553989e9c4a5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Gradient descent doesn't select for inner search TL;DR: Gradient descent won't select for inner search processes because they're not compute & memory efficient. Slightly longer TL;DR: A key argument for mesa-optimization is that as we search over programs, we will select for "search processes with simple objectives",...
296ee9da-3f6e-4047-a8bb-296b97e9d119
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
An appraisal of the Future of Life Institute AI existential risk program Summary: This is a small post to thank the Future of Life Institute for setting up their AI existential risk community, as well as the Vitalik Buterin PhD and postdoc fellowships. A couple of years ago the Future of Life Institute set up a comm...
3285173a-1188-4fbd-b901-2556d88b9aef
awestover/filtering-for-misalignment
Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results
id: post3706 A putative new idea for AI control; index here . Previously , I presented a model in which a “rationality module” kept track of two things: how well a human was maximising their actual reward, and whether their preferences had been overridden by AI action. The second didn’t integrate well into the first, ...
6980ee9b-f426-46d2-9b7c-8fa114f44557
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Inescapably Value-Laden Experience—a Catchy Term I Made Up to Make Morality Rationalisable A short one, just to clarify a term (I invented) that gets thrown around here a bit. It fits into a broadly Utilitarian view, but addresses Hume's problem of "No 'ought' from 'is'". Keen to hear if what I've defined here already...
99eb293e-31b1-42ad-922b-61627b8f2775
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Opinions on Interpretable Machine Learning and 70 Summaries of Recent Papers **[Peter Hase](https://peterbhase.github.io/)** UNC Chapel Hill **[Owen Shen](https://owenshen24.github.io/)** UC San Diego With thanks to [Robert Kirk](https://robertkirk.github.io/) and [Mohit Bansal](https://www.cs.unc.edu/~mbans...
90605357-b597-4475-8408-3d28366567f8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Friendly AI Society Summary: AIs might have cognitive biases too but, if that leads to it being in their self-interest to cooperate and take things slow, that might be no bad thing.   The value of imperfection When you use a traditional FTP client to download a new version of an application on your computer, it dow...
0cd6b0ec-39d5-4eeb-bcdf-76b8a792d197
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
From Comments on Accountability Sinks There was a lot of comments on the original article about accountability sinks. People seem to feel strongly about human judgement being replaced by formal processes. So let’s dive in into the comments! Ben Pace writes: > I liked reading these examples; I wanted to say, it initi...
35a5ba7d-ed34-4385-b768-e88630e0300d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Learning By Writing I have very detailed opinions on lots of topics. I sometimes get asked how I do this, which might just be people making fun of me, but I choose to interpret it as a real question, and I’m going to sketch an answer here. You can think of this as a sort of sequel to Minimal-Trust Investigations. Tha...
f0b0a124-d377-4746-867a-b94587fa47c2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Marginally Zero-Sum Efforts Today's post, Marginally Zero-Sum Efforts was originally published on April 11, 2007. A summary (from the LW wiki): > After a point, labeling a problem as "important" is a commons problem. Rather than increasing the total resources devoted to important problems, resources are t...
6282dfce-ae96-46f1-b220-6ded5ad5db92
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
WHO Biological Risk warning An hour ago the World Health Organization warned that there is an 'extremely serious' situation and 'huge biological risk' after a lab containing virus samples falls into control of Sudan fighters. #safety #ai #biosecurity  
830e69b6-73d9-4f29-be4f-a7590ad4cd76
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Hard Problem of Magic One of the hardest unsolved problems of metaphysics is that of magic. Magic exists -- self-evidently. Yet modern science leaves it less and less room to hide within the causally-interlocked world of the physical. We have come a long way from Descartes' belief that the pineal gland is that wh...
41d8033a-692b-453f-a9ae-b088fdd46c21
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What's the best approach to curating a newsfeed to maximize useful contrasting POV? In Superforecasters, Tetlock describes one superforecaster as having built a collection of automated scripts and sources to get useful information from a variety of different sources and different perspectives. This seems very useful a...
1521b01e-b5a0-44ab-9307-1577fcb621cb
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Current themes in mechanistic interpretability research *This post gives an overview of discussions - from the perspective and understanding of the interpretability team at Conjecture - between mechanistic interpretability researchers from various organizations including Conjecture, Anthropic, Redwood Research, OpenAI...
362462aa-eb2b-46d7-b1de-0e18caabac98
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Problems as dragons and papercuts Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/problems-as-dragons-and-papercuts/ When I started trying to become the kind of person that can give advice, I went looking for dragons. I figured if I didn't know the answers that meant the answers were hard, they were big monsters with hidden w...
ea81946a-caaf-43d2-9d9b-d38c534af532
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Golden Mean of Scientific Virtues I recently discovered this nice post on the scientific virtues by slimemoldtimemold. Overall, I enjoyed it, and I find it pushes nicely against some recurrent memes about science and scientists (and innovation in general) in the general culture. Yet in doing so, it also reinforc...
58d86644-5e9f-441b-8f18-50ba21431a75
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Starting an Egan High School In late 2023 I read Brandon Hendrickson’s book review of Kieran Egan’s book The Educated Mind on ACX. I’m a teacher and it lit a fire in me. I spent 2024 cycling with my young family and while I kept reading some Egan-related things, I didn’t really “work on it”. At some point in that year...
390275b3-460d-44f4-872f-8b47a7ecbe1f
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Top-Down and Bottom-Up Logical Probabilities **I.** I don't know very much model theory, and thus I don't fully understand [Hutter et al.'s logical prior, detailed here](http://www.hutter1.net/publ/problogics.pdf), but nonetheless I can tell you that it uses a *very* top-down approach. About 60% of what I mean is th...
2bfffe58-77f0-4e3b-b3a3-9b11a02df422
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Positive vs. Normative Rationality [Epistemic Status: Highly speculative/experimental. Playing around with ideas on rationality. Extremely interested in input, criticism, or other perspectives]       I.) Throughout the 20th century the University of Chicago school of thought seems to have generated the most po...
238af9e7-a672-43bd-b2e8-6a6b437c0925
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The value of low-conscientiousness people on teams [Apologies in advance if I sound like I'm over-generalizing high-conscientiousness or low-conscientiousness people. This is mostly from my own experience, so I'm sure I'm wrong on some counts and may, in fact, be over-generalizing at times. Ohh, and also apologies to...
99ff8e6b-722e-49c2-8c0f-d8bda2547afb
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/agentmodels
Tutorial: Modeling Agents with Probabilistic Programs
Modeling Agents with Probabilistic Programs --- layout: chapter title: Dynamic programming description: Exact enumeration of generative model computations + caching. status: stub is_section: false hidden: true ---
e6ec3ddb-8270-43f4-8252-2fc8fda413b3
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Group orbits partition Let $G$ be a [https://arbital.com/p/-3gd](https://arbital.com/p/-3gd), [acting](https://arbital.com/p/3t9) on the set $X$. Then the [orbits](https://arbital.com/p/group_orbit) of $X$ under $G$ form a [partition](https://arbital.com/p/set_partition) of $X$. # Proof We need to show that every el...
eb079188-817f-4a97-a74b-89cc32696859
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Announcing the Technical AI Safety Podcast Please comment if you use an obscure podcast app and I'll try to set it up for my feed. I'll have at least spotify, apple podcasts, and stitcher up shortly. EDIT: spotify, pocketcasts, stitcher, and apple podcasts are live. google podcasts is simply timegated at this point un...
0d411eb2-8841-42de-8ee4-c2c9765822df
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Writing Prompts Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Writing Prompts WHEN: 09 November 2014 02:00:00PM (-0600) WHERE: 206 S. Cedar St., Urbana, IL In honor of RaNoWriMo, let's do a few writing prompts - 15 minutes of just sitting down and writing the first page of somethi...
aa6df7c1-890b-400e-9cb1-6e07014dd3a6
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Strategic High Skill Immigration How to improve the global economy, increase strategic stability, and safeguard the far future. Part 1: The current situation: shifting balance of power When trying to help people at scale, it is often prudent to go beyond direct interventions and to seek equilibria which are in the lo...
64c4e845-7064-47d2-9bfb-0b3194c678b0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Lots of Hooks The entryway had gotten pretty messy, with a lot of things scattered on the horizontal surfaces. We decided to put up some hooks, to move things onto the vertical services. I used some trim that I'd saved from an earlier project, cut it to width, screwed it into studs, and attached hooks: This also ...
2b98f488-c396-4923-a718-7f075f7228d0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Rational Animations' Script Writing Contest Cross-posted to the EA Forum. Edit: The deadline has been removed! So you can continue to send scripts. Introduction I'm announcing a script writing contest for the Rational Animations YouTube channel. Write scripts of 2500 words maximum about a topic of longtermist relev...
ef03130a-d610-4a78-9cf7-2af82b419463
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The case against "The case against AI alignment" So I read this other post which talked about possible S-risk from an AI being aligned to human values. It contains the following statement: > Whoever controls the AI will most likely have somebody whose suffering they don’t care about, or that they want to enact, or th...
8f70aa86-181f-467f-b17b-65422ae4a8f2
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Reinforcement, Preference and Utility **Followup to:** [Reinforcement Learning: A Non-Standard Introduction](/lw/dux/reinforcement_learning_a_nonstandard_introduction/) A reinforcement-learning agent is interacting with its environment through the perception of observations and the performance of actions. We descr...
c0c04678-efc3-418b-b031-90f753824d2d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What is your timelines for ADI (artificial disempowering intelligence)? Most AI researchers think we are still a long ways off from AGI. However, I think this can be distracting. AGI includes the ability to do everything that humanity can do, such as: * Juggle objects of various unexpected shapes * Do the dishes i...
1912f685-3f37-47de-8c1f-62ec36b0c0ac
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
re: Yudkowsky on biological materials I was asked to respond to this comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky. This post is partly redundant with my previous post. ---------------------------------------- > Why is flesh weaker than diamond? When trying to resolve disagreements, I find that precision is important. Tensile stren...
9bf426c6-90ca-48bb-ad71-bbd22e610ba4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Judge Overturns Transportation Mask Mandate A federal judge has overturned the transportation mask mandate, saying the CDC overstepped its authority. The Biden administration is adhering to this ruling. It intends to appeal, but is not being loud about that. Mask mandates are lifted on planes. This happened in-flight...
65965271-be56-4659-a1d2-cc894c5333d1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Consistency Mystery There is a strange bias that affects every human even if they believe the opposite. For some reason, the reality we inhabit appears absolutely consistent and perfectly integrated. Everything happens for a precise reason, affecting everything else through an unbroken chain of logical connections...
76bda00c-d539-48b8-9af7-53f6bc972f76
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
An overview of some promising work by junior alignment researchers We’re all familiar with [ELK](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qHCDysDnvhteW7kRd/arc-s-first-technical-report-eliciting-latent-knowledge), [natural abstractions](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cy3BhHrGinZCp3LXE/testing-the-natural-abstraction-hypothesi...
8f3d682c-f835-4b71-a20e-9ebcf92ea9db
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Open Thread, May 16-31, 2012 If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.
402ace26-52df-4965-ab61-df9b4eca1baa
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Extending the stated objectives A putative new idea for AI control; index here. > A system that is optimizing a function of n variables, where the objective depends on a subset of size k<n, will often set the remaining unconstrained variables to extreme values; if one of those unconstrained variables is actually some...
5eff9b5e-50dd-4f51-8323-25071e3c87b0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
When a status symbol loses its plausible deniability, how much power does it lose? For example, assuming Harvard is mostly a status symbol, if that became common knowledge, how much would the quality of its applicants drop?
7f4846d3-8680-4fe2-8987-47ebd6350aad
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Nomic Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Nomic WHEN: 19 January 2014 02:00:00PM (-0600) WHERE: 40.109545,-88.227318 Ever played Nomic? Neither have I. But I am curious to see what LessWrongers will make of it. Coordinates are: 40.109545,-88.227318 Meetup will be held i...
bacb0afa-9123-46f5-b21a-57fa6f5c2181
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Why didn't people (apparently?) understand the metaethics sequence? There seems to be a widespread impression that the metaethics sequence was not very successful as an explanation of Eliezer Yudkowsky's views. It even says so on the wiki. And frankly, I'm puzzled by this... hence the "apparently" in this post's title...
233c54a8-4adb-4fa2-82e7-05f32629b208
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AI labs' requests for input AI labs sometimes publicly ask for input on their actions, their products, and the future of AI. See OpenAI's Democratic inputs to AI and ChatGPT Feedback Contest, and maybe bug bounty programs for security vulnerabilities (OpenAI, Google, Meta). I'd like to collect these; please reply with...
bd050810-46ff-473f-8a9c-a720cb39cc6b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Risk and Safety in the age of COVID Intro: When analyzing the dangers of COVID or proposing policies to combat it, there is a utilitarian cost-benefit framing which is implicitly assumed. Perhaps the best example of this is the Micro Covid calculator. Every action has a cost and benefit associated with it and the goal...
156d2f1f-185c-47c4-8479-59688412b818
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Practical Argument for Free Will
c94e9c2b-2ecb-42fb-b116-69bdc2011693
awestover/filtering-for-misalignment
Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results
id: post293 Developers of frontier AI systems will face increasingly challenging decisions about whether their AI systems are safe enough to develop and deploy. One reason why systems may not be safe is if they engage in scheming . In our new report "Towards evaluations-based safety cases for AI scheming" , written in...
07179361-212c-4f47-bc25-80c9a00412ab
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
China's Petition System: It Looks Like Democracy — But It Isn't In most democracies, the very way people file complaints tells you how well their government works. You can vote. You can sue. You can organize, lobby, or protest. But in China? You write a physical letter to Beijing, then pray someone reads it. This i...
73ff541f-6f21-4f9e-89bd-e45683ab2416
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Utrecht: Famine, Affluence and Morality Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Famine, Affluence and Morality WHEN: 22 March 2014 07:00:00PM (+0100) WHERE: Oudegracht 158, Utrecht At the last meetup we decided to have biweekly meetups on Saturday evenings. We will see if this turns out to be convenien...
a918cf00-1b36-416b-8456-bb15cdbedd13
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Holden Karnofsky Interview about Most Important Century & Transformative AI Holden Karnofsky is the co-CEO of [Open Philanthropy](http://www.openphilanthropy.org/) and co-founder of [GiveWell](http://www.givewell.org/). He is also the author of the always interesting [Cold Takes](https://www.cold-takes.com/) blog. Th...
a0a0c205-1f6b-48fe-b60c-ea9a47f6d0ea
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Rationality Vienna Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Vienna WHEN: 15 February 2014 03:00:00PM (+0100) WHERE: Vienna, Reichsratstraße 17 Manuel will talk about Universal Artificial Intelligence, which is the theory of perfectly rational agents. It claims to once-and-for-all define what rationa...
d07502a0-4162-4fcc-85be-c23ac7d0b3c1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How I accidentally discovered the pill to enlightenment but I wouldn’t recommend it. Main post:  http://bearlamp.com.au/how-i-accidentally-discovered-the-pill-to-enlightenment-but-i-wouldnt-recommend-it/ ---------------------------------------- Brief teaser: Eastern enlightenment is not what you think.  I mean, may...
df058ee3-f7e1-49f0-a57a-eb1d8223c820
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Serious Stories Today's post, Serious Stories was originally published on 08 January 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > Stories and lives are optimized according to rather different criteria. Advice on how to write fiction will tell you that "stories are about people's pain" and "every scene m...
bc0cb95c-17a7-43f3-a430-e61004cb8bbb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Vote counting bug? I've just noticed that the number of votes shown on my recent alignment forum post seems to actually correspond to the number of votes it's received on Less Wrong, rather than just counting the alignment forum votes. Not sure if this is intentional, but for me it makes the feature less useful. Not a...
1bfd8814-2ddd-499c-a61e-c14b56d6e187
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Seeing the Schema For the past month or two, I've been regularly playing a mental rotation game, available here. In the game, the task is to find which two of the six displayed block objects are identical under rotation. I'm not the best at mental rotation, so I figured I'd try and get better at it. But while I've got...
aa26d58d-7750-476a-bf39-e70bdcf6e4aa
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Are ethical asymmetries from property rights? These are some intuitions people often have: * You are not required to save a random person, but you are definitely not allowed to kill one * You are not required to create a person, but you are definitely not allowed to kill one * You are not required to create a happ...
bb16841e-4cfe-4ecf-8b2d-f859602a3d14
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Curriculum of Ascension Not sure whether this belongs here or not, but there are plenty of fiction posts here. This is sort of halfway between a story and a worldbuilding document, based on many ideas I've learned from here and from adjacent spaces. Hopefully it will be interesting or useful to somebody. ============...
a7274971-c4e7-470c-b536-a988e3c126e5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Press Your Luck (3/3) This is the third in a three part sequence, examining the scenario in which software development organisations might knowingly take a significant risk of unintentionally launching an AI program into inadequately supervised or controlled self-improvement, by comparing the scenario to the 'press yo...
145f1c4d-def4-4610-a92d-a1bbeb202bd5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Punt Trip Discussion article for the meetup : Punt Trip WHEN: 16 June 2012 12:00:00PM (+0100) WHERE: Cambridge_UK Come join the Cambridge LessWrong group for a free punt trip up the beautiful river Cam. A Smörgåsbord of discussion, fun, food and learning to punt. Meet at the Great Gate of Trinity College,...
529ba9c7-724c-40c8-9ceb-0b57c08e6084
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Attention is not Explanation
ab7c5540-5e25-48d5-8394-b8083d25f825
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
We can all be high status Extension of Give praise. This is part analysis, part a heartfelt story of my engagement with the LW/EA community. I usually don't like to kick up dust, but I've decided to write an honest representation of my feelings, here and there possibly sacrificing accuracy. Adjust your interpretation...
b494e522-3168-43ce-a5f1-770b26d3dc0b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On Voting for Third Parties Cross Posted on my blog, By Way of Contradiction.  Anti-Trigger Warning: There is not really any politics in this post. I doubt it will kill your mind. If your favorite candidate in an election is a third party candidate, should you vote for him? This question has confused me. I have cha...
c16f3f6f-3c46-41a9-b2dd-360d9a8cda16
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Case Against Education: Foundations An Introduction: The Case Against Education We’ll now focus more on the book and its data, reasoning and arguments, and related questions. There’s a lot to address, starting with the foundations of Bryan’s analysis. Rather than write one novella-long post, I’ll be going through...
234bf2e1-64d4-45d5-a665-1199ad822c34
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
'Concept' In the context of Artificial Intelligence or machine learning, a 'concept' is something that identifies thingies as being inside or outside of the boundary. For example, a neural network has learned the 'picture of a cat' concept if it can reliably distinguish pictures of cats from pictures of noncats. Tha...
d3699ef8-d94b-4c80-ac3c-d49b0a9f1836
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
test test
bb8cc4d8-bd4d-464b-ac79-7d35b600b7f1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Why don't long running conversations happen on LessWrong? Here is how things currently work: * Someone writes a post. * It lingers around the front page for a few days. During this time, conversations emerge in the comments section. * After a few days, the post no longer persists on the front page and conversation...
e6650c70-316a-4801-8feb-923acb101005
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AI alignment for mental health supports Initial Draft on 23 February   Goals As an affiliate member of  Cajal.org, I[1] would like to introduce a novel application of AI alignment as a tool for diagnosing, visualising, predicting, preventing and improving mental health symptoms in human users.    Motivations Glob...
4f243f90-154d-47b5-9503-c30579901fe1
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Storytelling Makes GPT-3.5 Deontologist: Unexpected Effects of Context on LLM Behavior TL;DR ----- When prompted to make decisions, do large language models (LLMs) show power-seeking behavior, self-preservation instincts, and long-term goals? [Discovering Language Model Behaviors with Model-Written Evaluations](https...
1c505634-5206-4102-8418-7a1bebf9bb50
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A novel about life extension People here will probably disagree with much of this, still it's interesting how longevity is becoming a popular culture meme http://boingboing.net/2011/09/07/the-postmortal-very-creepy-thriller-about-a-cure-for-aging.html
a5f1eaad-1eac-4869-b4a7-404fb8cdc35b
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
ARC is hiring theoretical researchers **The Alignment Research Center’s Theory team is starting a new hiring round for researchers with a theoretical background. Please apply** [**here**](https://jobs.lever.co/alignment.org/617488b1-d742-4990-a037-b7f0e2ba68c9/apply)**.** What is ARC’s Theory team? ------------------...
d93a2be4-f127-4f66-9804-b00f5ea6e109
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
what does it mean to value our survival? what does it mean to value our survival? ---------------------------------------- let's say that i want to continue living, or that i want everyone currently on earth to continue living. what *does* that value look like, in a formalized format? in my [goal-program framework...
a9d3b493-19b6-4cec-b4da-53c29360f1b0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Babble, Learning, and the Typical Mind Fallacy This is an essay I wrote originally just for myself about Babble and decided to post on my personal blog at a whim. The post is messy and digresses more than I'd like, but writing my thoughts down clarified my own thinking on the topic enough that I figured they might hel...
05c4cef0-fb49-4791-bbe9-7fb63fb8bb53
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Consider Joining the UK Foundation Model Taskforce A few months ago, Ian Hogarth wrote the Financial Times Op-Ed headlined “We must slow down the race to God-like AI.” A few weeks ago, he was appointed head of the UK Foundation Model Taskforce, and given 100 million pounds to dedicate to AI safety, to universal accla...
37d710f6-51cc-45c5-9504-ebc44a249f80
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Upcoming workshop on Post-AGI Civilizational Equilibria This workshop will address the technical and institutional questions of how to safeguard human interests after AI surpasses human abilities. This workshop will build on many domains, including political theory, cooperative AI, economics, mechanism design, histor...
d5cd93ca-74d9-4f11-8d5e-176e510cae1e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Densing Law of LLMs Authors: Chaojun Xiao, Jie Cai, Weilin Zhao, Guoyang Zeng, Xu Han, Zhiyuan Liu, Maosong Sun. Abstract (bolding mine): > Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as a milestone in artificial intelligence, and their performance can improve as the model size increases. However, this scaling brings ...
8e36c9dd-e50e-43ad-a5d7-df0969796f56
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Lives of the Cambridge polymath geniuses Link to full-size image Delicious Facts Russell * Grandfather was British prime minister * Told Virginia Woolf his devotion to serious intellectual work came to an end when “my passions got hold of me” * Met Lenin on a visit to Russia. This visit turned him against the Ru...
c43cae8e-a26e-4684-ae58-0adacc762838
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
"Do X because decision theory" ~= "Do X because bayes theorem" Decision theory is an extremely low-level tool for governing your interactions with other people, in the same way that physics is an extremely low-level tool for winning knife fights. Actual human behavior usually involves complex multi-agent interactions,...
f68f2c15-a7b0-4ba9-b725-0fbe2855acec
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
Tom Griffiths on Cognitive Science and AI [![Tom Griffiths](http://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/tomgriffiths.jpg)](http://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/tomgriffiths.jpg)Tom Griffiths *This is a guest post by Finan Adamson, 8 September 2016* [Prof. Tom Griffiths](http://cocosci.berkeley.edu/t...
7ef978ea-db41-45db-9527-d356d77f2e13
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AI risk, executive summary MIRI recently published "Smarter than Us", a 50 page booklet laying out the case for considering AI as an existential risk. But many people have asked for a shorter summary, to be handed out to journalists for example. So I put together the following 2-page text, and would like your opinion ...
44e5bd5b-5e52-4011-b2fc-861d22cec8a4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Minimization of prediction error as a foundation for human values in AI alignment I've mentioned in posts twice (and previously in several comments) that I'm excited about predictive coding, specifically the idea that the human brain either is or can be modeled as a hierarchical system of (negative feedback) control s...
1da3c0d1-6c36-491e-a2f1-75abc1312e25
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How BoMAI Might fail This post is me looking at 1905.12186.pdf and giving some ideas on how it might fail. Firstly, I would like to point out that I think the design in this paper does buy you some amount of marginal safety when dealing with slightly superhuman AI's, and that it still gives opportunity to perhaps ge...
19bd8af2-1d76-4a3a-9155-7a208a6bc289
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Dreams of AI Design After spending a decade or two living inside a mind, you might think you knew a bit about how minds work, right? That’s what quite a few AGI wannabes (people who think they’ve got what it takes to program an Artificial General Intelligence) seem to have concluded. This, unfortunately, is wrong. Ar...
05d90f0e-be1e-444b-bcbf-b83b0ebaf415
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Math 2 Do you work with math on a fairly routine basis? Do you have little trouble grasping new mathematical ideas that use language you already know? Having this requisite would be typical of a computer programmer, a physical engineer, or someone else who routinely works with mathematically-structured ideas. At th...
1e127d88-1988-422a-9d5c-8315c4fefd38
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
“Dirty concepts” in AI alignment discourses, and some guesses for how to deal with them *Meta: This is a short summary & discussion post of* [*a talk on the same topic by Javier Gomez-Lavin*](https://youtu.be/B9Ujr6uKmpc)*, which he gave as part of the* [*PIBBSS*](https://pibbss.ai) *speaker series. The speaker series...
e3f96440-e655-4783-be9d-bc8436a942b1
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Towards Understanding Sycophancy in Language Models **TL;DR:**We show sycophancy is a general behavior of RLHF’ed AI assistants in varied, free-form text-generation settings, extending previous results. Our experiments suggest these behaviors are likely driven in part by imperfections in human preferences–both humans ...
6d27a7e4-3332-44db-afa7-446fe26486a5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Solution to the free will homework problem At the last meetup of our local group, we tried to do Eliezer's homework problem on free will. This post summarizes what we came up with. Debates on free will often rely on questions like "Could I have eaten something different for breakfast today?". We focused on the subpro...
8f37478c-11b0-4d90-98e1-cd40c6596312
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Alarms Are Better Than Chivvying Lily recently told me that she wanted to be a big kid, and we talked about what that could mean. She decided she wanted to be fully responsible for getting ready and going to school in the morning. The biggest challenge was going to be timing: normally I walk her through the process, r...
cbed4163-1dc2-4596-b9da-1db437d98583
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
The Lesson To Unlearn > The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades. > >
3b12eeb0-6d69-471c-99b9-37a50cbf2cbf
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Manifold Predicted the AI Extinction Statement and CAIS Wanted it Deleted *Crosspost from* [*https://news.manifold.markets/p/manifold-predicted-the-ai-extinction*](https://news.manifold.markets/p/manifold-predicted-the-ai-extinction) History may look back on CAIS’s AI risk statement as a pivotal moment IF we survive ...
1d1bea1e-cec2-4e31-941a-3ef7d34d2816
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Smoking Lesion Steelman It seems plausible to me that any example I've seen so far which seems to require causal/counterfactual reasoning is more properly solved by taking the right updateless perspective, and taking the action or policy which achieves maximum expected utility from that perspective. If this were the r...
6e8eaba9-49e2-4546-90b5-b5d6b8cdcbcc
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Weak vs Quantitative Extinction-level Goodhart's Law This post overlaps with our recent paper Extinction Risk from AI: Invisible to Science?. tl;dr: With claims such as "optimisation towards a misspecified goal will cause human extinction", we should be more explicit about the order of quantifiers (and the quantities...