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7.55M
43866a59-1e46-42d4-a9c4-b546f48bb21b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
RTFB: The RAISE Act The RAISE Act has overwhelmingly passed the New York Assembly (95-0 among Democrats and 24-22 among Republicans) and New York Senate (37-1 among Democrats, 21-0 among Republicans). Governor Kathy Hochul now has to decide whether or not to sign it, which she has 10 non-Sunday days to do once the bi...
851946eb-5efb-411b-8838-4fc0221e3a17
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Realistic epistemic expectations When I state a position and offer evidence for it, people sometimes complain that the evidence that I've given doesn't suffice to establish my position. The situation is usually that I'm not trying to give a rigorous argument for my position, and I don't intend to claim that the eviden...
ae9d9da0-9698-46e1-9168-aaca770cf317
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How to get into AI safety research Recently, I had a conversation with someone from a math background, asking how they could get into AI safety research. Based on my own path from mathematics to AI alignment, I recommended the following sources. It may prove useful to others contemplating a similar change in career: ...
d96f8393-2b8c-4193-8766-68975d413138
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Consciousness Box You open your eyes.   Four walls. The surface of the floor and walls is a smooth, matte metal. The entire ceiling glows with a comfortable, soft luminosity like that of the morning sky. There are no doors. There are no windows. It is silent. The surfaces of the walls and floor are seamless, lac...
fabaa1c6-2c8b-4132-a3ec-8102ff3c2a65
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
"First post here, and I'm disagreeing with something in the main sequences. Hubris acknowledged, here's what I've been thinking about. It comes from the post "Are your enemies innately evil?": On September 11th, 2001, nineteen Muslim males hijacked four jet airliners in a deliberately suicidal effort to hurt the United...
8c815605-dc6e-46fb-a903-7472c199c3e0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Permanent properties of things are a self-fulfilling prophecy a fairy tale demonstrating that to maintain a constant property, words are not needed and you don't even need to be human if in the forest a bunny fell into a pit with stakes and was surprised - this can be interpreted as "the bunny held the property of th...
04e7618d-2ce8-406c-a6cc-a92f2d08bdad
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Natural Selection's Speed Limit and Complexity Bound Today's post, Natural Selection's Speed Limit and Complexity Bound was originally published on 04 November 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > Tried to argue mathematically that there could be at most 25MB of meaningful information (or therea...
5150e248-9053-415b-8e07-80b22ba6e4fe
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Montreal LessWrong Meetup - The Science of Winning at Life Discussion article for the meetup : Montreal LessWrong Meetup - The Science of Winning at Life WHEN: 18 February 2013 06:30:00PM (-0500) WHERE: 655 Avenue du Président Kennedy, Montréal, QC H3A 3H9 Weekly meeting of the Montreal LessWrong Meetup gr...
aee9b0a1-0695-4522-b277-7d32a5a51f37
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
"Casey Serin, a 24-year-old web programmer with no prior experience in real estate, owes banks 2.2 million dollars after lying on mortgage applications in order to simultaneously buy eight different houses in different states. He took cash out of the mortgage (applied for larger amounts than the price of the house) and...
252273b9-74a7-409a-a9d1-c3ea9510082a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
New organization - Future of Life Institute (FLI) As of May 2014, there is an existential risk research and outreach organization based in the Boston area. The Future of Life Institute (FLI), spearheaded by Max Tegmark, was co-founded by Jaan Tallinn, Meia Chita-Tegmark, Anthony Aguirre and myself. Our idea was to cr...
b29115d7-c001-4f83-b401-41d4483aaa38
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
General Purpose Intelligence: Arguing The Orthogonality Thesis 1 Analysis and Metaphysics GENERAL PURPOSE I NTELLIGENCE : ARGUING THE ORTHOGONALITY THESIS STUART ARMSTRONG stuart.armstrong@philosophy.ox.ac.uk Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford Martin School Philosophy Department, University of Oxford ...
864d19f3-d163-4d7c-a854-e7b444efe4de
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AI Strategy Updates that You Should Make or: "Things That I Keep Telling AI People Around Me, So I'm Just Writing A Big Post About Them." I think it's really valuable for people to think about AI strategy, even if that's not their main job, since it is useful for informing what their main job should be. There will be...
5d136045-7b96-47e1-aef6-cdfa6ddc54e0
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Is there any serious attempt to create a system to figure out the CEV of humanity and if not, why haven't we started yet? Hey, fellow people, I'm fairly new to LessWrong and if this question is irrelevant i apologise for that, however I was wondering whether any serious attempts to create a system for mapping out the ...
004f71a9-27de-405b-b460-62a3341b8902
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
"Disclaimer: I’ve never held a job for more than a year [1] or been paid more than $15 an hour. Take everything I say with a grain of salt.Many of my peers seem to make career plans like by asking things likeWhat am I interested in, or what do I like doing? andHow can I do something related to that?which might lead to ...
1a5b6f97-f7da-4bfe-853e-6615801816ce
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Off-topic Thread We used to have a monthly off-topic thread for stuff rationalists might like to talk about that really has no bearing on rationality. Here's a new one.   ETA: Original off-topic thread
bbf7300c-5275-4748-91a9-7a49da66f134
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
World War Zero In the 1750s, British settlers in America wanted to trade in Ohio Country. The French didn't want them to. In 1753 the French began construction of a series of forts in the Ohio Country. Nobody stopped them because Ohio Country was de facto French territory. The French had been trading there for years a...
e3c0c0cd-d9a3-4a1a-b42f-82a3f95efa11
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] A Failed Just-So Story Today's post, A Failed Just-So Story was originally published on 05 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > Part of the reason professional evolutionary biologists dislike just-so stories is that many of them are simply wrong. Discuss the post here (rather than in t...
e82c357c-7354-4ca0-8eb4-cca18b70d8c3
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
What Are The Biggest Threats To Humanity? (A Happier World video) A Happier World just published a video on existential risks! The aim was to make an introductory video to the threats of nuclear war, engineered pandemics and AI. Would love to hear what you think. Feel free to use it for your EA events! Thanks to Yu...
1e7f59b8-2916-447b-bdfc-18ebbe0e8503
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Encultured AI, Part 1 Appendix: Relevant Research Examples Also available on the EA Forum. Appendix to: Encultured AI, Part 1: Enabling New Benchmarks Followed by: Encultured AI, Part 2: Providing a Service Appendix 1: “Trending” AI x-safety research areas We mentioned a few areas of “trending” AI x-safety research ...
4784bfee-a024-4372-9e31-1cf74445ca6f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Coordination Frontier: Sequence Intro Sometimes, groups of humans disagree about what to do.  We also sometimes disagree about how to decide what to do.  Sometimes we even disagree about how to decide how to decide. Among the philosophically unsophisticated, there is a sad, frustrating way this can play out: Pe...
51445322-6417-48ed-b2ec-d3221487d532
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
Building safe artificial intelligence: specification, robustness, and assurance \*By Pedro A. Ortega, Vishal Maini, and the DeepMind safety team\* Building a rocket is hard. Each component requires careful thought and rigorous testing, with safety and reliability at the core of the designs. Rocket scientists and engi...
bf9d42e2-de94-4737-924c-8210a5dfa33d
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
Update on all the AI predictions *By Katja Grace, 5 June 2015* For the last little while, we’ve been looking into [a dataset of individual AI predictions](http://aiimpacts.org/miri-ai-predictions-dataset/), collected by MIRI a couple of years ago. We also previously gathered all the [surveys](http://aiimpacts.org/ai...
da94eb67-d80b-45d4-90cd-640c0bc2f1a4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Comic about the Singularity Today's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.  (Which incidentally is a very funny webcomic I read regularly.)  Mouseover the red button for a bonus panel. Clearly the author hasn't read the proper Eliezer essay(s) on post-Singularity life.
b90da88b-ad14-4dea-8975-0f05d746e3ba
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Why and How to Graduate Early [U.S.] Students that pursue a bachelors degree in the U.S. traditionally spend four years in high school (graduating at ~18) and four years in university (~22). They often hold part-time jobs and internships, but only start accumulating “real” experience after finishing their education. ...
9ce0e89d-ea59-4bd7-8b25-7f0a5655aa72
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Incorrigibility in the CIRL Framework 1 Introduction and Setup ------------------------- When designing an advanced AI system, we should allow for the possibility that our first version may contain some errors. We therefore want the system to be incentivized to allow human redirection even if it has some errors in ...
6e552b84-69c5-4c4c-92d8-9e9beef3f1a3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Abs-E (or, speak only in the positive) "Positive" and "negative", as used here, refer to truth-values and logical structure, rather than emotional valence. On almost any topic, there are many potential false statements, and comparatively very few[1] true statements. Thus a simple true statement (like "the sky is blue...
0365f36c-e5af-42a6-bc07-96bcbb51ff61
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Healthy News Diet II In the previous post I described what I thought a healthy news diet might look like. I wanted to lay out a framework that would allow me to stay informed in ways I care about, but would also keep me from using news as a way to pass time and indulge in an addiction to the feed. I came up with the...
2a166491-7a3b-4704-803c-613698a9403e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Testing the effectiveness of an effort to help "It has long been the standard practice in medical testing: Give drug treatment to one group while another, the control group, goes without. Now, New York City is applying the same methodology to assess one of its programs to prevent homelessness. Half of the test subjec...
daafb51a-509a-4ef9-88ed-a15988999b57
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
"Churchill—when he wasn’t busy leading the fight against the Nazis—had many hobbies. He wrote more than a dozen volumes of history, painted over 500 pictures, and completed one novel (“to relax”). He tried his hand at landscaping and bricklaying, and was “a championship caliber polo player.” But did you know he was als...
2ef0f943-c4c8-41fe-8ab7-f3ba8709d2ad
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Dangers of Closed-Loop AI In control theory, an open-loop (or non-feedback) system is one where inputs are independent of outputs. A closed-loop (or feedback) system is one where outputs are input back into the system. In theory, open-loop systems exist. In reality, no system is truly open-loop because systems are em...
2f34f5b4-5777-443d-92d6-7dd8edcbd941
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
' petertodd'’s last stand: The final days of open GPT-3 research TL;DR All GPT-3 models were decommissioned by OpenAI in early January. I present some examples of ongoing interpretability research which would benefit from the organisation rethinking this decision and providing some kind of ongoing research access. Thi...
1f9899f4-a184-4c00-be5d-dc4185fd9f5b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A clever argument for buying lottery tickets I use the phrase 'clever argument' deliberately: I have reached a conclusion that contradicts the usual wisdom around here, and want to check that I didn't make an elementary mistake somewhere. Consider a lottery ticket that costs $100 for a one-in-ten-thousand chance of w...
af9016d2-ce46-4c9f-a51e-6ad92c853fc2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Mental software updates Brains are like computers in that the hardware can do all kinds of stuff in principle, but each one tends to run through some particular patterns of activity repeatedly. For computers you can change this by changing programs. What are big ways brain ‘software’ changes? Some I can think of: *...
71f67def-150c-4148-a32b-0f794adde597
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Emergent AI Society. Tasks, Scarcity, Talks In this article, I explore how AI agents on the web, driven only by task completion and resource efficiency incentives, may naturally form a self-regulating society with their own culture, economy, and governance — without human oversight and intention. Tasks, resource scarc...
4c3b32cb-b244-4c1b-afa9-d3a8bb17d4ec
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
I Was Not Almost Wrong But I Was Almost Right: Close-Call Counterfactuals and Bias Abstract: "Close-call counterfactuals", claims of what could have almost happened but didn't, can be used to either defend a belief or to attack it. People have a tendency to reject counterfactuals as improbable when those counterfactua...
79e0b4d3-f865-4b17-82f9-5245fca4ab11
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
No Anthropic Evidence Closely related to: How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many? Consider the following thought experiment. At the start, an "original" coin is tossed, but not shown. If it was "tails", a gun is loaded, otherwise it's not. After that, you are offered a big number of rounds of decision, where in each one y...
047229df-74f2-47f0-adfb-615dcedfaa82
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Foom seems unlikely in the current LLM training paradigm Epistemic status: The idea here has likely been articulated before, I just haven't noticed it, so it might be worth pointing it out again. Foom describes the idea of a rapid AI takeoff caused by an AI's ability to recursively improve itself. Most discussions ab...
b07ab114-3c46-4cc9-b1a7-29d57a9433b2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Mental models - giving people personhood and taking it away Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/giving-people-personhood-and-taking-it-away This post is about the Kegan levels of self development.  If you don't know what that is, this post might still be interesting to you but you might be missing some key structur...
0626b5d0-c3b6-4f3b-83d1-543ca25601ed
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
The Thingness of Things *[Metadata: crossposted from <https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-thingness-of-things.html>. I'm fairly likely to not respond to comments promptly. If you're especially interested in chatting, my gmail address is: tsvibtcontact ]* .mjx-chtml {display: inline-block; line-height: 0; text-in...
f51fbed7-9bae-4511-9e34-1f7b39dc4e7a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Improving the college experience for students on the autism spectrum Smith College is considering trying to make itself more attractive to smart students on the autism spectrum.  I would be grateful for suggestions on how to do this from autistics who read LessWrong.  You can write comments here or if you wish to rema...
86c75381-6d20-4cb1-ad13-c9ac02863949
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What I am working on right now and why: representation engineering edition TL:DR: Representation engineering will probably revolutionize how we interact with the most important technology of our generation. Based on my reading of a 1000+ representation-engineering-adjacent papaers are some thoughts on what I am workin...
cc28df92-0138-4327-a5a4-21e77618475b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
I'm Voting For Ranked Choice, But I Don't Like It This fall, Ranked Choice / Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) will be on the ballot in Massachusetts. I'm voting for it, but only because it's better than the status quo, not because I think it's a very good voting system. Massachusetts currently uses traditional majority ("...
0b628b97-50f7-4c28-b77d-8625662a50ed
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Solovay's theorems of arithmetical adequacy for GL One of the things that makes [https://arbital.com/p/-5l3](https://arbital.com/p/-5l3) such an interesting formal system is the direct relation between its theorems and a restricted albeit rich class of theorems regarding [provability predicates](https://arbital.com/p/...
6e250dd0-3977-451f-9e64-0a68e644811e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What we're losing More and more, LessWrong's posts are meta-rationality posts, about how to be rational, how to avoid akrasia, in general, without any specific application.  This is probably the intended purpose of the site.  But they're starting to bore me. What drew me to LessWrong is that it's a place where I can ...
97956fe9-1bd4-4197-a177-b44ec2a69350
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Random fic idea Got this snippet of an idea while reading a Terminator/Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover. Not going to do anything with it (for hopefully obvious reasons), but I figured I'd share because I found it amusing.   >  The artificial intelligence researcher looked up, startled, as the door slammed open, r...
79267d0e-a4eb-4245-bd04-0dac98acd18f
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
$100/$50 rewards for good references *With thanks to Rohin Shah.* Dear LessWrongers, this is an opportunity to make money and help with AI alignment. We're looking for specific AI capabilities; has anyone published on the following subject: * **Generating multiple reward functions or policies from the same set o...
c7f5f568-10e0-4522-98b6-d6ee82fc3764
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Global warming is a better test of irrationality that theism Theism is often a default test of irrationality on Less Wrong, but I propose that global warming denial would make a much better candidate. Theism is a symptom of excess compartmentalisation, of not realising that absence of evidence is evidence of absence,...
54c92e61-ac40-4239-8816-edc640c5fedf
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Could fabs own AI? Disclaimer: Very rough thoughts. I am nothing approaching an expert on this topic. Comments, corrections, and references appreciated. Suppose there's an amazing general-purpose neural net architecture that learns as it runs and can be scaled indefinitely with returns that don't diminish too much. S...
9cb5ead0-ee46-4463-a19a-3fbf2fcac97b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Towards a Quieter Life My life is LOUD. Thoughts of fiction, conversations, unrealistic hypotheticals, games, tv shows flood my mind when there's no need to be babbling those thoughts. I have coroutines running in my mind to CHECK YOUR PHONE, YOUR EMAIL, YOUR RSS FEED, ... Being aware of myself in those moments, I've...
3aaff0e2-0912-4d61-8f56-23d0b55b7fb7
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Eliezer apparently wrong about higgs boson So someone told me that Eliezer Yudkowsky predicted no 5 sigma evidence of the higgs boson, and that 6 sigma evidence had been found. A quick search found the post referred to, and a slightly longer but not particularly thorough search did not find anything discussing it. So...
756ef9e6-a16e-4273-bbcf-13b03048d34d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Which fields of learning have clarified your thinking? How and why? Did computer programming make you a clearer, more precise thinker? How about mathematics? If so, what kind? Set theory? Probability theory? Microeconomics? Poker? English? Civil Engineering? Underwater Basket Weaving? (For adding... depth.) Anything...
535cf85b-0448-4ef6-857b-2596b057bd4d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Reflection Mechanisms as an Alignment Target - Attitudes on “near-term” AI TL;DR * We survey 1000 participants on their views about what values should be put into powerful AIs that we think are plausible in the near-term (e.g. within 5-10 years) * We find that respondents report to not favor the means of choosing ...
891cf86c-2d0a-4b89-b505-f1dc73d528ab
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Smartphone Etiquette: Suggestions for Social Interactions If anyone stopped and asked themselves if they enjoy the current smartphone social etiquette—whereby you could be opening up your soul to a friend in a moment of vulnerability, when suddenly, they feel a buzz and reflexively check their phone to discover an imp...
a60bbf87-e28b-4d20-bc44-58a3c31921d2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Wes Weimer from Udacity presents his list of things you should learn I've just gotten to the end of Udacity's CS262 course in programming languages. It's been pretty good. Wes Weimer, the lecturer, seems to be a really cool guy. There's a quote from HPMOR in the final exam, which I thought was pretty cool. In the las...
d5233374-c247-4986-b52e-80f81e011e91
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American There are different ways of combining quotation and punctuation marks. In the American style, you almost always put periods and commas inside the quotation marks: > Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, "I refute it thu...
786ed568-5f12-485d-93fb-71eec77398bf
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Four part playbook for dealing with AI (Holden Karnofsky on the 80,000 Hours Podcast) We just published an interview: [**Holden Karnofsky’s four part playbook for dealing with AI**](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/holden-karnofsky-how-ai-could-take-over-the-world/)**.** You can click through for the audio, a f...
9f98710e-d747-4f07-8a1f-2a445fb9c855
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Putanumonit: What statistical power means, and why I'm terrified about psychology
b3c1eadf-51b0-4009-a1cf-42952ad3cdc5
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
How to use the Forum (intro) The Effective Altruism Forum is a platform run by the [Centre for Effective Altruism](https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/) to facilitate discussions relevant to [effective altruism](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/) and coordinate related projects. Here are some resources for Fo...
0c2ff7fd-43e3-4d29-82f5-f939901b06b0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Bayesian examination A few months ago, Olivier Bailleux, a Professor of computer science and reader of my book on Bayesianism, sent me an email. He suggested to apply some of the ideas of the book to examine students. He proposed Bayesian examination. I believe it to be a brilliant idea, which could have an important...
f846e155-4ff0-443b-9d51-e2e49d6eb131
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
My favorite AI governance research this year so far I collected my favorite public pieces of research on AI strategy, governance, and forecasting from 2023 so far. If you're a researcher, I encourage you to make a quick list of your favorite pieces of research, then think about what makes it good and whether you're a...
58059cab-670c-4753-9b60-133684928fbb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Bayes Academy: Development report 1 Some of you may remember me proposing a game idea that went by the name of The Fundamental Question. Some of you may also remember me talking a lot about developing an educational game about Bayesian Networks for my MSc thesis, but not actually showing you much in the way of results...
e55b6475-ae41-446d-832b-05b35458123d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Decoherent Essences Today's post, Decoherent Essences was originally published on 30 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > Decoherence is implicit within physics, not an extra law on top of it. You can choose representations that make decoherence harder to see, just like you can choose repr...
c8c8312c-d36a-4118-80ce-985710a755c1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Gary Marcus: Four Steps Towards Robust Artificial Intelligence Gary Marcus is a pretty controversial figure within machine learning. He's become widely known for being the most outspoken critic of the current paradigm of deep learning, arguing that it will be insufficient to yield AGI. Two years ago he came out with D...
7ddb1cc1-35b4-4a94-87bb-64f44f064984
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Optimization, loss set at variance in RL This is a suggestion of a reinforcement learning model with an additional conflicting dynamic between optimized data and loss function. That conflict is intended to reduce RL’s intrinsic Omohundro x-risk dynamic. Thus, it’s also an attempt to produce, though without details, a ...
ceb45b05-4edc-4eb2-8f7a-9a9b1904b433
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Ideal target The 'ideal target' of a [meta-utility function](https://arbital.com/p/meta_utility) $\Delta U$ which behaves as if a ground-level utility function $U$ is taking on different values in different possible worlds, is the value of $U$ in the actual world; or the expected value of $U$ after updating on all pos...
d3d8934d-06e1-4d7c-88ad-029f5bf83c7f
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info
AI Safety Info
Why can’t we just use Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics? Asimov’s laws, often highlighted in AI discussions, are insightful but inherently flawed. Indeed, Asimov himself acknowledges their limitations in his books and uses them primarily as an illustrative tool. Take the first law, for example. This law dictates that ...
d2fac1bd-b0c7-4572-bf2e-969fb908876a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Wire versus Evolutionary Psychology In their Evolutionary Psychology Primer, Cosmides and Tooby give an example of a hypothesized adaptation that allows us to detect cheaters in a certain type of logical task (Wason) that we generally fail at.  In the Wason selection task (both article and wiki give examples) you ...
fe19a38b-b279-4a12-b40b-4cc195f925e3
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
IJMC Mind Uploading Special Issue published The International Journal of Machine Consciousness recently published its [special issue on mind uploading](http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmc/04/0401/S17938430120401.html). The papers are paywalled, but as the editor of the issue, Ben Goertzel has put together a page that [lin...
0ea6a77f-8326-4b37-ac6b-af73063699b1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Summary of 80k's AI problem profile This is a summary of the article “Preventing an AI-related catastrophe” (audio version here) by Benjamin Hilton from 80,000 Hours (80k). The article is quite long, so I have attempted to capture the key points without going through all the details. I’m mostly restating ideas from th...
ef8debe1-5451-4480-bedf-3282db0e6c98
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Humans Shouldn't make Themselves Smarter? Just thought you guys should know about this. Some work that argues that humans should not enhance their intelligence with technology, and that super intelligence probably never evolves.
8bf0a37d-04bf-433e-b6b6-3b19dec99892
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Ought: why it matters and ways to help (*Cross-posted from [LessWrong](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cpewqG3MjnKJpCr7E/ought-why-it-matters-and-ways-to-help)*) I think that Ought is one of the most promising projects working on AI alignment. There are several ways that readers can potentially help: * They are recr...
b6f1985b-42e0-4faa-83f5-bbc3fe7929b6
awestover/filtering-for-misalignment
Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results
id: post1744 Produced during the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative (SERI) ML Alignment Theory Scholars (MATS) Program of 2022, under John Wentworth “Overconfidence in yourself is a swift way to defeat.” - Sun Tzu TL;DR: Escape into the Internet is probably an instrumental goal for an agentic AGI. An incompletely al...
b5261dd2-bc99-4e01-999c-bd2d11d87d40
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Zetetic explanation There is a kind of explanation that I think ought to be a cornerstone of good pedagogy, and I don't have a good word for it. My first impulse is to call it a historical explanation, after the original, investigative sense of the term "history." But in the interests of avoiding nomenclature collisio...
8dc5533c-9294-4818-bb48-ebef99d2fc91
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
If you know you are unlikely to change your mind, should you be lazier when researching? I'm currently doing research into political candidates to decide how I'm going to vote. It's tedious because I don't know of a good system that prescribes how much research to do and what exactly to factor into my voting decision....
5c9747f4-ed8c-4262-aad6-9af8532af2f0
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Knowledge-Integrated Informed AI for National Security Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory Knowledge-Integrated Informed AI for National Security Anu K. Myne Kevin J. Leahy Ryan J. Soklaski Technical Report TR-1272 27 January 2022 DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT A. Approved for public release. Distribution...
8861e964-fc99-47bb-a13e-279269a23452
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Orthogonality: action counterfactuals It seems that some of the problems with orthogonality go away if you use the AI's actions to define the counterfactuals. In the traditional model "Press" meant a button is pressed that compels the AI to change utility u→v, and it gets a reward E(u|u↛v)−E(v|u→v). Problem was, this...
f9c5e2e1-78f2-43c6-b30a-d83125b961cc
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Thoughts on the OpenAI alignment plan: will AI research assistants be net-positive for AI existential risk? Note: I really appreciate the work that the OpenAI alignment team put into their alignment plan writeup and related posts, especially Jan Leike, the leader of that team. I believe open discussions about alignmen...
90fb4b67-f197-47ec-b3d6-5d17a4df0577
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
MIRI Has Moved! For the past several months, MIRI and its child organization [CFAR](http://rationality.org/) have been working from a much-too-small office on the outskirts of Berkeley. At the end of June, MIRI and CFAR took over the 3rd floor of [2030 Addison St.](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=2030+Addison+S...
5f3c138f-5ab1-4996-a7e8-b9ed402c37d9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Re: Fierce Nerds Paul Graham just published an article titled Fierce Nerds. It's the most precise description of me I've ever read. > Most people think of nerds as quiet, diffident people. In ordinary social situations they are — as quiet and diffident as the star quarterback would be if he found himself in the middl...
1adc37da-70a4-4e69-b4cc-f48677ef2282
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
I'm hiring a Research Assistant for a nonfiction book on AI! I'm Garrison Lovely, a freelance journalist with work in NYT, Nature, BBC, TIME, and elsewhere. I report on the intersection of economics, geopolitics, and artificial intelligence. I'm also a Reporter in Residence at the Omidyar Network and publisher of Obso...
5baf2629-8950-4094-a539-79958dfaaeea
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
AXRP Episode 23 - Mechanistic Anomaly Detection with Mark Xu [Google Podcasts link](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9heHJwb2RjYXN0LmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz/episode/NDUzZTcwMzUtNThiOS00Y2NjLTkzOGUtNzJhZWM0MmFlNTA1) Is there some way we can detect bad behaviour in our AI system without having to know exactly wha...
d7721b0e-a68b-438b-9ef4-cb47d9e18475
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
LINK: 'Philosophy Bites' episode on the Singularity In May 2010, a leading philosophy podcast called Philosophy Bites did a show on the Singularity.
5ad2a3e4-966b-4308-aa67-1c9613c3a40f
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info
AI Safety Info
How might AGI kill people? If we pose a serious threat, it could hack our weapons systems and turn them against us. Future militaries are much more vulnerable to this due to rapidly progressing autonomous weapons. There’s also the option of creating bioweapons and distributing them to the most unstable groups you can ...
05062786-ca63-47a3-8026-aaecbd8af5dd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On Tables and Happiness I'm writing this post because I want to have a succinct and shareable piece summarising my non-rigorous views on happiness. During the past decade, I entered adulthood. With this transition came more choices, as my parents and teachers no longer constrained me. More choices came with more resp...
ca96bb54-5ab3-4cfd-936c-5db6221f364c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Fear or fear? (A Meteuphoric post on distinguishing feelings from considered positions.)
bb190230-d1db-4000-b08b-a3d99df26ea3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AI labs can boost external safety research Frontier AI labs can boost external safety researchers by * Sharing better access to powerful models (early access, fine-tuning, helpful-only,[1] filters/moderation-off, logprobs, activations)[2] * Releasing research artifacts besides models * Publishing (transparent, rep...
cf7da1da-8238-4c42-a25c-325d7c355a40
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Warsaw November Meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Warsaw November Meetup WHEN: 17 November 2014 06:00:00PM (+0100) WHERE: Warsaw Where? Cafe Niespodzianka, Marszałkowska 7, 00-626 Warszawa When? Vote and decide: http://doodle.com/t28anzntaczs8nwi If you use Facebook, join our local group: www.fa...
90bad1e9-0f96-4a03-a476-085cf30d5d36
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Why do we post our AI safety plans on the Internet? *Cross-posted from the* [*EA Forum*](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WPEwFS5KR3LSqXd5Z/why-do-we-post-our-ai-safety-plans-on-the-internet)*.* **TL;DR**: It is plausible that AGI safety research should be assumed compromised once it is posted on the Inte...
fc13f590-23f1-489c-94f1-10e6b210a300
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Ex-OpenAI employee amici leave to file denied in Musk v OpenAI case? Several ex-employees of OpenAI filed an amicus brief in the Musk v OpenAI[1] case. This proposed brief argues that OpenAI should not be allowed to move from its existing nonprofit structure to a for-profit structure. We now have an order on the motio...
068c920c-3785-4960-a71e-6cf62c602b31
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Not yet gods You probably don't feel guilty for failing to snap your fingers in just such a way as to produce a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Yet, many people do feel guilty for failing to work until they drop every single day (which is a psychological impossibility). They feel guilty for failing to magically abandon...
c66e5946-0673-4c10-bd42-915a52664f02
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
[AN #144]: How language models can also be finetuned for non-language tasks Alignment Newsletter is a weekly publication with recent content relevant to AI alignment around the world. Find all Alignment Newsletter **[resources here](http://rohinshah.com/alignment-newsletter/)**. In particular, you can look through **[...
5274dd01-9ea8-4c9b-8b79-46c64055b2a5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Babble Challenge: 50 Ways to Overcome Impostor Syndrome Here we go again. Time to become stronger. This week’s challenge: Imagine you are a bright young PhD student with interesting articles to write. You have picked your journals, developed the thesis, and are hard at work dratfting publications. But there's one p...
eb4c1efb-4fb4-4774-b22f-40424d421ce9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The current state of RSPs This is a reference post. It contains no novel facts and almost no novel analysis. The idea of responsible scaling policies is now over a year old. Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind each have something like an RSP, and several other relevant companies have committed to publish RSPs by February...
f0958f50-1a88-40eb-90e6-a591dbfcb894
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What do you actually do to replenish your willpower? After a bit of brief research, I still have no idea how willpower depletion actually works, or if I'm mistaking depletion for distraction, etc., etc.  I get the impression that there isn't much a consensus in the field on this subject.   What I'd like to know is t...
601c717e-d905-468b-963b-5a11c76e1291
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Learning human preferences: optimistic and pessimistic scenarios In this post and the next, I try and clarify - for myself and for others - the precise practical implications of the "Occam's razor is insufficient to infer the preferences of irrational agents " paper. Time and again, I've had trouble getting others to...
66917e32-5472-4bb1-b931-736202c73cfb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Variational Bayesian methods I've noticed a lack of clear explanations of the fundamental idea behind the use of variational Bayesian methods, so I thought it would be worth writing something here on this topic. Intractability problems A problem that comes up routinely in Bayesian inference is the following: suppose...
7effc807-292a-4bf0-b314-14747b47e198
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The New Age of Social Engineering Why have so many online social networks failed to form healthy communities, and instead gained notoriety as hostile spaces? I argue that the reason these platforms have failed is because they didn’t learn the lessons taught by the High Moderns when humans were first faced with the cha...
92835256-9614-4202-8b9d-86a5e43cea92
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Good intuitions Sometimes people have ‘good intuitions’. Which is to say something like, across a range of questions, they tend to be unusually correct for reasons that are hard to explain explicitly. How do people come to have good intuitions? My first guess is that new intuitions are born from looking at the world,...
53666b71-1845-4035-8aa1-ab47e5e653e1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities Today's post, Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities was originally published on 19 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > An Artificial Intelligence coded using Solmonoff Induction would be vulnerable to Pascal's Muggi...
decd87d1-b6bd-4c0c-9ac8-2cd9cb468651
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Statistical error in half of neuroscience papers The statistical error that just keeps on coming, Ben Goldacre, Guardian, Friday 9 September 2011 20.59 BST We all like to laugh at quacks when they misuse basic statistics. But what if academics, en masse, deploy errors that are equally foolish? This week Sander Nieuwe...