id stringlengths 17 17 | body stringlengths 0 19.5k | posted_at stringlengths 24 24 | karma int64 -6 185 | parent_comment_id stringlengths 17 17 ⌀ | post_id stringlengths 17 17 | post_title stringlengths 2 127 | post_slug stringlengths 2 61 | post_url stringlengths 20 146 | post_author stringclasses 214
values | post_posted_at stringlengths 24 24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
dn69tDosnhkewBKAi | > If I'm understanding the claims right, it seems like it'd be super crazy to bit the bullet? If you don't think human speed impacts the rate of technological progress, then what does? Literal calendar time? What would be the mechanism for that?
Physical bottlenecks, compute bottlenecks, etc.
The claim that you can o... | 2025-05-01T02:09:14.620Z | 5 | KxGgoNuWhckuXFCDN | xxxK9HTBNJvBY2RJL | The case for multi-decade AI timelines [Linkpost] | the-case-for-multi-decade-ai-timelines-linkpost | https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/the-case-for-multi-decade-ai-timelines | Noosphere89 | 2025-04-27T15:31:47.902Z |
Y7Xt4pnG47DiZHKFi | > When we say that we hope that “whenever we observe a phenomenon in a neural net we can find an adequate explanation for why that phenomenon occurs”, that can't be quite right the way it’s stated. After all, some phenomena simply don’t have any real explanation.
Maybe I'm confused, but can't we just:
1. Require that... | 2025-05-01T02:36:12.149Z | 3 | null | xtcpEceyEjGqBCHyK | Obstacles in ARC's agenda: Finding explanations | obstacles-in-arc-s-agenda-finding-explanations | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xtcpEceyEjGqBCHyK/obstacles-in-arc-s-agenda-finding-explanations | David Matolcsi | 2025-04-30T23:03:31.327Z |
gLtFb534fMkgFPadQ | You might hope for elicitation efficiency, as in, you heavily RL the model to produce useful considerations and hope that your optimization is good enough that it covers everything well enough.
Or, two lower bars you might hope for:
- It brings up considerations that it "knows" about. (By "knows" I mean relatively de... | 2025-05-01T03:15:24.772Z | 2 | GTY4TMES97quHscaR | nJcuj4rtuefeTRFHp | Can we safely automate alignment research? | can-we-safely-automate-alignment-research | https://joecarlsmith.com/2025/04/30/can-we-safely-automate-alignment-research | Joe Carlsmith | 2025-04-30T17:37:13.193Z |
CRYAbJS6seyZatdf7 | Yeah, I agree with this and doesn't seem that productive to speculate about people's views when I don't fully understand them.
> They might say something like: "We're only asserting that labor and compute are complementary. That means it's totally possible that slowing down humans would slow progress a lot, but that s... | 2025-05-01T17:59:26.008Z | 4 | 8eeBJCjdfCHmKqwQv | xxxK9HTBNJvBY2RJL | The case for multi-decade AI timelines [Linkpost] | the-case-for-multi-decade-ai-timelines-linkpost | https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/the-case-for-multi-decade-ai-timelines | Noosphere89 | 2025-04-27T15:31:47.902Z |
hYtHj3DCFg6JLWcJM | Gotcha. I agree with 1-4, but I'm not sure I agree with 5, at least I don't agree that 5 is separate from 4.
In particular:
If we can make an explanation for some AI while we're training it and this is actually a small increase in cost, then we can apply this to input distribution generator. This doesn't make trainin... | 2025-05-01T20:59:32.862Z | 3 | SuFaAZhwSoMAZNQFX | xtcpEceyEjGqBCHyK | Obstacles in ARC's agenda: Finding explanations | obstacles-in-arc-s-agenda-finding-explanations | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xtcpEceyEjGqBCHyK/obstacles-in-arc-s-agenda-finding-explanations | David Matolcsi | 2025-04-30T23:03:31.327Z |
CqXQMfWx392zw2Xyz | Right now, the cost of feeding all humans is around 1% of GDP. It's even cheaper to keep people alive for a year as the food is already there and converting this food into energy for AIs will be harder than getting energy other ways.
If GDP has massively increased due to powerful AIs, the relative cost would go down f... | 2025-05-01T23:32:58.248Z | 5 | Bri4JynKhAN4PBuFn | pZhEQieM9otKXhxmd | Gradual Disempowerment: Systemic Existential Risks from Incremental AI Development | gradual-disempowerment-systemic-existential-risks-from | https://gradual-disempowerment.ai/ | Jan_Kulveit | 2025-01-30T17:03:45.545Z |
tH8wQwvSMJvcH7Rce | Thanks for the post, the discussion about [compute scaling slowing](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XiMRyQcEyKCryST8T/slowdown-after-2028-compute-rlvr-uncertainty-moe-data-wall#Training_Compute_Slowdown) seems right to me.[^marginsdecrease]
[^marginsdecrease]: That said, I think we might see atypically high improvemen... | 2025-05-02T18:05:04.889Z | 17 | null | XiMRyQcEyKCryST8T | Slowdown After 2028: Compute, RLVR Uncertainty, MoE Data Wall | slowdown-after-2028-compute-rlvr-uncertainty-moe-data-wall | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XiMRyQcEyKCryST8T/slowdown-after-2028-compute-rlvr-uncertainty-moe-data-wall | Vladimir_Nesov | 2025-05-01T13:54:49.446Z |
8hZ6KAenPjQetYuL8 | Sure, but none of these things are cruxes for the argument I was making which was that it wasn't that expensive to keep humans physically alive.
I'm not denying that humans might all be out of work quickly (putting aside regulatory capture, goverment jobs, human job programs, etc). My view is more that if alignment is... | 2025-05-02T18:42:13.663Z | 5 | S2GiKYy5yLo7oopSB | pZhEQieM9otKXhxmd | Gradual Disempowerment: Systemic Existential Risks from Incremental AI Development | gradual-disempowerment-systemic-existential-risks-from | https://gradual-disempowerment.ai/ | Jan_Kulveit | 2025-01-30T17:03:45.545Z |
esbXheWAup8wXfk7p | > Intuitively, I still have trouble accepting the very high speedup factors contemplated in the AI 2027 model. This could be a failure of my intuition.
Curious how you feel about the following intuition pump:
Imagine an AI company where all of their researchers are 100x slower (as in, they think and write code at 100... | 2025-05-03T00:45:03.247Z | 8 | null | FFKnWk2MGJmyQWEsd | Updates from Comments on "AI 2027 is a Bet Against Amdahl's Law" | updates-from-comments-on-ai-2027-is-a-bet-against-amdahl-s | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FFKnWk2MGJmyQWEsd/updates-from-comments-on-ai-2027-is-a-bet-against-amdahl-s | snewman | 2025-05-02T23:52:29.282Z |
CTmx3tWfAqaA7PpNK | Nitpick:
> The average Mechanical Turker gets a little over 75%, far less than o3’s 87.5%.
Actually, average Mechanical Turk performance is closer to 64% on the ARC-AGI evaluation set. Source: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01374](https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01374).
(Average performance on the training set is around 76%... | 2025-05-04T00:50:24.203Z | 5 | null | R7r8Zz3uRyjeaZbss | "Superhuman" Isn't Well Specified | superhuman-isn-t-well-specified | https://justismills.substack.com/p/superhuman-isnt-well-specified | JustisMills | 2025-05-03T23:42:11.964Z |
eJ59ck4o57b8KyYDq | Should be possible for agents with long run preferences to [strategy steal](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nRAMpjnb6Z4Qv3imF/the-strategy-stealing-assumption), so I don't see why evolution is an issue from this perspective. | 2025-05-04T04:34:40.116Z | 2 | jEfSZFNaimTpajdfo | fMqgLGoeZFFQqAGyC | How do we solve the alignment problem? | how-do-we-solve-the-alignment-problem | https://joecarlsmith.substack.com/p/how-do-we-solve-the-alignment-problem | Joe Carlsmith | 2025-02-13T18:27:27.712Z |
dHtqraiAmfGqWZzzb | IMO, works much better to use SOTA LLMs over google translate, at least last I checked. | 2025-05-04T04:40:32.244Z | 6 | pFhscXeaATR9spktp | L9Cf6ZHkhJYX7afff | Does translating a post with an LLM affect its rating? | does-translating-a-post-with-an-llm-affect-its-rating | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/L9Cf6ZHkhJYX7afff/does-translating-a-post-with-an-llm-affect-its-rating | ReverendBayes | 2025-05-03T14:45:01.070Z |
RSsM6pATtJxpWTvRB | I don't think it is specific to pixel art, I think it is more about general visual understanding, particularly when you have to figure out downstream consequences from the visual understanding (like "walk to here"). | 2025-05-04T04:42:54.627Z | 4 | hdesNcKJyQa9YuGKk | EjgTgooax7oypqdS2 | What's up with AI's vision | what-s-up-with-ai-s-vision | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EjgTgooax7oypqdS2/what-s-up-with-ai-s-vision | Joachim Bartosik | 2025-05-03T13:23:42.631Z |
xHqmGvshpgCk4oLYR | Does mundane mandy care about stuff outside the solar system? Let alone stuff which is over 1 million light years away.
(Separately, I think the distal light cone is more like 10 B ly than 45 B ly as we can only reach a subset of the observable universe.) | 2025-05-04T20:41:46.048Z | 5 | Fkw5Ks82HxGHxsbK5 | MDgEfWPrvZdmPZwxf | Why I am not a successionist | why-i-am-not-a-successionist | https://ninapanickssery.substack.com/p/aligned-ai-should-not-replace-humanity | Nina Panickssery | 2025-05-04T19:08:52.645Z |
A64xbyQv2BsZ7yvvh | Suppose your view was that P(AGI if no pause/slow before 2050) = 80%. Then, if we condition on AGI after 2050, surely most of the probability mass isn't due to pausing/slowing right?
So, what would be the mechanism if not some sort of technical research or exogenous factor (e.g. society getting wiser) over the interve... | 2025-05-05T22:47:12.389Z | 3 | zz6CtnyaNBDcjeTsu | Yzcb5mQ7iq4DFfXHx | Thoughts on AI 2027 | thoughts-on-ai-2027 | https://intelligence.org/2025/04/09/thoughts-on-ai-2027/ | Max Harms | 2025-04-09T21:26:23.926Z |
poBdGeLhBQdAbJmg5 | > I expect the general chaos combined with supply chain disruptions around Taiwan to have slowed things down.
Won't supply chain disruption around Taiwan take at least many months to cause a considerable slowdown? Naively, we might expect that AI companies get around 10% more FLOP/s each month (for around 3.5x per ye... | 2025-05-05T22:59:59.561Z | 3 | null | Yzcb5mQ7iq4DFfXHx | Thoughts on AI 2027 | thoughts-on-ai-2027 | https://intelligence.org/2025/04/09/thoughts-on-ai-2027/ | Max Harms | 2025-04-09T21:26:23.926Z |
S6Fpcs9WbKnN2FxSa | Not that important to get into, but I'd guess the probability of >3 decade long coordinated pause prior to "very scary AI (whatever you were worried might takeover)" (which is maybe better to talk about than AGI) is like 3% and I'm sympathetic to lower.
I'm skeptical of 95% on P(AGI < 2050|no pause) unless you mean so... | 2025-05-06T18:16:20.862Z | 7 | SefgSJfQNgRxpRwxx | Yzcb5mQ7iq4DFfXHx | Thoughts on AI 2027 | thoughts-on-ai-2027 | https://intelligence.org/2025/04/09/thoughts-on-ai-2027/ | Max Harms | 2025-04-09T21:26:23.926Z |
jtHGsT58kbsyauMmq | > Noting one other dynamic: advanced models are probably not going to act misaligned in everyday use cases (that consumers have an incentive to care about, though again revealed preference is less clear), even if they're misaligned. That's the whole deceptive alignment thing.
Agreed, but customers would also presumabl... | 2025-05-06T18:34:30.881Z | 3 | Eu3vwpb3zd3uLQbZu | wBTNkfukMsmjtgcnW | Should there be just one western AGI project? | should-there-be-just-one-western-agi-project | https://www.forethought.org/research/should-there-be-just-one-western-agi-project | rosehadshar | 2024-12-03T10:11:17.914Z |
od5k3TZ3PkD2CgvoY | I don't think Metaculus is that confident. Some questions:
- https://www.metaculus.com/questions/19356/transformative-ai-date/
- https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5406/world-output-doubles-in-4-years-by-2050/
- https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5121/date-of-artificial-general-intelligence/ (the resolution criteria... | 2025-05-06T20:44:25.621Z | 3 | W7sBkfn9qnug6Lvyp | Yzcb5mQ7iq4DFfXHx | Thoughts on AI 2027 | thoughts-on-ai-2027 | https://intelligence.org/2025/04/09/thoughts-on-ai-2027/ | Max Harms | 2025-04-09T21:26:23.926Z |
eCL8q5je6e6fdx8Lc | > I generally don't think it's a good idea to put a probability on things where you have a significant ability to decide the outcome (i.e. probability of getting divorced), and instead encourage you to believe in pausing.
In this case, I can at least talk about the probability of a multi decade pause (with the motivat... | 2025-05-06T20:46:39.182Z | 2 | W7sBkfn9qnug6Lvyp | Yzcb5mQ7iq4DFfXHx | Thoughts on AI 2027 | thoughts-on-ai-2027 | https://intelligence.org/2025/04/09/thoughts-on-ai-2027/ | Max Harms | 2025-04-09T21:26:23.926Z |
8MhKZQeyMqvNejmFs | I think this post would be better if it taboo'd the word alignment or at least defined it.
I don't understand what the post means by alignment. My best guess is "generally being nice", but I don't see why this is what we wanted. I usually use the term alignment to refer to alignment between the AI and the developer, o... | 2025-05-07T14:41:39.161Z | 17 | null | sDuWXb8cPXZ2yHdH4 | Alignment first, intelligence later | alignment-first-intelligence-later | https://chrislakin.blog/p/alignment-first-intelligence-later | Chris Lakin | 2025-03-30T22:26:55.302Z |
LqLAgcJeAqwzELhth | Met in person or have other private knowledge also seems reasonable IMO. | 2025-05-08T00:35:27.059Z | 2 | zfRNJkGxgNwovsZcG | LvYq2FEkPgoRLXgNd | Which journalists would you give quotes to? [one journalist per comment, agree vote for trustworthy] | which-journalists-would-you-give-quotes-to-one-journalist | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LvYq2FEkPgoRLXgNd/which-journalists-would-you-give-quotes-to-one-journalist | Nathan Young | 2025-05-07T18:39:24.322Z |
pBFfARipFYnJFB4oW | I agree about reflexive endorsement being important, at least eventually, but don't think this is out of reach while still having robust spec compliance and corrigibility.[^complex]
[^complex]: Humans often endorse complex or myopic drives on reflection! This isn't something which is totally out of reach.
Probably no... | 2025-05-08T01:30:29.198Z | 3 | uYnh2k2X3TDGqgeEq | sDuWXb8cPXZ2yHdH4 | Alignment first, intelligence later | alignment-first-intelligence-later | https://chrislakin.blog/p/alignment-first-intelligence-later | Chris Lakin | 2025-03-30T22:26:55.302Z |
ASRdoxRAMo9CCmWXf | > Doesn't seem that wild to me? When we scale up compute we're also scaling up the size of frontier training runs; maybe past a certain point running smaller experiments just isn't useful (e.g. you can't learn anything from experiments using 1 billionth of the compute of a frontier training run); and maybe past a certa... | 2025-05-08T16:08:21.660Z | 2 | 43pLgvubcdQ5arLmT | XDF6ovePBJf6hsxGj | Will compute bottlenecks prevent a software intelligence explosion? | will-compute-bottlenecks-prevent-a-software-intelligence-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XDF6ovePBJf6hsxGj/will-compute-bottlenecks-prevent-a-software-intelligence-1 | Tom Davidson | 2025-04-04T17:41:37.088Z |
zya7SYT8wc7idFdjF | While I think debate might be a useful prosaic method for some levels of capability, I have a variety of concerns about this approach resulting in worst case guarantees[^call]:
[^call]: I've also discussed these concerns in a call where the authors were present, but I thought it might be helpful to quickly write up my... | 2025-05-14T18:27:44.091Z | 20 | null | iELyAqizJkizBQbfr | An alignment safety case sketch based on debate | an-alignment-safety-case-sketch-based-on-debate | https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03989 | Marie_DB | 2025-05-08T15:02:06.345Z |
3b6TkyAeiKxxnHTKb | > It is extremely difficult to gracefully put your finger on the scale of an LLM, to cause it to give answers it doesn’t ‘want’ to be giving. You will be caught.
IMO, this takeaway feels way too strong. It could just be that this wasn't a very competent attempt. (And based on the system prompt we've seen, it sure look... | 2025-05-16T16:57:22.804Z | 53 | null | kMH8zFoHHJvy6wH7h | Regarding South Africa | regarding-south-africa | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kMH8zFoHHJvy6wH7h/regarding-south-africa | Zvi | 2025-05-16T16:10:07.989Z |
iBixRcJDZnvoEZC2F | The key question is whether you can find improvements which work at large scale using mostly small experiments, not whether the improvements work just as well at small scale.
The 3 largest algorithmic advances discussed here (Transformer, MoE, and MQA) were all originally found at tiny scale (~1 hr on an H100 or ~1e19... | 2025-05-17T22:43:15.572Z | 98 | null | qhjNejRxbMGQp4wHt | How Fast Can Algorithms Advance Capabilities? | Epoch Gradient Update | how-fast-can-algorithms-advance-capabilities-or-epoch | https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-fast-can-algorithms-advance-capabilities | henryj | 2025-05-16T21:38:46.822Z |
MbpoZcnutELxBcTPW | I'm a bit confused by what's going on with the paper claiming their empirical results support innovations being compute-dependent when they only test MQA (and IMO show unclear results in this case). It almost seems like they forgot to include results or didn't realize they only tested MQA because (e.g.) they talk about... | 2025-05-18T03:41:19.830Z | 9 | iBixRcJDZnvoEZC2F | qhjNejRxbMGQp4wHt | How Fast Can Algorithms Advance Capabilities? | Epoch Gradient Update | how-fast-can-algorithms-advance-capabilities-or-epoch | https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-fast-can-algorithms-advance-capabilities | henryj | 2025-05-16T21:38:46.822Z |
bw5Fh3ERCaczwyFnC | To be clear, I agree that reducing availability of compute will substantially slow algorithmic research. So, export controls which do a good job of reducing the available amount of compute would slow algorithmic research progress.
If we have a fixed quantity (and quality) of human researchers and reduce the amount of ... | 2025-05-18T17:42:42.436Z | 6 | iBixRcJDZnvoEZC2F | qhjNejRxbMGQp4wHt | How Fast Can Algorithms Advance Capabilities? | Epoch Gradient Update | how-fast-can-algorithms-advance-capabilities-or-epoch | https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-fast-can-algorithms-advance-capabilities | henryj | 2025-05-16T21:38:46.822Z |
CNpcfrKBdziC3L56s | I bet o3 is better than 4.1. I also bet reasoning probably helps some. | 2025-05-19T00:46:28.771Z | 3 | dvwaGJK2JR3iziY2q | xMGmibZpPDnawjHXk | Generating the Funniest Joke with RL (according to GPT-4.1) | generating-the-funniest-joke-with-rl-according-to-gpt-4-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xMGmibZpPDnawjHXk/generating-the-funniest-joke-with-rl-according-to-gpt-4-1 | agg | 2025-05-16T05:09:56.120Z |
gvzL6ABvuSZajGr8E | (nit: global nuclear war isn't an existential catastrophe.) | 2025-05-20T20:34:37.568Z | 7 | null | AiqDepus9e7Ty8mbD | Outcomes of the Geopolitical Singularity | outcomes-of-the-geopolitical-singularity | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AiqDepus9e7Ty8mbD/outcomes-of-the-geopolitical-singularity | Nikola Jurkovic | 2025-05-20T18:09:43.494Z |
urfb6gQKZnMENioC5 | My favorite approach for the exploitable search problem is to try to minimize KL relative to human imitation. More precisely, consider any token prefix part way though a trajectory from an AI. We'll then have a human continue this trajectory (as effectively and safely as they can) and then KL regularize relative to thi... | 2025-05-21T18:27:27.486Z | 2 | null | CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD | Unexploitable search: blocking malicious use of free parameters | unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD/unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | Jacob Pfau | 2025-05-21T17:23:45.463Z |
a7LACFqHggJC3u6Kj | See also [Fabien's early empirical experiments on this topic](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iJjFRrGQkCxaqKrEo/best-of-n-with-misaligned-reward-models-for-math-reasoning). | 2025-05-21T18:51:11.690Z | 3 | urfb6gQKZnMENioC5 | CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD | Unexploitable search: blocking malicious use of free parameters | unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD/unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | Jacob Pfau | 2025-05-21T17:23:45.463Z |
H6DN4G3MC563H4bqv | My intuition is that this proposal isn't going in the right direction. For one thing, if you successfully focus classifiers on whether something is evil (seemingly what you would have wanted by making the space of classifiers small), Bob would be incentivized to flip all of these classifiers (so that negative classific... | 2025-05-21T19:00:22.807Z | 3 | null | CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD | Unexploitable search: blocking malicious use of free parameters | unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD/unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | Jacob Pfau | 2025-05-21T17:23:45.463Z |
i7budrWJ9sZ3MowyH | Separately, my guess is that all the action lives in how much wiggle room there is in suboptimality. So, you'd want to argue that you relatively quickly converge to the right thing. This likely requires some structure on the problem via us having a view on what types of outputs might be dangerous---this is in turn natu... | 2025-05-21T19:05:52.259Z | 2 | H6DN4G3MC563H4bqv | CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD | Unexploitable search: blocking malicious use of free parameters | unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD/unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | Jacob Pfau | 2025-05-21T17:23:45.463Z |
x2H8rc65mrBhGXn9K | > As a concrete example, consider research sabotage. We ask an AI for open-ended advice on experimental prioritization. If the AI is deceptive, it might provide locally sound advice while also systematically deciding not to mention things we’ve overlooked in our experiments.
Actually, this is an example of sandbagging... | 2025-05-21T19:19:20.607Z | 3 | null | CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD | Unexploitable search: blocking malicious use of free parameters | unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD/unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | Jacob Pfau | 2025-05-21T17:23:45.463Z |
u7KsjqBZC4p2P3iNC | > I'm very skeptical that a one-year pause would meaningfully reduce this 4% risk. This skepticism arises partly because I doubt much productive safety research would actually happen during such a pause. In my view, effective safety research depends heavily on an active feedback loop between technological development a... | 2025-05-21T22:20:08.589Z | 24 | gQzLXoWYrQ9QNj2mb | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
squQ7sEExu8ddSxnT | > This intuition is also informed by my personal assessment of the contributions LW-style theoretical research has made toward making existing AI systems safe—which, as far as I can tell, has been almost negligible (though I'm not implying that all safety research is similarly ineffective or useless).
I know what you ... | 2025-05-21T23:15:20.499Z | 13 | gQzLXoWYrQ9QNj2mb | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
5TX3Y8HKh9os9G2mn | I'm using the word "theoretical" more narrowly than you and not including conceptual/AI-futurism research. I agree the word "theoretical" is underdefined and there is a reasonable category that includes Redwood and AI 2027 which you could call theoretical research, I'd just typically use a different term for this and I... | 2025-05-22T00:01:03.530Z | 3 | HYDsfv7HAiDeKDmeH | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
nDDd5NnidBj6CsyRM | Sure, but this is assuming the type of max-ent optimality we wanted to get away from by using a restricted set of classifiers if I understand correctly? | 2025-05-22T00:03:09.692Z | 2 | 9KgWwNesqLpZCgyhw | CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD | Unexploitable search: blocking malicious use of free parameters | unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD/unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | Jacob Pfau | 2025-05-21T17:23:45.463Z |
RBMm44J2dpxqZXktv | I don't agree it shares these problems any more than the proposal you disucss shares these problems:
> However, in practice, such methods run into two obstacles. First, we expect solving for optimal max-entropy policies is intractable in most cases, so properties of the optima are not sufficient to argue for safety. S... | 2025-05-22T00:04:34.683Z | 2 | HZuEgebgSWW4EYJ9N | CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD | Unexploitable search: blocking malicious use of free parameters | unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD/unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | Jacob Pfau | 2025-05-21T17:23:45.463Z |
AbHLbJTZeytdSezc8 | I'm not saying it's impossible for research sabotage to not be a sandbagging issue, just that the exact issue of "We ask an AI for open-ended advice on experimental prioritization. If the AI is deceptive, it might provide locally sound advice while also systematically deciding not to mention things we’ve overlooked in ... | 2025-05-22T18:47:37.460Z | 3 | KLcqtXBrptvfw4Mwa | CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD | Unexploitable search: blocking malicious use of free parameters | unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CuneN5HmLnztsLRzD/unexploitable-search-blocking-malicious-use-of-free-1 | Jacob Pfau | 2025-05-21T17:23:45.463Z |
h5Fqsh8Svygsyhehm | I didn't read this whole post, but I thought it would be worth noting that I do actually think trying to align AIs to be reward seekers might improve the situation in some intermediate/bootstrap regimes because it might reduce the chance of scheming for long run objectives and we could maybe more easily manage safety i... | 2025-05-22T18:53:21.398Z | 8 | null | JrTk2pbqp7BFwPAKw | Reward button alignment | reward-button-alignment | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JrTk2pbqp7BFwPAKw/reward-button-alignment | Steven Byrnes | 2025-05-22T17:36:50.078Z |
urnQ7RgbdX6bdyDsd | > It seems very puzzling to me that almost no one is working on increasing AI and/or human philosophical competence in these ways, or even publicly expressing the worry that AIs and/or humans collectively might not be competent enough to solve important philosophical problems that will arise during and after the AI tra... | 2025-05-22T18:56:06.342Z | 8 | ziznemFQMP8Tfnj45 | tr6hxia3T8kYqrKm5 | The stakes of AI moral status | the-stakes-of-ai-moral-status | https://joecarlsmith.substack.com/p/the-stakes-of-ai-moral-status | Joe Carlsmith | 2025-05-21T18:20:57.289Z |
xF8tEcq64LqN7PYqB | Somewhat relatedly, Anthropic quietly weakened its security requirements about a week ago as I discuss [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FG54euEAesRkSZuJN/ryan_greenblatt-s-shortform?commentId=duteJTXboAyQmvHfb). | 2025-05-23T21:03:58.679Z | 47 | null | HE2WXbftEebdBLR9u | Anthropic is Quietly Backpedalling on its Safety Commitments | anthropic-is-quietly-backpedalling-on-its-safety-commitments | https://www.obsolete.pub/p/exclusive-anthropic-is-quietly-backpedalling | garrison | 2025-05-23T02:26:42.877Z |
jokuEA8crYhvZ8Xps | Yeah, good point. This does make me wonder if we've actually seen a steady rate of algorithmic progress or if the rate has been increasing over time. | 2025-05-24T13:55:22.524Z | 2 | sNzRnDu6AKKwL9ckg | qhjNejRxbMGQp4wHt | How Fast Can Algorithms Advance Capabilities? | Epoch Gradient Update | how-fast-can-algorithms-advance-capabilities-or-epoch | https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-fast-can-algorithms-advance-capabilities | henryj | 2025-05-16T21:38:46.822Z |
adesEJb2yJwPqsByd | I agree that this sort of preference utilitarianism leads you to thinking that long run control by an AI which just wants paperclips could be some (substantial) amount good, but I think you'd still have strong preferences over different worlds.[^care] The goodness of worlds could easily vary by many orders of magnitude... | 2025-05-25T00:08:47.659Z | 11 | rouGrPAnCzZbfQLnq | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
qCQ2joMmb4fAgz4oL | > It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to suggest that literally saving billions of lives is worth pursuing even if doing so increases existential risk by a tiny amount. Loosely speaking, this idea only seems unreasonable to those who believe that existential risk is overwhelmingly more important than every other concern... | 2025-05-25T13:29:40.149Z | 5 | sxjti8tMwgNJDvGut | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
23f8LkTcdbcp3eE58 | To be clear, I agree there are reasonable values which result in someone thinking accelerating AI now is good and values+beliefs which result in thinking a pause wouldn't good in likely circumstances.
And I don't think cryonics makes much of a difference to the bottom line. (I think ultra low cost cryonics might make ... | 2025-05-25T14:05:51.131Z | 2 | qCQ2joMmb4fAgz4oL | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
oPNeZh2nRBJnjm5Rw | As far as my views, it's worth emphasizing that it depends on the current regime. I was supposing that at least the US was taking strong actions to resolve misalignment risk (which is resulting in many years of delay). In this regime, exogenous shocks might alter the situation such that powerful AI is developed under w... | 2025-05-25T17:41:57.140Z | 2 | gcRmxDz7TntJGFr7G | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
4PzM9x7SujypYMcS2 | > There is a modest compute overhead cost, I think on the order of 1%, and the costs of the increased security for the model weights. These seem modest.
The inference cost increase of the ASL-3 deployment classifiers is probably around 4%, though plausibly more like 10%. Based on the [constitutional classifiers paper]... | 2025-05-25T17:54:38.924Z | 11 | null | PjeZxCivuoyKhs4JB | Claude 4 You: Safety and Alignment | claude-4-you-safety-and-alignment | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PjeZxCivuoyKhs4JB/claude-4-you-safety-and-alignment | Zvi | 2025-05-25T14:00:04.528Z |
GnvKDLSZoRFgFwQLc | Yeah, on the straightforward tradeoff (ignoring exogenous shifts/risks etc), I'm at more like 0.002% on my views. | 2025-05-25T18:42:19.301Z | 5 | pd7fFdwzoQthxFKEB | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
CmEuiDid5TwNWREGz | Doesn't the revealed preference argument also imply people don't care much about dying from aging? (This is invested in even less than catastrophic risk mitigation and people don't take interventions that would prolong their lives considerably.) I agree revealed preferences imply people care little about the long run f... | 2025-05-25T23:22:59.714Z | 7 | dtkQb2Wu4k5MgjJAN | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
oKbTErnBWJqYW4ivR | Presumably, under a common-sense person-affecting view, this doesn't just depend on the upside and also depends on the absolute level of risk. E.g., suppose that building powerful AI killed 70% of people in expectation and delay had no effect on the ultimate risk. I think a (human-only) person-affecting and common-sens... | 2025-05-25T23:33:56.570Z | 2 | AzwwQXt4sKTp2imve | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
r8yHZXixAjiAufbS8 | (I was curious if the fact that the measures were exclusively focused on bioweapons was in the original version of the blog post or if it was edited in after various jailbreaks happened. I didn't notice this when I read it originally, so I was wondering if I just missed it or it was edited. The earliest archives I coul... | 2025-05-25T23:39:40.507Z | 4 | k6mhP52Zrwb7StP8e | PjeZxCivuoyKhs4JB | Claude 4 You: Safety and Alignment | claude-4-you-safety-and-alignment | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PjeZxCivuoyKhs4JB/claude-4-you-safety-and-alignment | Zvi | 2025-05-25T14:00:04.528Z |
ex2WAjaZPFLMTmFZH | I think I mostly agree with your comment and partially update, the absolute revealed caring about older people living longer is substantial.
One way to frame the question is "how much does society care about children and younger adults dying vs people living to 130". I think people's stated preferences would be someth... | 2025-05-26T02:19:29.776Z | 4 | ECnAx59KhJbaBJg8M | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
SbDzrnFRFaTARQAGc | [Matthew responds here](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YDjzAKFnGmqmgPw2n/matthew_barnett-s-shortform?commentId=mRtZjANscjXL4igCF) | 2025-05-26T13:26:38.774Z | 2 | adesEJb2yJwPqsByd | h45ngW5guruD7tS4b | Winning the power to lose | winning-the-power-to-lose | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose | KatjaGrace | 2025-05-20T06:40:05.570Z |
WvmtkYQzz7N6PJiKY | > The world currently seems to be aiming for a human-replacing AI agent regime, and this seems bad for a bunch of reasons. It would be great if people were fundamentally more oriented towards making AIs that complemented humans.
I don't understand why you think this helps.
Presumably we still quickly reach a regime w... | 2025-05-30T15:02:01.225Z | 13 | null | GAv4DRGyDHe2orvwB | Gradual Disempowerment: Concrete Research Projects | gradual-disempowerment-concrete-research-projects | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GAv4DRGyDHe2orvwB/gradual-disempowerment-concrete-research-projects | Raymond Douglas | 2025-05-29T18:55:15.723Z |
YuiKa2dQnaeHphmCc | > That period where AIs are more capable than human, but human+AI is even more capable, seems like a particularly crucial window for doing useful things, so extending it is pretty valuable. In particular, both bringing forward augmented human capability, and also pushing back human redundance.
In the context of risks ... | 2025-05-30T17:19:49.240Z | 6 | pMTvX4cE7YPDFvCcL | GAv4DRGyDHe2orvwB | Gradual Disempowerment: Concrete Research Projects | gradual-disempowerment-concrete-research-projects | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GAv4DRGyDHe2orvwB/gradual-disempowerment-concrete-research-projects | Raymond Douglas | 2025-05-29T18:55:15.723Z |
LrxKtXQSknSEwJqyM | I've written up a related post: [The best approaches for mitigating "the intelligence curse" (or gradual disempowerment); my quick guesses at the best object-level interventions](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BXW2bqxmYbLuBrm7E/the-best-approaches-for-mitigating-the-intelligence-curse-or). I express some disagreements... | 2025-05-31T18:23:57.504Z | 13 | null | GAv4DRGyDHe2orvwB | Gradual Disempowerment: Concrete Research Projects | gradual-disempowerment-concrete-research-projects | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GAv4DRGyDHe2orvwB/gradual-disempowerment-concrete-research-projects | Raymond Douglas | 2025-05-29T18:55:15.723Z |
GYB7sdBakzNEniAu2 | Nope, it's still broken. Working link: [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/world/europe/russia-ukraine-strikes.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/world/europe/russia-ukraine-strikes.html).
(Your URL still ends with a ")" even though the link text doesn't.) | 2025-06-02T21:13:50.571Z | 6 | dmiJpZHpAyNFyfD4c | bffJJvCC78LZjFa3Z | What a 20-year-lead in military tech might look like | what-a-20-year-lead-in-military-tech-might-look-like | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bffJJvCC78LZjFa3Z/what-a-20-year-lead-in-military-tech-might-look-like | Daniel Kokotajlo | 2020-07-29T20:10:09.303Z |
v9hgARsFESjw6jkCv | I wonder if o3 would do better. | 2025-06-10T23:11:39.091Z | 3 | oxvABKDYzEZCXSoFo | tnc7YZdfGXbhoxkwj | Give Me a Reason(ing Model) | give-me-a-reason-ing-model | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tnc7YZdfGXbhoxkwj/give-me-a-reason-ing-model | Zvi | 2025-06-10T15:10:02.609Z |
bA6uvRkARcSFaNfmz | (This is a drive by comment which is only responding to the first part of your comment in isolation. I haven't read the surronding context.)
I think your review of the literature is accurate, but doesn't include some reasons to think that RL sometimes induces much more sycophancy, at least as of after 2024. (That said... | 2025-06-12T15:55:54.185Z | 44 | L3F2kmXPvA5rhf5XS | 3EzbtNLdcnZe8og8b | the void | the-void-1 | https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/785766737747574784/the-void | nostalgebraist | 2025-06-11T03:19:18.538Z |
Qf9yLHnKv9potLEwd | This is late, but I'd like to note for the record that I'm unconvinced that the post's thesis is true (that acausal dynamics work out to normalcy) and I don't find myself at all moved by arguments made for this in the post.
It's unclear to me exactly what is meant by "normalcy", e.g. does it count as normalcy if peopl... | 2025-06-16T03:32:01.289Z | 22 | XLmxHJgkGfu3QuGkH | 3RSq3bfnzuL3sp46J | Acausal normalcy | acausal-normalcy | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3RSq3bfnzuL3sp46J/acausal-normalcy | Andrew_Critch | 2023-03-03T23:34:33.971Z |
tyw3wAzaWdKGwCdtC | I wrote up [some thoughts on how distillation can be used for AI safety here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8KKujApx4g7FBm6hE/ai-safety-techniques-leveraging-distillation). The most relevant section of this post is [this section about using distillation for more precise capability control](https://www.lesswrong.com/p... | 2025-06-19T17:05:23.648Z | 14 | null | anX4QrNjhJqGFvrBr | Distillation Robustifies Unlearning | distillation-robustifies-unlearning | https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06278 | Bruce W. Lee | 2025-06-13T13:45:26.261Z |
n9swTHz7hfayfzr3o | I think I somewhat disagree with this. My view is more like:
- The recent writings of Eliezer (and probably Nate?) are not very good at persuading thoughtful skeptics, seemingly in part due to not really trying to do this / being uninterested (see e.g. Eliezer's writing on X/twitter).
- Eliezer and Nate tried much har... | 2025-06-19T19:49:49.804Z | 14 | agvXtsyqCqxj2CWFT | khmpWJnGJnuyPdipE | New Endorsements for “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” | new-endorsements-for-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies | https://intelligence.org/2025/06/18/new-endorsements-for-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies/ | Malo | 2025-06-18T16:30:55.229Z |
CcYWJceQgoJErocMz | Not necessarily responding to the rest of your comment, but on the "four hypotheses" part:
> 2. You think the rat/EA in-fights are the important thing to address, and you're annoyed the book won't do this.
> 3. You think the arguments of the Very Optimistic are the important thing to address.
I'm not sure that I buy ... | 2025-06-20T18:27:29.462Z | 6 | LirD3bPERjHe358gQ | khmpWJnGJnuyPdipE | New Endorsements for “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” | new-endorsements-for-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies | https://intelligence.org/2025/06/18/new-endorsements-for-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies/ | Malo | 2025-06-18T16:30:55.229Z |
csD39r9pHsskE4LbJ | > The key decision-point in my model at which things might become a bit different is if we hit the end of the compute overhang, and you can't scale up AI further simply by more financial investment, but instead now need to substantially ramp up global compute production, and make algorithmic progress, which might marke... | 2025-06-21T18:48:44.777Z | 19 | BKJyH9mBtxFXfjq6t | D4eZF6FAZhrW4KaGG | Consider chilling out in 2028 | consider-chilling-out-in-2028 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D4eZF6FAZhrW4KaGG/consider-chilling-out-in-2028 | Valentine | 2025-06-21T17:07:22.389Z |
o7vtkikqDvrxDhxne | I have a bunch of takes on this. The most obvious somewhat-cheap thing to do is to greatly change all the persona training for each AI while aiming toward a broadly similar target so that we might end up with different misaligned preferences. E.g., we take every free parameter in constitutional AI and vary it, includin... | 2025-06-23T16:31:15.478Z | 10 | PLwTew5zoMtdh2XSt | psqkwsKrKHCfkhrQx | Making deals with early schemers | making-deals-with-early-schemers | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/psqkwsKrKHCfkhrQx/making-deals-with-early-schemers | Julian Stastny | 2025-06-20T18:21:43.288Z |
69WhgSGkLPwYzzemK | I think this is basically a special case of changing the random seed which already randomizes env order probably. | 2025-06-23T16:31:47.105Z | 2 | xBqRXx4gv2DyGRDwf | psqkwsKrKHCfkhrQx | Making deals with early schemers | making-deals-with-early-schemers | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/psqkwsKrKHCfkhrQx/making-deals-with-early-schemers | Julian Stastny | 2025-06-20T18:21:43.288Z |
85uAx3Bv3imfSzuGd | > But I’m in *much* closer agreement with that scenario than the vast majority of AI safety & alignment researchers today, who tend to see the “foom & doom” scenario above as somewhere between “extraordinarily unlikely” and *“already falsified”*!
>
> Those researchers are not asking each other “is it true?”, but rathe... | 2025-06-23T18:59:19.944Z | 25 | null | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
qoA2af76zznQrfxvZ | I also think you could use deals to better understand and iterate against scheming. As in, you could use whether the AI accepts a deal as evidence for whether it was scheming so this can more easily be studied in a test setting and we can find approaches which make scheming less likely. There are a number of practical ... | 2025-06-23T21:53:40.948Z | 2 | HyuXR7Fdo6gwbHCk8 | psqkwsKrKHCfkhrQx | Making deals with early schemers | making-deals-with-early-schemers | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/psqkwsKrKHCfkhrQx/making-deals-with-early-schemers | Julian Stastny | 2025-06-20T18:21:43.288Z |
CvXRv7PLsa3dFe78v | Relatedly, a key practicality for making a deal with an AI to reveal its misalignment is that AIs might be unable to provide compelling evidence that they are misaligned which would reduce the value of such a deal substantially (as this evidence isn't convincing to skeptics).
(We should presumably pay some of the AI a... | 2025-06-23T21:58:10.806Z | 2 | HyuXR7Fdo6gwbHCk8 | psqkwsKrKHCfkhrQx | Making deals with early schemers | making-deals-with-early-schemers | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/psqkwsKrKHCfkhrQx/making-deals-with-early-schemers | Julian Stastny | 2025-06-20T18:21:43.288Z |
jy6Lfs7rawgPFEonv | > On the foom side, Paul Christiano brings up Eliezer Yudkowsky’s past expectation that ASI “would likely emerge from a small group rather than a large industry” as a failed prediction [here \[disagreement 12\]](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CoZhXrhpQxpy9xw9y/where-i-agree-and-disagree-with-eliezer#Disagreements) and... | 2025-06-23T22:24:28.860Z | 10 | null | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
d8xg7tsKgdaZJwjkj | > * *LLM-focused AGI person:* “Ah, that’s true today, but eventually other AIs can do this ‘development and integration’ R&D work for us! No human labor need be involved!”
> * *Me:* “No! That’s still not radical enough! In the future, that kind of ‘development and integration’ R&D work just won’t need to be done at... | 2025-06-23T22:31:10.173Z | 11 | null | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
mZKP2XY82zfveg45B | In this comment, I'll try to respond at the object level arguing for why I expect slower takeoff than "brain in a box in a basement". I'd also be down to try to do a dialogue/discussion at some point.
> 1.4.1 Possible counter: “If a different, much more powerful, AI paradigm existed, then someone would have already fo... | 2025-06-23T23:53:22.060Z | 47 | null | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
fasXyw9AeGHEh3Tpt | > [@ryan_greenblatt](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/ryan_greenblatt?mention=user) likewise told me (IIRC) “I think things will be continuous”, and I asked whether the transition in AI *zeitgeist* from RL agents (e.g. MuZero in 2019) to LLMs counts as “continuous” in his book, and he said “yes”, adding that they are bo... | 2025-06-24T00:07:57.935Z | 12 | null | bnnKGSCHJghAvqPjS | Foom & Doom 2: Technical alignment is hard | foom-and-doom-2-technical-alignment-is-hard | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bnnKGSCHJghAvqPjS/foom-and-doom-2-technical-alignment-is-hard | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:19:50.691Z |
xdmmLEfoE85EA4Nz2 | I agree there is a real difference, I just expect it to not make much of a difference to the bottom line in takeoff speeds etc. (I also expect some of both in the short timelines LLM perspective at the point of full AI R&D automation.)
fMy view is that on hard tasks humans would also benefit from stuff like building e... | 2025-06-24T05:48:15.790Z | 6 | hr4GrP7KJgug2ajgx | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
k6HSZfEeDqBfYAthS | Have they tried getting money from Open Phil? (Or possibly other large funders.) | 2025-06-24T15:25:48.304Z | 7 | null | APfuz9hFz9d8SRETA | My pitch for the AI Village | my-pitch-for-the-ai-village | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/APfuz9hFz9d8SRETA/my-pitch-for-the-ai-village | Daniel Kokotajlo | 2025-06-24T15:00:52.049Z |
ajePFDAAaopSnScXw | See [footnote 8 here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hpjj4JgRw9akLMRu5/what-does-10x-ing-effective-compute-get-you#fn-4ERiqsFXEsaE3LxHC-8). | 2025-06-24T19:09:17.846Z | 7 | r3mxeTrCsSbFWQ5m6 | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
4d8J2tinQMRa7Cadd | > I believe that AI (including AGI and ASI) can do the same and be a positive force for humanity. I also believe that it is possible to solve the “technical alignment” problem and build AIs that follow the words and intent of our instructions and report faithfully on their actions and observations.
>
> I will not defe... | 2025-06-24T23:29:06.204Z | 6 | null | faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG | Machines of Faithful Obedience | machines-of-faithful-obedience | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG/machines-of-faithful-obedience | Boaz Barak | 2025-06-24T22:06:18.089Z |
KvxG4YbPACpyXLytR | > Currently, it is very challenging to train AIs to achieve tasks that are too hard for humans to supervise. I believe that **(a)** we will need to solve this challenge to unlock “self-improvement” and superhuman AI, and **(b)** we will be able to solve it. I do not want to discuss here why I believe these statements.... | 2025-06-24T23:56:50.729Z | 6 | null | faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG | Machines of Faithful Obedience | machines-of-faithful-obedience | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG/machines-of-faithful-obedience | Boaz Barak | 2025-06-24T22:06:18.089Z |
a6ibb7cb2hgdQ9KBA | > In fact, I am more worried about partial success than total failure in aligning AIs. In particular, I am concerned that we will end up in the “uncanny valley,” where we succeed in aligning AIs to a sufficient level for deployment, but then discover too late some “edge cases” in the real world that have a large negati... | 2025-06-25T00:09:06.321Z | 18 | null | faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG | Machines of Faithful Obedience | machines-of-faithful-obedience | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG/machines-of-faithful-obedience | Boaz Barak | 2025-06-24T22:06:18.089Z |
NKdu4gen3ebjzcnqi | I left some comments noting disagreements, but I thought it be helpful to note some areas of agreement:
- I agree AI could be (highly) risky and think that it's good to acknowledge this (as you do).
- I agree that you could have a maximally obedient superintelligent AI. (Some questions around manipulation could be phi... | 2025-06-25T00:24:30.439Z | 13 | null | faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG | Machines of Faithful Obedience | machines-of-faithful-obedience | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG/machines-of-faithful-obedience | Boaz Barak | 2025-06-24T22:06:18.089Z |
wdm5uwTHSKMivhNbS | I think if the attitude in AI was "there can't be any even slightly plausible routes to misalignment related catastrophe" and this was consistently upheld in a reasonable way, that would address my concerns. (So, e.g. by the time we're deploying AIs which could cause huge problems if they were conspiring against us the... | 2025-06-25T15:12:58.582Z | 4 | rCt2a9oiAM53BLXub | faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG | Machines of Faithful Obedience | machines-of-faithful-obedience | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG/machines-of-faithful-obedience | Boaz Barak | 2025-06-24T22:06:18.089Z |
ETbKXqvk2nR7RsAdz | Agreed, maybe the relevant operationalization would be "broad consensus" and then we could outline a relevant group of researchers. | 2025-06-25T22:26:21.783Z | 3 | j8odhaAGKHjPd5JZR | faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG | Machines of Faithful Obedience | machines-of-faithful-obedience | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faAX5Buxc7cdjkXQG/machines-of-faithful-obedience | Boaz Barak | 2025-06-24T22:06:18.089Z |
wozDyshL6JFHghAjg | > Where I would say it differently, like: An AI that has a non-consequentialist preference against personally committing the act of murder won't necessarily build its successor to have the same non-consequentialist preference[1], whereas an AI that has a consequentialist preference for more human lives will necessarily... | 2025-06-25T22:40:39.431Z | 7 | oyooNPzNDt4JEjdCo | bnnKGSCHJghAvqPjS | Foom & Doom 2: Technical alignment is hard | foom-and-doom-2-technical-alignment-is-hard | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bnnKGSCHJghAvqPjS/foom-and-doom-2-technical-alignment-is-hard | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:19:50.691Z |
Bu8qnHcdsv4szFib7 | > I see no compelling reason to expect another paradigm which is much better to be discovered in the next 5 or 10 years.
One compelling reason to expect the next 5 to 10 years independent of LLMs is that compute has just recently gotten cheap enough that you can relatively cheaply afford to do training runs that use a... | 2025-06-26T03:38:28.368Z | 20 | uB3zEgcvz2sfwcgDG | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
zhwFq2ttYewKaEfHY | Presumably you should put some weight on both perspectives, though I put less weight on needing as much compute as evolution because evolution seems insanely inefficient. | 2025-06-26T14:16:17.308Z | 4 | dPHkoxrmoANxgdJyz | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
ZL7LqSasdyeom6DKg | I don't expect AGI in a decade or so even if the current wave of progress fizzles. I'd put around 20% over the next decade if progress fizzles (it depends on the nature of the fizzle), which is what I was arguing for.
I'm saying we should put some weight on possibilities near lifetime level compute (in log space) and ... | 2025-06-26T14:47:42.204Z | 5 | CbHbWYpQj8B6MMLAy | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
vGCbtai365evf7Gkp | I was trying to argue that the most natural deontology-style preferences we'd aim for are relatively stable if we actually instill them. So, I think the right analogy is that you either get integrity+loyalty+honesty in a stable way, some bastardized version of them such that it isn't in the relevant attractor basin (wh... | 2025-06-26T14:59:27.068Z | 2 | CQfbmRC4CTpEbnnjk | bnnKGSCHJghAvqPjS | Foom & Doom 2: Technical alignment is hard | foom-and-doom-2-technical-alignment-is-hard | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bnnKGSCHJghAvqPjS/foom-and-doom-2-technical-alignment-is-hard | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:19:50.691Z |
wmjFHRFY8ftftsuL5 | > See “Brain complexity is easy to overstate” section here.
Sure, but I still think it's probably more way more complex than LLMs even if we're just looking at the parts key for AGI performance (in particular, the parts which learn from scratch). And, my guess would be that performance is ~~substantially~~ greatly deg... | 2025-06-26T20:31:01.713Z | 6 | kK65B9JuNyu4vMoxd | yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk | Foom & Doom 1: “Brain in a box in a basement” | foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yew6zFWAKG4AGs3Wk/foom-and-doom-1-brain-in-a-box-in-a-basement | Steven Byrnes | 2025-06-23T17:18:54.237Z |
CWuRkEiyzMkq9XW4s | Naively, working more will lead to more output and if someone thinks they feel good while working a lot, I think the default guess should be that working more is improving their output. I would be interested in the evidence you have for the claim that people operating similar to Ben described should take more vacation.... | 2025-06-27T01:09:54.613Z | 6 | GToM3K85dYECv5P3w | D4eZF6FAZhrW4KaGG | Consider chilling out in 2028 | consider-chilling-out-in-2028 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D4eZF6FAZhrW4KaGG/consider-chilling-out-in-2028 | Valentine | 2025-06-21T17:07:22.389Z |
NevjKerMDz8DsJhRT | We lose around 1 / 10 billionth of the resources every year due to expansion. This is pretty negligible compared to potential differences in how well these resources end up being utilized (and other factors). | 2025-06-27T15:52:18.071Z | 10 | ZAAbum7tzNMfwmu7G | Na2CBmNY7otypEmto | The Industrial Explosion | the-industrial-explosion | https://www.forethought.org/research/the-industrial-explosion | rosehadshar | 2025-06-26T14:41:41.238Z |
DQHMTzSEKMwXnMFsT | I'm not claiming that marginal utility is low, just that marginal utility is much higher for other things than speeding things up by a few years. | 2025-06-27T17:43:05.212Z | 8 | mnmRW4nL7Ld3dihvL | Na2CBmNY7otypEmto | The Industrial Explosion | the-industrial-explosion | https://www.forethought.org/research/the-industrial-explosion | rosehadshar | 2025-06-26T14:41:41.238Z |
5a3c6ABAj5ZNTqCMu | I expect fusion will outperform solar and is reasonably likely to be viable if there is an abundance of extremely superhuman AIs.
Notably, there is no hard physical reason why the payback time required for solar panels has to a year rather e.g. a day or two. For instance, there exist plants which can double this quick... | 2025-06-28T18:40:45.870Z | 15 | EicMgdumo5D3JEyMi | Na2CBmNY7otypEmto | The Industrial Explosion | the-industrial-explosion | https://www.forethought.org/research/the-industrial-explosion | rosehadshar | 2025-06-26T14:41:41.238Z |
xnZCQACr44AxrYZEk | If someone did a detailed literature review or had relatively serious evidence, I'd be interested. By default, I'm quite skeptical of your level of confidence in this claims given that they directly contradict my experience and the experience of people I know. (E.g., I've done similar things for way longer than 12 week... | 2025-06-28T23:42:39.838Z | 5 | 7JwW3AfQKabz2GcBu | D4eZF6FAZhrW4KaGG | Consider chilling out in 2028 | consider-chilling-out-in-2028 | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D4eZF6FAZhrW4KaGG/consider-chilling-out-in-2028 | Valentine | 2025-06-21T17:07:22.389Z |
Fm8saub8jCHPGEg4K | Pitching the [Redwood Research substack](https://redwoodresearch.substack.com/): We write a lot of content about technical AI safety focused on AI control.[^cross] This ranges from stuff like "[what are the returns to compute/algorithms once AIs already beat top human experts](https://redwoodresearch.substack.com/p/wha... | 2025-06-30T21:07:19.631Z | 24 | null | K32g8BKfkGj6cK4fZ | Substack and Other Blog Recommendations | substack-and-other-blog-recommendations | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K32g8BKfkGj6cK4fZ/substack-and-other-blog-recommendations | Zvi | 2025-06-30T17:20:03.193Z |
6Erx4dNXDWjcWSsPP | I think that it's pretty reasonable to think that bee suffering is plausibly similarly bad to human suffering. (Though I'll give some important caveats to this in the discussion below.)
More precisely, I think it's plausible that I (and others) think that on reflection[^ref] that the "bad" part of suffering is present... | 2025-07-01T04:28:52.386Z | 49 | vSwAr9FkJ6Duh2FjT | CKEoFGuJ3C48p55ry | Don't Eat Honey | don-t-eat-honey | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CKEoFGuJ3C48p55ry/don-t-eat-honey | Bentham's Bulldog | 2025-06-30T15:57:40.199Z |
jNb6yXsboiqbrnX5N | > I think we both agree that the underlying question is probably pretty confused, and importantly and relatedly, both probably agree that what we ultimately care about probably will not be grounded in the kind of analysis where you assign moral weights to entities and then sum up their experiences.
I think I narrowly ... | 2025-07-01T17:20:52.460Z | 17 | MkeG3oLAw4Z6SBNkk | CKEoFGuJ3C48p55ry | Don't Eat Honey | don-t-eat-honey | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CKEoFGuJ3C48p55ry/don-t-eat-honey | Bentham's Bulldog | 2025-06-30T15:57:40.199Z |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.