url stringlengths 52 124 | post_id stringlengths 17 17 | title stringlengths 2 248 | author stringlengths 2 49 | content stringlengths 22 295k ⌀ | date stringclasses 376
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https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2uJsiQqHTjePTRqi4/superbabies-putting-the-pieces-together | 2uJsiQqHTjePTRqi4 | Superbabies: Putting The Pieces Together | sarahconstantin | This post was inspired by some talks at the recent LessOnline conference including one by LessWrong user “Gene Smith”.
Let’s say you want to have a “designer baby”. Genetically extraordinary in some way — super athletic, super beautiful, whatever.
6’5”, blue eyes, with a trust fund.
Ethics aside[1], what would be neces... | 2024-07-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Yu8jADLfptjPsR58E/games-for-ai-control-1 | Yu8jADLfptjPsR58E | Games for AI Control | cjgriffin | [UPDATE: This post is now updated to reflect our conference-length preprint, available on arXiv. Louis Thomson helped with this update. New results are marked "NEW".]
This post summarises our new workshop paper: Games for AI Control. The paper applies AI- and game-theoretic tools to the AI Control framework introduced ... | 2024-07-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/odSAs6HCMFJrWhdZX/effective-empathy | odSAs6HCMFJrWhdZX | Effective Empathy | Unknown | I have just summarised a video by Psychiatrist Alok Kanija for myself, which is about maximising the benefits of empathy and lowering the drawbacks. It generally pleads the case, that people are getting more selfish and naricicistic, but the rarer empathy becomes the bigger the benefits become, sort of in a market supp... | 2024-07-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xAoXxjtDGGCP7tBDY/ai-72-denying-the-future | xAoXxjtDGGCP7tBDY | AI #72: Denying the Future | Zvi | The Future. It is coming.
A surprising number of economists deny this when it comes to AI. Not only do they deny the future that lies in the future. They also deny the future that is here, but which is unevenly distributed. Their predictions and projections do not factor in even what the AI can already do, let alone wh... | 2024-07-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uuAsPCGh2uxff7WNB/thoughts-to-niplav-on-lie-detection-truthfwl-mechanisms-and | uuAsPCGh2uxff7WNB | Thoughts to niplav on lie-detection, truthfwl mechanisms, and wealth-inequality | Emrik North | Emrik
Hi, niplav! You might be wondering, "what's this about?", and you would be right.
You see, I was going to write this to you on Schelling.pt (⛯) in response to our chat about lie-detection and the future of human civilization, but instead I am writing it here. I also considered writing it as an email, and I real... | 2024-07-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Xtv9FcFpJQfqLqubQ/the-best-bits-from-build-baby-build | Xtv9FcFpJQfqLqubQ | The Best Bits From Build, Baby, Build | maxwell-tabarrok | Build, Baby, Build is George Mason Economist Bryan Caplan’s latest book and second graphic novel. This book makes the case that government regulation of housing is at the center of our most important economic and social problems. It’s a fun book and a quick read. If you’re already involved in research or debates about ... | 2024-07-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MfTLXSWqs5iorKzyW/examine-self-modification-as-an-intuition-provider-for-the | MfTLXSWqs5iorKzyW | Examine self modification as an intuition provider for the concept of consciousness | weightt-an | (epistemic status: this direction of thought is pretty strongly endorsed by me, but not very thoroughly expressed/developed, I'm working on it)
This post is kind of a mess, and made out of pieces of discussions I had in many places, but I decided to post it anyway, otherwise its editing stated to stretch out indefinite... | 2024-08-24 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tgrdfvN8f3WzvZGcr/what-other-lines-of-work-are-safe-from-ai-automation | tgrdfvN8f3WzvZGcr | What Other Lines of Work are Safe from AI Automation? | roger-d-1 | TL;DR: Post-AGI career advice needed (asking for a friend).
Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that Leopold Aschenbrenner is correct that at some point in the fairly near future (possibly even, as he claims, this decade) AI will be capable of acting as a drop-in remote worker as intelligent as the smartest human... | 2024-07-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jpGHShgevmmTqXHy5/decomposing-agency-capabilities-without-desires | jpGHShgevmmTqXHy5 | Decomposing Agency — capabilities without desires | owencb | What is an agent? It’s a slippery concept with no commonly accepted formal definition, but informally the concept seems to be useful. One angle on it is Dennett’s Intentional Stance: we think of an entity as being an agent if we can more easily predict it by treating it as having some beliefs and desires which guide it... | 2024-07-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3XNinGkqrHn93dwhY/reliable-sources-the-story-of-david-gerard | 3XNinGkqrHn93dwhY | Reliable Sources: The Story of David Gerard | tracingwoodgrains | This is a linkpost for https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin, posted in full here given its relevance to this community. Gerard has been one of the longest-standing malicious critics of the rationalist and EA communities and has done remarkable amounts of work to shape their public im... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ABsb23t74M5ZetuqX/interim-research-report-evaluating-the-goal-directedness-of | ABsb23t74M5ZetuqX | [Interim research report] Evaluating the Goal-Directedness of Language Models | rauno-arike | This post was written as part of the summer 2024 cohort of the ML Alignment & Theory Scholars program, under the mentorship of Marius Hobbhahn.
Summary
Over the past four weeks, we have been developing an evaluation suite to measure the goal-directedness of LLMs. This post outlines our motivation, our approach, and the... | 2024-07-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7LWKzJd3L3YJ8Ys6D/managing-emotional-potential-energy | 7LWKzJd3L3YJ8Ys6D | Managing Emotional Potential Energy | adamShimi | I really need a holiday.
I’m feeling stressed and trapped by my responsibilities, I get angry at people and at what they ask of me, I feel miserable at the end of most days.
Now, even just a year ago, I would have looked for a cause outside of myself: my job is unsatisfying, my boss is a dick, my colleagues are terribl... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BmqKxL3BedDTCjer3/eaforum-xpost-a-breakdown-of-openai-s-revenue | BmqKxL3BedDTCjer3 | [EAForum xpost] A breakdown of OpenAI's revenue | dschwarz | We estimate that, as of June 12, 2024, OpenAI has an annualized revenue (ARR) of:
$1.9B for ChatGPT Plus (7.7M global subscribers),
$714M from ChatGPT Enterprise (1.2M seats),
$510M from the API, and
$290M from ChatGPT Team (from 980k seats)
(Full report in https://app.futuresearch.ai/reports/3Li1, methods described in... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wDpXshpakpYDcTtug/fluent-cruxy-predictions-1 | wDpXshpakpYDcTtug | Fluent, Cruxy Predictions | Raemon | The latest in the Feedback Loop Rationality series.
Periodically, people (including me) try to operationalize predictions, or bets, and... it doesn't seem to help much.
I think I recently "got good" at making "actually useful predictions." I currently feel on-the-cusp of unlocking a host of related skills further down ... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/usyCLLT3PxGqNuqap/antitrust-as-controlled-creative-destruction | usyCLLT3PxGqNuqap | Antitrust as Controlled Creative Destruction | sustrik | Standard Oil, Refinery No. 1
Splitting large companies is an antitrust measure which, in its essence, is meant as an act of controlled creative destruction. (Read more about controlled creative destruction here.) When a company achieves monopoly status, it often becomes ridden with different inefficiencies and perverse... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bwtGTK6ZnwaumjJNj/airbnb-baking | bwtGTK6ZnwaumjJNj | AirBnB Baking | jkaufman | I like making food at home, where I know my kitchen and ingredients.
I have a several things I
make often, and while
I sometimes make new things it's all a bit familiar. So when I'm on a
vacation in a rental house, one thing I enjoy is cooking. It's a bit
of a challenge, perhaps suitable for a low-stakes cooking show... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BmJZKtuoroqgBpWTe/diy-rlhf-a-simple-implementation-for-hands-on-experience | BmJZKtuoroqgBpWTe | DIY RLHF: A simple implementation for hands on experience | mike-vaiana | Many thanks to Diogo de Lucena, Cameron Berg, Judd Rosenblatt, and Philip Gubbins for support and feedback on this post.
TL;DR
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is one of the leading methods for fine-tuning foundational models to be helpful, harmless, and honest. But it’s complicated and the standard i... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i9BM732YusRGEhqn2/usefulness-grounds-truth | i9BM732YusRGEhqn2 | Usefulness grounds truth | invertedpassion | Crosspost from https://invertedpassion.com/usefulness-grounds-truth/
Are LLMs intelligent?
Debates on this question often, but not always, devolve into debates on what LLMs can or cannot do. To a limited extent, the original question is useful because it creates an opening for people to go into specific. But, beyond th... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/erE6jmJviBAarWgQL/on-passing-complete-and-honest-ideological-turing-tests | erE6jmJviBAarWgQL | On passing Complete and Honest Ideological Turing Tests (CHITTs) | alenglander | [Cross-posted from Facebook]
"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."
- Ender Wiggin (fro... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4fqdfrDzFebsx8amf/brief-notes-on-the-wikipedia-game | 4fqdfrDzFebsx8amf | Brief notes on the Wikipedia game | jarviniemi | Alex Turner introduced an exercise to test subjects’ ability to notice falsehoods: change factual statements in Wikipedia articles, hand the edited articles to subjects and see whether they notice the modifications.
I’ve spent a few hours making such modifications and testing the articles on my friend group. You can fi... | 2024-07-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NyS2i5WCypJuG6LBC/if-ai-starts-to-end-the-world-is-suicide-a-good-idea | NyS2i5WCypJuG6LBC | If AI starts to end the world, is suicide a good idea? | IlluminateReality | For a while I’ve thought to myself that if AI starts to obviously end the world I would just commit suicide, mainly to avoid any potential s-riskiness. But I’ve become far less certain recently that that would be a good idea.
Between the possibility of resurrection, quantum immortality, and weird acausal shenanigans, I... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dQHg2sKtnuXeNydFS/video-intro-to-guaranteed-safe-ai | dQHg2sKtnuXeNydFS | Video Intro to Guaranteed Safe AI | mike-vaiana | Many thanks to Evan Miyazono, Nora Amman, Philip Gubbins, and Judd Rosenblatt for valuable feedback towards making this video.
We created a video introduction to the paper Towards Guaranteed Safe AI to highlight its concepts[1] and make them more accessible through a visual medium. We believe the framework introduced ... | 2024-07-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9hY2McrBQJCJHRcfG/solving-pascal-s-wager-using-dynamic-programming | 9hY2McrBQJCJHRcfG | Solving Pascal’s Wager using dynamic programming | paul-wilczewski | In Infinite Ethics Nick Bostrom argues against using discount factors to resolve problems created by the temporal and spatial infinities that arise in moral theories. While this argument is compelling in the context of aggregative consequentialism it is less compelling under ethical egosim. Incorporating discount facto... | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KxkMmwJnhmCFBjhTi/new-page-integrity | KxkMmwJnhmCFBjhTi | New page: Integrity | Zach Stein-Perlman | There's a new page collecting integrity incidents at the frontier AI labs.
Also a month ago I made a page on labs' policy advocacy.
If you have suggestions to improve these pages, or have ideas for other resources I should create, let me know.
Crossposted from AI Lab Watch. Subscribe on Substack. | 2024-07-10 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pKa3ZwmDw9d4DLL9A/rationalist-purity-test | pKa3ZwmDw9d4DLL9A | Rationalist Purity Test | Gunnar_Zarncke | A quick, fun, and somewhat random test with 100 questions that you can all see on a single page, thus easy to judge if you like it. I got 50, but now clue if that's average or not.
Seen on Twitter. | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gBZgRrdWdpRxzBuj5/that-which-can-be-destroyed-by-the-truth-should-be-assumed | gBZgRrdWdpRxzBuj5 | That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be assumed to should be destroyed by it | Unknown | This is a post about bringing a concept from German law, Beweislast, which is most likely also present in all legal systems worldwide, to rationality, specifically to this old but central tenant of it.
Beweislast means burden of proof, and is the framework under which it is decided that who has to proove what before co... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vGgsvwH8aujrfznis/aisn-38-supreme-court-decision-could-limit-federal-ability | vGgsvwH8aujrfznis | AISN #38: Supreme Court Decision Could Limit Federal Ability to Regulate AI
Plus, “Circuit Breakers” for AI systems, and updates on China’s AI industry | corin-katzke | Welcome to the AI Safety Newsletter by the Center for AI Safety. We discuss developments in AI and AI safety. No technical background required.
Listen to the AI Safety Newsletter for free on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Supreme Court Decision Could Limit Federal Ability to Regulate AI
In a recent decision, the Supreme Co... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TvCQJHnHcMCuLL3dD/summer-tour-stops | TvCQJHnHcMCuLL3dD | Summer Tour Stops | jkaufman | Last week, Lily, Anna, Cecilia, Harris, and I drove to St
Louis and back playing dances. I wrote about one aspect
last week, and will
probably continue splitting thoughts across posts. Today I'm thinking
some about our approach to stopping along the way.
I grew up in a family with a very strong "maximize time at
dest... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pvBqB6F89enufZkYr/dialogue-on-what-it-means-for-something-to-have-a-function | pvBqB6F89enufZkYr | Dialogue on What It Means For Something to Have A Function/Purpose | johnswentworth | Context for LW audience: Ramana, Steve and John regularly talk about stuff in the general cluster of agency, abstraction, optimization, compression, purpose, representation, etc. We decided to write down some of our discussion and post it here. This is a snapshot of us figuring stuff out together.
Hooks from Ramana:
Wh... | 2024-07-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jEEWe42fcJWdbCZo9/fix-simple-mistakes-in-arc-agi-etc | jEEWe42fcJWdbCZo9 | Fix simple mistakes in ARC-AGI, etc. | oleg-trott | ARC-AGI is a diverse artificial dataset that aims to test general intelligence. It's sort of like an IQ test that's played out on rectangular grids.
Last month, @ryan_greenblatt proposed an approach that used GPT-4o to generate about 8000 Python programs per task. It then selected the programs that worked on the "train... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oNxPqB3kyCd2kYnXH/paper-summary-the-effects-of-communicating-uncertainty-on | oNxPqB3kyCd2kYnXH | Paper Summary: The Effects of Communicating Uncertainty on Public Trust in Facts and Numbers | jeffrey-heninger | by Anne Marthe van der Bles, Sander van der Linden, Alexandra L. J. Freeman, and David J. Spiegelhalter. (2020)
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1913678117.
Summary: Numerically expressing uncertainty when talking to the public is fine. It causes people to be less confident in the number itself (as it should),... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FENtGM5waoxtYazzM/uc-berkeley-course-on-llms-and-ml-safety | FENtGM5waoxtYazzM | UC Berkeley course on LLMs and ML Safety | dan-hendrycks | The UC Berkeley course I co-taught now has lecture videos available: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ66BAXN6D8H_gRQJGjmbnS5qCWoxJNfe
Course site: Understanding LLMs: Foundations and Safety
Unrelatedly, a more conceptual AI safety course has its content available at https://www.aisafetybook.com/ | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DS3TTpCEFKduC8zPy/paper-blogpost-when-your-ais-deceive-you-challenges-with | DS3TTpCEFKduC8zPy | [Paper Blogpost] When Your AIs Deceive You: Challenges with Partial Observability in RLHF | leon-lang | TL;DR
There has been a lot of discussion on Lesswrong on concerns about deceptive AI, much of which has been philosophical. We have now written a paper that proves that deception is one of two failure modes when using RLHF improperly. It's called “When Your AIs Deceive You: Challenges with Partial Observability in Rein... | 2024-10-22 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Bczmi8vjiugDRec7C/what-and-why-developmental-interpretability-of-reinforcement | Bczmi8vjiugDRec7C | What and Why: Developmental Interpretability of Reinforcement Learning | D0TheMath | Introduction
I happen to be in that happy stage in the research cycle where I ask for money so I can continue to work on things I think are important. Part of that means justifying what I want to work on to the satisfaction of the people who provide that money.
This presents a good opportunity to say what I plan to wor... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6GhemtgJxF9sSDNrq/medical-roundup-3 | 6GhemtgJxF9sSDNrq | Medical Roundup #3 | Zvi | This time around, we cover the Hanson/Alexander debates on the value of medicine, and otherwise we mostly have good news.
Technology Advances
Regeneron administers a single shot in a genetically deaf child’s ear, and they can hear after a few months, n=2 so far.
Great news: An mRNA vaccine in early human clinical trial... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CZpZFYPqtk6wMTQwR/consent-across-power-differentials | CZpZFYPqtk6wMTQwR | Consent across power differentials | ramana-kumar | I'd like to put forward another description of a basic issue that's been around for a while. I don't know if there's been significant progress on a solution, and would be happy to pointed to any such progress. I've opted to go for a relatively rough and quick post that doesn't dive too hard into the details, to avoid l... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MrnxtMKXdfZ4bgEGm/how-bad-would-ai-progress-need-to-be-for-us-to-think-general | MrnxtMKXdfZ4bgEGm | How bad would AI progress need to be for us to think general technological progress is also bad? | jim-buhler | It is widely believed in the EA community that AI progress is acutely harmful by substantially increasing X-risks. This has led to a growing priority on pushing against work advancing AI capabilities.[1]
On the other hand, economic growth, scientific advancements, and (non-AI) technological progress are generally viewe... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aAbaZe8eFyhj9y4qx/how-llms-learn-what-we-know-what-we-don-t-yet-know-and-what | aAbaZe8eFyhj9y4qx | How LLMs Learn: What We Know, What We Don't (Yet) Know, and What Comes Next | denominations | Humans are amazing.
And–let's be honest–pretty weird.
I mean, why are so many of us all hyped up about Large Language Models (LLMs)? How did we collectively decide this kind of automated decision-making is "the next big thing"? It's not like a talking thesaurus can change the world, right?*
The thing most people seem t... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P8qLZco6Zq8LaLHe9/tokenized-saes-infusing-per-token-biases | P8qLZco6Zq8LaLHe9 | Tokenized SAEs: Infusing per-token biases. | tdooms | tl;dr
We introduce the notion of adding a per-token decoder bias to SAEs. Put differently, we add a lookup table indexed by the last seen token. This results in a Pareto improvement across existing architectures (TopK and ReLU) and models (on GPT-2 small and Pythia 1.4B). Attaining the same CE loss is generally 8x fast... | 2024-08-04 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mBiqMmREQYaMnRZs4/book-review-safe-enough-a-history-of-nuclear-power-and-1 | mBiqMmREQYaMnRZs4 | Book Review: Safe Enough? A History of Nuclear Power and Accident Risk | ErickBall | Epistemic status: This book covers a lot of topics related to nuclear energy; I have experience with some of them but not all, and some are inherently murky. I will try to make it clear what's fact and what's my opinion.
“If you’re not [pursuing safety] cost-effectively, you’re killing people.”
—David Okrent, former me... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iFoHj3Q2Tj5wgqhbP/sex-death-and-complexity | iFoHj3Q2Tj5wgqhbP | Sex, Death, and Complexity | Zero Contradictions | Cancer can be understood as evolution within the body. Cancer is a mutation, and that mutation is selected for, while the body is alive. The cancer cells are more "successful" than other cells, because they are selfish reproducers. They out-compete other cells for the resources of the body.
The coherence of the body de... | 2024-07-25 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mdeDquqameec2ERe4/robin-hanson-and-liron-shapira-debate-ai-x-risk | mdeDquqameec2ERe4 | Robin Hanson & Liron Shapira Debate AI X-Risk | Liron | Robin and I just had an interesting 2-hour AI doom debate. We picked up where the Hanson-Yudkowsky Foom Debate left off in 2008, revisiting key arguments in the light of recent AI advances.
My position is similar to Eliezer's: P(doom) on the order of 50%.
Robin's position remains shockingly different: P(doom) < 1%.
I t... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QXHKLbHzC5nPvJnXd/the-singularity-is-nearer-by-ray-kurzweil-review | QXHKLbHzC5nPvJnXd | "The Singularity Is Nearer" by Ray Kurzweil - Review | Kevin92 | Over the past week I read Ray Kurzweil's new book "The Singularity Is Nearer". This is my review.
First off, if you've read The Singularity Is Near, which was published 19 years ago in 2005, you should be aware that the sequel book is a lot less technical. The Singularity Is Near contained a couple dozen graphs explain... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D3o3ed8WRspbgnPGr/sample-prevalence-vs-global-prevalence | D3o3ed8WRspbgnPGr | Sample Prevalence vs Global Prevalence | jkaufman | Cross-posted from my NAO
Notebook. Thanks to Evan Fields and Mike McLaren for editorial
feedback on this post.
In Detecting
Genetically Engineered Viruses With Metagenomic Sequencing we have:
our best guess is that if this system were deployed at the scale of
approximately $1.5M/y it could detect something genetically... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ABSEaJvtap4v4nzcM/advice-to-junior-ai-governance-researchers | ABSEaJvtap4v4nzcM | Advice to junior AI governance researchers | Unknown | This summer, I’m supervising some research fellows through Cambridge’s ERA AI Fellowship. The program started last week, and I’ve had conversations with about 6 fellows about their research projects & summer goals.
In this post, I’ll highlight a few pieces of advice I’ve found myself regularly giving to research fellow... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cnBLj6KQSeZ4CA9NS/pondering-how-good-or-bad-things-will-be-in-the-agi-future | cnBLj6KQSeZ4CA9NS | Pondering how good or bad things will be in the AGI future | Sherrinford | Yesterday I heard a podcast where someone said he hoped AGI would be developed in his lifetime. This confused me, and I realized that it might be useful - at least for me - to write down this confusion.
Consider that for some reasons - different history, different natural laws, whatever - LLMs had never been invented, ... | 2024-07-09 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nszMNo2TuMHJ2KDdv/launching-the-ai-forecasting-benchmark-series-q3-or-usd30k | nszMNo2TuMHJ2KDdv | Launching the AI Forecasting Benchmark Series Q3 | $30k in Prizes | ChristianWilliams | null | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GwKzezDsTdQCbTrBK/the-golden-mean-of-scientific-virtues | GwKzezDsTdQCbTrBK | The Golden Mean of Scientific Virtues | adamShimi | I recently discovered this nice post on the scientific virtues by slimemoldtimemold.
Overall, I enjoyed it, and I find it pushes nicely against some recurrent memes about science and scientists (and innovation in general) in the general culture.
Yet in doing so, it also reinforces a set of opposite memes that can be as... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KPXjL4usfRZeSrjmF/massapequa-long-island-new-york-usa-acx-meetup | KPXjL4usfRZeSrjmF | Massapequa (Long Island), New York, USA – ACX Meetup | gabriel-weil | All are welcome.
Location: 47 Clinton Pl., Massapequa NY, 11758 – https://plus.codes/87G8MG4F+3W
Please RSVP via email so I know how much food to get.
Contact: gabeaweil@gmail.com | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JHsfMWtwxBGGTmb8A/pantheon-interface | JHsfMWtwxBGGTmb8A | Pantheon Interface | nick_kees | Pantheon is an experimental LLM interface exploring a different type of human-AI interaction. We created this as a part of the cyborgism project, with the abstract motivation of augmenting the human ability to think by integrating human and AI generated thoughts.
How it works:
A human user “thinks out loud” by typing o... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LJD4C7KAr64onL8fq/response-to-dileep-george-agi-safety-warrants-planning-ahead | LJD4C7KAr64onL8fq | Response to Dileep George: AGI safety warrants planning ahead | steve2152 | (Target audience: Dileep George himself, and anyone coming from a similar place.)
Dileep George is a researcher working at the intersection of AI and neuroscience. He started his career by co-founding Numenta in 2005 with Jeff Hawkins (while a Stanford PhD student), then he left to co-found Vicarious in 2010 with D. Sc... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TDmkDKzD5zdZruua7/announcing-the-techno-humanist-manifesto-a-new-philosophy-of | TDmkDKzD5zdZruua7 | Announcing The Techno-Humanist Manifesto: A new philosophy of progress for the 21st century | jasoncrawford | Humans are a curious species: We have a need not only to do, but to explain what we are doing—to each other and above all to ourselves. Movements begin with practice, but as they evolve, they need theory in order to maintain the coherence needed to change the world. Providing this is the role of what Joel Mokyr calls t... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oAYzpSTHDthmtREDN/why-not-parliamentarianism-book-by-tiago-ribeiro-dos-santos | oAYzpSTHDthmtREDN | Why not parliamentarianism? [book by Tiago Ribeiro dos Santos] | arturo-macias | “Why not parliamentarianism?” is a short and free booklet (and a follow-up blog) authored by the Brazilian diplomatist Tiago Ribeiro dos Santos. See here his proposal to turn “parlamentarianism” into an EA cause.
Ribeiro dos Santos summarizes the previous research on patterns of democracy to make a compelling case for ... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NxBPFfKCCdrK7gKGi/games-of-my-childhood-the-troops | NxBPFfKCCdrK7gKGi | Games of My Childhood: The Troops | Kaj_Sotala | The Troops (Finnish “joukot”, could also be translated as “the armies” or “the forces”) was a game of pretend that I played the most with my friend Eero; I believe Aleksi also joined in.
The central premise was that each time that you played a video game and killed, recruited, rescued, built, or otherwise destroyed/obt... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PypgeCxFHLzmBENK4/poker-is-a-bad-game-for-teaching-epistemics-figgie-is-a | PypgeCxFHLzmBENK4 | Poker is a bad game for teaching epistemics. Figgie is a better one. | rossry | Editor's note: Somewhat after I posted this on my own blog, Max Chiswick cornered me at LessOnline / Manifest and gave me a whole new perspective on this topic. I now believe that there is a way to use poker to sharpen epistemics that works dramatically better than anything I had been considering. I hope to write it up... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/quvunrHrJ3ByTegYy/controlled-creative-destruction | quvunrHrJ3ByTegYy | Controlled Creative Destruction | sustrik | This is a crosspost from https://250bpm.substack.com/p/controlled-creative-destruction.
Creative destruction is a process which lets the inefficient fail and the efficient survive. It's the economists' way of saying of "survival of the fittest".
In free markets, creative destruction reigns supreme. Firms build competin... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baJyjpktzmcmRfosq/stitching-saes-of-different-sizes | baJyjpktzmcmRfosq | Stitching SAEs of different sizes | Stuckwork | Work done in Neel Nanda’s stream of MATS 6.0, equal contribution by Bart Bussmann and Patrick Leask, Patrick Leask is concurrently a PhD candidate at Durham University
TL;DR: When you scale up an SAE, the features in the larger SAE can be categorized in two groups: 1) “novel features” with new information not in the sm... | 2024-07-13 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ascu5u6qF4Thu3YP7/on-saying-thank-you-instead-of-i-m-sorry | ascu5u6qF4Thu3YP7 | On saying "Thank you" instead of "I'm Sorry" | michael-cohn | Back in 2016 or so, I ran into an idea going around the self-help / trauma-informed-therapy / cognitive-behavioral internet: Learn to say “thank you” instead of “I’m sorry”. It’s turned out to be one of the most transformative pieces of advice I’ve ever taken. I’d like to share what it’s done for me, with just enough c... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfFST5Mio7BCAQHPA/an-extremely-opinionated-annotated-list-of-my-favourite | NfFST5Mio7BCAQHPA | An Extremely Opinionated Annotated List of My Favourite Mechanistic Interpretability Papers v2 | neel-nanda-1 | This post represents my personal hot takes, not the opinions of my team or employer. This is a massively updated version of a similar list I made two years ago
There’s a lot of mechanistic interpretability papers, and more come out all the time. This can be pretty intimidating if you’re new to the field! To try helping... | 2024-07-07 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kbwHXpymfLkZpKExd/toy-models-of-superposition-what-about-bitnets | kbwHXpymfLkZpKExd | Toy Models of Superposition: what about BitNets? | alejandro-tlaie-boria | Summary
In this post I want to briefly share some results I have got after experimenting with the equivalent version of the simple neural networks that the authors used here to study how superposition and poly-semantic neurons come about in neural networks trained with gradient descent.
The take-home message is that Bi... | 2024-08-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NrWPuHCfiTj9sHD8t/joint-mandatory-donation-as-a-way-to-increase-the-number-of | NrWPuHCfiTj9sHD8t | Joint mandatory donation as a way to increase the number of donations | commissar Yarrick | Let's say each person in your community has 1 resource unit. They are 10 peoples in community including you.
Each member of the community can either consume 1 resource himself or give it to a fund that distributes resources to those in need in third world countries. Each resource consumed by one of you brings him 1 uni... | 2024-07-07 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5XQjuLerCrHyzjCcR/rationality-vs-alignment | 5XQjuLerCrHyzjCcR | Rationality vs Alignment | donatas-luciunas | Mistakes
Some opinions popular among AI alignment scientists are completely wrong in my opinion. I put a few examples here.
Paperclip maximizer
It is thought the maximiser will produce ever more paper clips. Eventually the whole Solar system will be turned into a big paper clip factory…
In my opinion this conflicts wit... | 2024-07-07 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8XtYr3av6rpEbjGTh/beyond-biomarkers-understanding-multiscale-causality | 8XtYr3av6rpEbjGTh | Beyond Biomarkers: Understanding Multiscale Causality | matej-nekoranec | Photo by Jigar Panchal on Unsplash
In exercise science, we typically derive causality in a bottom-up manner. When we evaluate performance, we assess factors such as cardiovascular capacity, metabolic efficiency, or muscular contractile capacity. However, I’ve always grappled with a chicken-and-egg dilemma in exercise p... | 2024-07-07 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JZ3EaAyHPLbFuDB85/how-can-i-get-over-my-fear-of-becoming-an-emulated | JZ3EaAyHPLbFuDB85 | How can I get over my fear of becoming an emulated consciousness? | james-dowdell | Summary
In the last few months I've been suffering from bouts of abject terror related to the thought of experiencing reality as a thinking being only - one with no senses of any kind, as well as no agency - presumably as a result of unintended consequences from asking to have my mind uploaded and emulated in a compute... | 2024-07-07 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/47CYFbrSyiJE2X5ot/efficient-dictionary-learning-with-switch-sparse | 47CYFbrSyiJE2X5ot | Efficient Dictionary Learning with Switch Sparse Autoencoders | anish-mudide | Produced as part of the ML Alignment & Theory Scholars Program - Summer 2024 Cohort
0. Summary
To recover all the relevant features from a superintelligent language model, we will likely need to scale sparse autoencoders (SAEs) to billions of features. Using current architectures, training extremely wide SAEs across mu... | 2024-07-22 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3in2vMnfeEeM8aCvA/lk-99-in-retrospect | 3in2vMnfeEeM8aCvA | LK-99 in retrospect | bhauth | About a year ago, there was a lot of public interest in a supposed room-temperature superconductor called LK-99. What I publicly said at the time was, basically:
We should remember the possibility that apparent levitation is from ferromagnetism or paramagnetism. Iron filings can stand up on a magnet, and pyrolytic grap... | 2024-07-07 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NdfXRzWdNoEJgwxsN/reflections-on-less-online | NdfXRzWdNoEJgwxsN | Reflections on Less Online | Error | Meta: This post turned out longer, slower, and less well-written than I hoped. I don’t see any similar posts in a quick search, though, so
I'm posting it anyway. I’ve tried to front-load
feedback that might be useful to the organizers, and put more personal
stuff towards the end. For context, I attended LessOnline and ... | 2024-07-07 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6AT4vhYzww56CR6cm/scalable-oversight-as-a-quantitative-rather-than-qualitative | 6AT4vhYzww56CR6cm | Scalable oversight as a quantitative rather than qualitative problem | Buck | [Many of these ideas were developed in conversation with Ryan Greenblatt and Ansh Radhakrishnan; a lot of this isn’t original but I haven’t seen it written up]
A lot of the time when people talk about scalable oversight, which I'll define for the moment as "the problem of developing techniques that allow you to assess ... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QffwXEExuGZadwqBK/an-ai-manhattan-project-is-not-inevitable | QffwXEExuGZadwqBK | An AI Manhattan Project is Not Inevitable | maxwell-tabarrok | Early last month, Leopold Aschenbrenner released a long essay and podcast outlining his projections for the future of AI. Both of these sources are full of interesting arguments and evidence, for a comprehensive summary see Zvi’s post here. Rather than going point by point I will instead accept the major premises of Le... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gtccz5K5ggEYrc5XN/goodhart-s-law-and-emotions | gtccz5K5ggEYrc5XN | Goodhart's Law and Emotions | Zero Contradictions | Goodhart's Law is an important principle about using a measure to drive action, and there are many examples of Goodhart's law and its importance in human affairs. This essay focuses on how Goodhart's Law applies to human desire in the modern environment.
Emotions do not directly measure the adaptiveness of an action be... | 2024-07-07 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hXsbrQSbgD7JnbW9p/linkpost-a-case-for-ai-consciousness | hXsbrQSbgD7JnbW9p | [Linkpost] A Case for AI Consciousness | cdkg | Just wanted to share a new paper on AI consciousness with Simon Goldstein that members of this community might be interested in. Here's the abstract:
It is generally assumed that existing artificial systems are not phenomenally conscious, and that the construction of phenomenally conscious artificial systems would requ... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uQciccRgxjxjYKXAL/can-agents-coordinate-on-randomness-without-outside-sources | uQciccRgxjxjYKXAL | Can agents coordinate on randomness without outside sources? | mikhail-samin | There are situations where two agents that can read each other’s source code want to have a bit of random information (e.g., they want to cooperate and split an indivisible thing by deciding randomly who’ll have it and having half of it in expectation).
If these agents don’t have access to unpredictable sources of rand... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qHgyGguajSjP4wGEf/links-and-brief-musings-for-june | qHgyGguajSjP4wGEf | Links and brief musings for June | Kaj_Sotala | Links in English
Schrödinger’s Ursula
Apparently the concept of Schrödinger’s cat got popularized thanks to Ursula Le Guin.
Schrödinger originally invented the cat image as a gag. If true believers in quantum mechanics are right that the microworld’s uncertainties are dispelled only when we observe it, Schrödinger felt... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7dW9dHdcj5XHFxui5/indecision-and-internalized-authority-figures | 7dW9dHdcj5XHFxui5 | Indecision and internalized authority figures | Kaj_Sotala | A trauma book I was reading had an interesting claim that indecision is often because the person looks for the approval of an internalized authority figure (the writer is a Jungian therapist so attributed it to looking for the approval of an internalized parent, but I think it can be broader) but is unable to predict w... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vyoNsLYJXJtCY8CSr/nyu-debate-training-update-methods-baselines-preliminary | vyoNsLYJXJtCY8CSr | NYU Debate Training Update: Methods, Baselines, Preliminary Results | samarnesen | [This writeup reflects work done jointly with David Rein and Julian Michael at NYU's Alignment Research Group]
Introduction
In the past year, there have been a number of projects aimed at validating the basic premises behind debate as a mechanism for scalable oversight (see here, here, and here). One important next ste... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N7owFAHWgALNWs25d/travel-buffer | N7owFAHWgALNWs25d | Travel Buffer | jkaufman | I recently finished a
nine-day
road trip, playing a series of dances. This combined driving long
distances with arrival deadlines: you don't want to arrive
late. Not only is it unprofessional, but it's stressful rushing to
set up and you'll likely have a bad night from skipping some nice-to-have
steps. A concept I f... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/v5jBXHH9rDwBttWNp/what-progress-have-we-made-on-automated-auditing | v5jBXHH9rDwBttWNp | What progress have we made on automated auditing? | LawChan | One use case for model internals work is to perform automated auditing of models:
https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/cQwT8asti3kyA62zc/automating-auditing-an-ambitious-concrete-technical-research
That is, given a specification of intended behavior, the attacker produces a model that doesn't satisfy the spec, and the ... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oRQMonLfdLfoGcDEh/a-bitter-lesson-approach-to-aligning-agi-and-asi-1 | oRQMonLfdLfoGcDEh | A "Bitter Lesson" Approach to Aligning AGI and ASI | roger-d-1 | TL;DR: I discuss the challenge of aligning AGI/ASI, and outline an extremely simple approach to aligning an LLM: train entirely on a synthetic dataset that always shows the AI acting aligned (even when the humans behave badly), and use a conditional training/inference-time technique to lock the LLM into the AI role.
Ep... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vrB8xYK8pFPmP5ts8/d-and-d-sci-whom-shall-you-call | vrB8xYK8pFPmP5ts8 | D&D.Sci: Whom Shall You Call? | abstractapplic | This is a D&D.Sci scenario: a puzzle where players are given a dataset to analyze and an objective to pursue using information from that dataset.
Intended Difficulty: Average
Good news! After an interminable period of waiting for lawyers to finish arguing over the will, you’ve inherited your great-uncle’s sprawling cou... | 2024-07-05 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CmcarN6fGgTGwGuFp/dialogue-introduction-to-singular-learning-theory | CmcarN6fGgTGwGuFp | Dialogue introduction to Singular Learning Theory | jarviniemi | Alice: A lot of people are talking about Singular Learning Theory. Do you know what it is?
Bob: I do. (pause) Kind of.
Alice: Well, I don't. Explanation time?
Bob: Uh, I'm not really an expert on it. You know, there's a lot of materials out there that--
Alice: that I realistically won't ever actually look at. Or, I've ... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YsCRXZYr5DcJ84XHq/me-myself-and-ai-the-situational-awareness-dataset-sad-for | YsCRXZYr5DcJ84XHq | Me, Myself, and AI: the Situational Awareness Dataset (SAD) for LLMs | LRudL | TLDR: We build a comprehensive benchmark to measure situational awareness in LLMs. It consists of 16 tasks, which we group into 7 categories and 3 aspects of situational awareness (self-knowledge, situational inferences, and taking actions).
We test 19 LLMs and find that all perform above chance, including the pretrain... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HuWaETuQiRHd87jRv/minimalist-and-maximalist-type-systems | HuWaETuQiRHd87jRv | Minimalist And Maximalist Type Systems | adamShimi | I have two completely opposed aesthetic preferences inside me.
On one hand, I love minimalism: doing the maximum with as little as possible. This leads to a fascination with disciplines that have the smallest palette and the largest focus (calligraphy, go, writing, japanese cooking…). More abstractly, it’s an aesthetic... | 2024-07-05 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LajDyGyiyX8DNNsuF/interim-research-report-activation-plateaus-and-sensitive-1 | LajDyGyiyX8DNNsuF | [Interim research report] Activation plateaus & sensitive directions in GPT2 | Stefan42 | This part-report / part-proposal describes ongoing research, but I'd like to share early results for feedback. I am especially interested in any comment finding mistakes or trivial explanations for these results. I will work on this proposal with a LASR Labs team over the next 3 months. If you are working (or want to w... | 2024-07-05 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i5xLe5brs2Pf9heA9/ml4good-summer-bootcamps-applications-open-deadline-extended | i5xLe5brs2Pf9heA9 | ML4Good Summer Bootcamps - Applications Open [deadline extended] | Yannick_Muehlhaeuser_duplicate0.05902100825326273 | ML4Good bootcamps are 10-day bootcamps focusing on upskilling in technical AI safety, exploring governance, and delving into conceptual topics. ML4Good is a non-profit project and free of charge for the participants. We're seeking motivated individuals with some coding experience who want to make a difference in the fi... | 2024-07-05 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6SE2b247B45hKxziF/ai-alignment-research-engineer-accelerator-arena-call-for-2 | 6SE2b247B45hKxziF | AI Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator (ARENA): Call for applicants v4.0 | James Fox | TL;DR
We are excited to announce the fourth iteration of ARENA (Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator), a 4-5 week ML bootcamp with a focus on AI safety! ARENA’s mission is to provide talented individuals with the skills, tools, and environment necessary for upskilling in ML engineering, for the purpose of contributi... | 2024-07-06 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jfixkiy4wav7PCBxJ/are-there-any-plans-to-launch-a-paperback-version-of | jfixkiy4wav7PCBxJ | Are there any plans to launch a paperback version of "Rationality: From AI to Zombies"? | m_arj | Books one and two are already available in paperback. However, books three, four, five, and six are still missing. Nevertheless, I wonder if you could release a complete version.
I believe many of us are eagerly waiting for it. | 2024-07-05 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qn3ZDf9WAqGuAjWQe/on-scalable-oversight-with-weak-llms-judging-strong-llms | Qn3ZDf9WAqGuAjWQe | On scalable oversight with weak LLMs judging strong LLMs | zkenton | Abstract
Scalable oversight protocols aim to enable humans to accurately supervise superhuman AI. In this paper we study debate, where two AI's compete to convince a human judge; consultancy, where a single AI tries to convince a human judge that asks questions; and compare to a baseline of direct question-answering, w... | 2024-07-08 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8ZR3xsWb6TdvmL8kx/optimistic-assumptions-longterm-planning-and-cope | 8ZR3xsWb6TdvmL8kx | Optimistic Assumptions, Longterm Planning, and "Cope" | Raemon | Eliezer Yudkowsky periodically complains about people coming up with questionable plans with questionable assumptions to deal with AI, and then either:
Saying "well, if this assumption doesn't hold, we're doomed, so we might as well assume it's true."Worse: coming up with cope-y reasons to assume that the assumption is... | 2024-07-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hqpDh6jtxHQTsPA7H/libs-vs-frameworks-middle-level-regularities-vs-theories | hqpDh6jtxHQTsPA7H | Libs vs Frameworks, Middle-Level Regularities vs Theories | adamShimi | Recently, a friend of mine brought out the essential distinction between libraries and frameworks in software engineering.
A library is a small software program that does one thing, does it cleanly, and lets you apply this thing to whatever you want. It lives and dies by the UNIX philosophy and the Keep It Simple Stupi... | 2024-07-04 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fWEnZqgxA2BcxZXF3/consider-the-humble-rock-or-why-the-dumb-thing-kills-you | fWEnZqgxA2BcxZXF3 | Consider the humble rock (or: why the dumb thing kills you) | pleiotroth | When people think about street-fights and what they should do when they find themselves in the unfortunate position of being in one, they tend to stumble across a pretty concerning thought relatively early on: "What if my attacker has a knife?" . Then they will put loads of cognitive effort into strategies for how to d... | 2024-07-04 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AYJcL6GD3FLkL4yNC/ai-71-farewell-to-chevron | AYJcL6GD3FLkL4yNC | AI #71: Farewell to Chevron | Zvi | Chevron deference is no more. How will this impact AI regulation?
The obvious answer is it is now much harder for us to ‘muddle through via existing laws and regulations until we learn more,’ because the court narrowed our affordances to do that. And similarly, if and when Congress does pass bills regulating AI, they a... | 2024-07-04 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/T7fd4paHJRiaACoTe/the-dumbification-of-our-smart-screens | T7fd4paHJRiaACoTe | The Dumbification of our smart screens | itay-dreyfus | Here we are at the peak of an eternal technology era.
AI agents are on their way. Driverless taxis are making a debut. 4G is an old fashion. We’re heading to a seemingly great utopia.
Perhaps the greatest invention of this era is the smartphone. The small pocket device has evolved into various shapes while computerizin... | 2024-07-04 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tkNLgHCwBRmLMgR76/the-potential-impossibility-of-subjective-death | tkNLgHCwBRmLMgR76 | The Potential Impossibility of Subjective Death | VictorLJZ | Epistemic Status: ~70% confidence, hoping to get some feedback.
I'm going to argue that if we accept three controversial (but not outlandish) assumptions to be true, then subjective death (the cessation of conscious experiences identifying themselves as "you") is impossible. I will keep this post as concise as possible... | 2024-07-04 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8qCwuE8GjrYPSqbri/80-000-hours-should-remove-openai-from-the-job-board-and | 8qCwuE8GjrYPSqbri | 80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from the Job Board (and similar EA orgs should do similarly) | Raemon | null | 2024-07-03 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EF8tvShQJ5cbdZzTb/a-simple-model-of-math-skill | EF8tvShQJ5cbdZzTb | A simple model of math skill | Alex_Altair | I've noticed that when trying to understand a math paper, there are a few different ways my skill level can be the blocker. Some of these ways line up with some typical levels of organization in math papers:
Definitions: a formalization of the kind of objects we're even talking about.Theorems: propositions on what prop... | 2024-07-21 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XEuArCYEALQ6XecW7/static-analysis-as-a-lifestyle | XEuArCYEALQ6XecW7 | Static Analysis As A Lifestyle | adamShimi | I’ve been watching French Top Chef (the best Top Chef, fight me) with my wife again, and I’m always impressed by how often the mentoring chefs, all with multiple michelin stars and years of experience, can just guess that a dish will work or that it will be missing something.
By far, whenever a chef points to an error ... | 2024-07-03 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ja9NP3NJpEd7BXMnW/when-are-results-from-computational-complexity-not-too | Ja9NP3NJpEd7BXMnW | When Are Results from Computational Complexity Not Too Coarse? | Darcy | Tl;dr, While an algorithm's computational complexity may be exponential in general (worst-case), it is often possible to stratify its input via some dimension k that makes it polynomial for a fixed k, and only exponential in k. Conceptually, this quantity captures the core aspect of a problem's structure that makes spe... | 2024-07-03 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/T3tDQfkAjFsScHL3C/musings-on-llm-scale-jul-2024 | T3tDQfkAjFsScHL3C | Musings on LLM Scale (Jul 2024) | Vladimir_Nesov | In a recent interview, Dario Amodei claimed that cost of training is (starting with models already available)
Right now, $100 million. There are models in training today that are more like a $1 billion. I think if we go to $10 or a $100 billion, and I think that will happen in 2025-2026, maybe 2027, ...
(Epistemic stat... | 2024-07-03 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jgjGJBFLSzBYJjxAh/notes-on-tuning-metacognition | jgjGJBFLSzBYJjxAh | Notes on Tuning Metacognition | joanna-j-1 | Summary: Reflections and practice notes on a metacognitive technique aimed at refining the process of thinking, rather than the thoughts themselves.
Epistemic Status: Experimental and observational, based on personal practice and reflections over a brief period.
Introduction
While doing a simple math problem, I realize... | 2024-07-03 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EKhNDspRxLGcZAuJz/what-percent-of-the-sun-would-a-dyson-sphere-cover | EKhNDspRxLGcZAuJz | What percent of the sun would a Dyson Sphere cover? | Raemon | I disagreed with a bunch of the implications of this comment, but I was curious about the specific question "Would a dyson sphere made out of the solar system necessarily cover (most of) the sun?" (and therefore block out a substantial fraction of light coming to Earth).
The subquestions here seem to be (at first glanc... | 2024-07-03 |
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