Currently pursuing a PhD at the “Mathematics for Our Future Climate” CDT at Reading University.
Previously MSc in applied mathematics/theoretical ML.
Not really active here—racism, Rationality and weirdness in the movement are so bad they made me give up on it.
Seems like a good compromise. The examples at the end are also helpful.
About this, however:
The laissez-faire option is flawed because LLM-generated writing is increasingly difficult to detect. There are posts (I’ve seen a lot of these) which have the form of a good quality post which is worth reading, but on closer analysis turn out not to contain any ideas, or just to contain a couple of bullet points’ worth of ideas, surrounded by a lot of fluff and repetition. This leads to quite a large waste of time for the reader.
While this is true, and indeed happens a lot everywhere nowadays, let’s not forget about the option for actual malice—manipulation by posts that look good or convincing but are actually written to persuade you to serve someone’s interests. Which can be done by anyone ranging from individuals, to companies, to industry lobbies to state governments.
Allowing LLM-generated content not only leaves the door open to heaps of slop, but also allows all of this. So some sort of defence is definitely warranted.
The prospects of winning or losing money usually leads to people investigating their views more.
That seems to be a general cultural view in EA, but what I’m saying is that I’ve yet to see any evidence these bets actually help. I think the notion is unfounded.
That’s still a sort of game/cultural thing rather than a means for more positive impact, though. I’ve seen that around EA basically forever, but I don’t think people who bet on their beliefs have been “more right” than those who don’t.
Off topic, but one additional thing I noticed about this list:
I can point to you hundreds of millions of chickens that lay eggs that are out of cages, and I can point to you observable families that are no longer living in poverty. I can show you pieces of legislation that have passed or almost passed on AI. I can show you AMF successes with about 200k lives saved and far lower levels of malaria, not to mention higher incomes and longer life expectancies, and people living longer lives that otherwise wouldn’t be because of our actions.
Is the glaring lack of tangible advances in technical AI safety. It’s a different case from your post, as it’s about a problem rather than a tool; but I think it still shows something about whether we understand the dangers of AI and the systems they stem from enough to do anything about it.
Presumably whoever approved the original donation to buy Wytham Abbey did understand these considerations and decided to go through with it anyway?
To be entirely fair, the comment I linked to for the original cost also explains it was an outside donor—Good Ventures if I’m not mistaken, but I couldn’t find a source for that—who gave the money specifically for this purchase. So EVF is still at a plus, but it’s an… interesting decision on behalf of the donor.
Haven’t seen this anywhere on the forum: Effective Ventures sold Wytham Abbey in February for £5.95 million (source). When they bought it, there were many debates over the price they paid (just under £15 million). Some people said it’s an investment and so it’s not like £15 million have been lost. Well, seems like we now have the verdict on those claims—the whole thing cost about £9 million.
Really cool! I hope it becomes available in the UK soon.
Meanwhile in Israel, Solve is a company offering a whole egg substitute for baking, for 130 ILS for ~50 small eggs (currently ~42 USD, although the war makes the conversion somewhat unrepresentative). I’ve not used it but I’ve heard good things from a gourmet chef. They also sell a “meringue powder”, called Mery Mix by an Italian company, Lapet, at 65 ILS per 1kg(!). Not sure how this converts to eggs.
Yeah I’m not sure what’s with the downvotes.
This is outright the best April Fool’s post we’ve had this year. Shame it didn’t get more views. Seriously, I laughed out loud multiple times.
(I’m Jewish, my grandma was a Holocaust survivor and her father and most of her extended family were killed by the Nazis. My grandfather managed to flee before the war started but some of his family were also killed.)
Thank god we have the April Fool’s tag to protect us from Poe’s law though.
How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?
The only parts I’d let AI write are those where I’m unsure if my phrasing is really natural in English and I ask for a better one.
If I’m not the one writing the post, I don’t see why anyone should bother reading it.
Doesn’t really even have to be “AGI” for this, strictly speaking.
Extinction perhaps not, but I think eternal autocracy is definitely possible.
Elon Musk has already used this power to do actions which will potentially kill millions (by funding the Trump campaign enough to get to close down USAID). I think that should worry us, and the chance of people amassing even more power should worry us even more.
Re: helping people in our communities
I’d respond that’s it’s not an either/or situation. I do donate to help the local community (for different senses of “local”), but there too:
I try to understand what is more effective within that space—e.g. EA Israel did a project at some point of trying to quantify the impact of charities operating within Israel, and they have a donation portal for the recommended charities.
I remember that all the people who are currently suffering keep existing even if I don’t see them in my neighbourhood. And my money, even personally, can have an impact there in the order of magnitude of saving a child’s life.
What do you think their counterfactual is? I don’t think any of what they’ve been doing is really transferable.
Not trying to answer on the author’s behalf, but it seems relatively clear to me that differential development is possible here: so far most advancements in science seem to have come from biological applications like AlphaFold that are distinct from the LLMs that have created most problems both in the eyes of “doomers” and in the eyes of people warning about current non-extinction dangers. Therefore the development of beneficial tools can in theory be accelerated while the development of LLMs is slowed down.
Small note: I don’t know if it’s my own English at fault, but I interpreted “7x below the WHO threshold” as meaning “7 times worse than the threshold” and only understood the actual meaning as I looked at the actual numbers later. Might be worth wording it differently.
Great result I think!
Mentioned many real dangers, gave a pretty realistic outlook, and was approachable and funny without making it all look ridiculous.
No offense Linch, but aren’t these questions for jurists, historians and philosophers? Why should you develop the answers from first principles, so to speak? I’d get writing a blog post about a journey through such sources and what their theories are, but I think trying to answer such questions ourselves is not very robust.
This is not a criticism of you personally—developing ideas that require domain expertise from first principles is an approach I often see in EA and I think it’s a wrong one.