Isaac Dunn

Karma: 657

Isaac Dunn Jul 1, 2024, 3:12 PM
6 points
2 ∶ 0
on: How can I justify not dedicating my life to helping others?
Good question! I share that intuition that preventing harm is a really good thing to do, and I find striking the right balance between self-sacrifice and pursuing my own interests difficult.
I think if you argue that that leads to anything close to a normal life you are being disingenuous
I think this is probably wrong for most people. If you make yourself unhappy by trying to force yourself to make sacrifices you don’t want to make, I think most people will be much less productive. And I think that most people actually need a fairly normal social life etc. to avoid that. I believe this because I’ve seen and heard stories of people burning out from trying to work too hard, and I’ve come close myself.
I think the best way to have a large impact probably looks like working as hard as you sustainably can (for most people, I think this is working hard in a normal 9-5 work week or less), and spending enough time thinking seriously about the best strategy for you to make the biggest difference. It might also involve donating money, but again I think it’s a good use of money to spend some money on what makes you happy, to prevent resentment and burn out.

Isaac Dunn Feb 3, 2024, 5:31 PM
6 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Matthew_Barnett’s comment on: Matthew_Barnett’s Shortform
I think misaligned AI values should be expected to be worse than human values, because it’s not clear that misaligned AI systems would care about eg their own welfare.

Inasmuch as we expect misaligned AI systems to be conscious (or whatever we need to care about them) and also to be good at looking after their own interests, I agree that it’s not clear from a total utilitarian perspective that the outcome would be bad.

But the “values” of a misaligned AI system could be pretty arbitrary, so I don’t think we should expect that.

Isaac Dunn Dec 8, 2023, 12:40 PM
43 points
5 ∶ 0
on: GWWC Operational Funding Match 2023
This is a true, counterfactual match, and we will only receive the equivalent amount to what we can raise.
What will happen to the money counterfactually? Presumably it will be donated to other things the match funder thinks are roughly as good as GWWC?

Isaac Dunn Nov 23, 2023, 1:01 AM
5 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Joseph’s comment on: Hello from the new content manager at CEA
Is this a problem? Seems fine to me, because the meaning is often clear, as in two of your examples, and I think it adds value in those contexts. And if it’s not clear, doesn’t seem like a big loss compared to a counterfactual of having none of these types of vote available.

Isaac Dunn Nov 20, 2023, 9:38 PM
5 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Akash’s comment on: Sam Altman / Open AI Discussion Thread
I think that trying to get safe concrete demonstrations of risk by doing research seems well worth pursuing (I don’t think you were saying it’s not).

Isaac Dunn Oct 24, 2023, 5:49 PM
11 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why you should (maybe) apply to the CEA University Groups Team!
Do you have any thoughts on how should people decide between working on groups at CEA and running a group on the ground themselves?
I imagine a lot of people considering applying could be asking themselves that question, and it doesn’t seem obvious to me how to decide.

Isaac Dunn Oct 12, 2023, 6:59 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Greg_Colbourn ⏸️ ’s comment on: Timelines are short, p(doom) is high: a global stop to frontier AI development until x-safety consensus is our only reasonable hope
To be fair, I think I’m partly making wrong assumptions about what exactly you’re arguing for here.
On a slightly closer read, you don’t actually argue in this piece that it’s as high as 90% - I assumed that because I think you’ve argued for that previously, and I think that’s what “high” p(doom) normally means.

Isaac Dunn Oct 12, 2023, 5:22 PM
5 points
4 ∶ 4
in reply to: Isaac Dunn’s comment on: Timelines are short, p(doom) is high: a global stop to frontier AI development until x-safety consensus is our only reasonable hope
Relatedly, I also think that your arguments for “p(doom|AGI)” being high aren’t convincing to people that don’t share your intuitions, and it looks like you’re relying on those (imo weak) arguments, when actually you don’t need to

Isaac Dunn Oct 12, 2023, 5:20 PM
14 points
11 ∶ 3
in reply to: Greg_Colbourn ⏸️ ’s comment on: Timelines are short, p(doom) is high: a global stop to frontier AI development until x-safety consensus is our only reasonable hope
I think you come across as over-confident, not alarmist, and I think it hurts how you come across quite a lot. (We’ve talked a bit about the object level before.) I’d agree with John’s suggested approach.

Isaac Dunn Sep 30, 2023, 9:58 AM
8 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Should 80,000 hours have more near-termist career content?
Makes sense. To be clear, I think global health is very important, and I think it’s a great thing to devote one’s life to! I don’t think it should be underestimated how big a difference you can make improving the world now, and I admire people who focus on making that happen. It just happens that I’m concerned the future might be even higher priority thing that many people could be in a good position to address.

Isaac Dunn Sep 29, 2023, 4:10 PM
20 points
4 ∶ 0
on: Should 80,000 hours have more near-termist career content?
On your last point, if you believe that the EV from a “effective neartermism → effective longtermism” career change is greater than a “somewhat harmful career → effective neartermism” career change, then the downside of using a “somewhat harmful career → effective longtermism” example is that people might think the “stopped doing harm” part is more important than the “focused on longtermism” part.
More generally, I think your “arguments for the status quo” seem right to me! I think it’s great that you’re thinking clearly about the considerations on both sides, and my guess is that you and I would just weight these considerations differently.

Isaac Dunn Sep 15, 2023, 11:23 AM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Four productivity techniques if you love working with others but work alone
Thank you for sharing these! I’m probably going to try the first three as a result of this post.

Isaac Dunn Sep 14, 2023, 11:34 AM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jens Aslaug 🔸’s comment on: Theory: “WAW might be of higher impact than x-risk prevention based on utilitarianism”
Another thing on my mind is that we should beware surprising and suspicious convergence—it would be surprising and suspicious if the same intervention (present-focused WAW work) was best for improving animals’ lives today and also happened to be best for improving animals’ lives in the distant future.
I worry about people interested in animal welfare justifying maintaining their existing work when they switch their focus to longtermism, when actually it would be better if they worked on something different.

Isaac Dunn Sep 14, 2023, 11:30 AM
3 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jens Aslaug 🔸’s comment on: Theory: “WAW might be of higher impact than x-risk prevention based on utilitarianism”
Thanks for your reply! I can see your perspective.
On your last point, but future-focused WAW interventions, I’m thinking of things that you mention in the tractability section of your post:
Here is a list of ways we could work on this issue (directly copied from the post by saulius^[9]):
“To reduce the probability of humans spreading of wildlife in a way that causes a lot of suffering, we could:
1. Directly argue about caring about WAW if humans ever spread wildlife beyond Earth
2. Lobby to expand the application of an existing international law that tries to protect other planets from being contaminated with Earth life by spacecrafts to planets outside of our solar system.
3. Continue building EA and WAW communities to ensure that there will be people in the future who care about WAW.
4. Spread the general concern for WAW (e.g., through WAW documentaries, outreach to academia).”
That is, things aimed at improving (wild) animals’ lives in the event of space colonisation.
Relatedly, I don’t think you necessarily need to show that “interfering with nature could be positive for welfare”, because not spreading wild animals in space wouldn’t be interfering with nature. That said, it would be useful in case we do spread wild animals, then interventions to improve their welfare might look more like interfering with nature, so I agree it could be helpful.
My personal guess is that a competent organisation that eventually advocates for humanity to care about the welfare of all sentient beings would be good to exist. It would probably have to start by doing a lot of research into people’s existing beliefs and doing testing to see what kinds of interventions get people to care. I’m sure there must be some existing research about how to get people to care about animals.
I’m not sure either way how important this would be compared with other priorities, though. I believe some existing organisations believe the best way to reduce the expected amount of future suffering is to focus on preventing the cases where the amount of future suffering is very large. I haven’t thought about it, but that could be right.

Isaac Dunn Sep 13, 2023, 12:41 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Theory: “WAW might be of higher impact than x-risk prevention based on utilitarianism”
For the kinds of reasons you give, I think it could be good to get people to care about the suffering of wild animals (and other sentient beings) in the event that we colonise the stars.
I think that the interventions that decrease the chance of future wild animal suffering are only a subset of all WAW things you could do, though. For example, figuring out ways to make wild animals suffer less in the present would come under “WAW”, but I wouldn’t expect to make any difference to the more distant future. That’s because if we care about wild animals, we’ll figure out what to do sooner or later.
So rather than talking about “wild animal welfare interventions”, I’d argue that you’re really only talking about “future-focused wild animal welfare interventions”. And I think making that distinction is important, because I don’t think your reasoning supports present-focused WAW work.
I’d be curious what you think about that!

Isaac Dunn Sep 13, 2023, 12:35 PM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Theory: “WAW might be of higher impact than x-risk prevention based on utilitarianism”
If I understand correctly, you put 0.01% on artificial sentience in the future. That seems overconfident to me—why are you so certain it won’t happen?

Isaac Dunn Sep 12, 2023, 1:54 PM
22 points
16 ∶ 0
on: Theory: “WAW might be of higher impact than x-risk prevention based on utilitarianism”
I’ve only skimmed this, but just want to say I think it’s awesome that you’re doing your own thinking trying to compare these two approaches! In my view, you don’t need to be “qualified” to try to form your own view, which depends on understanding the kinds of considerations you raise. This decision matters a lot, and I’m glad you’re thinking carefully about it and sharing your thoughts.

Isaac Dunn Aug 15, 2023, 1:08 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: A bill to prevent AI from hiring people instead of human enployers in NY
I interpreted the title of this post as a bill banning autonomous AI systems from paying people to do things! I did think it was slightly early.

Isaac Dunn Jul 22, 2023, 3:27 PM
7 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: 𝕮𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆’s comment on: Dragon God’s Shortform
Would you be eligible for the graduate visa? https://www.gov.uk/graduate-visa

If so, would that meet your needs?

Isaac Dunn Jul 19, 2023, 11:27 PM
1 point
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Isaac Dunn’s comment on: I’m interviewing Jan Leike, co-lead of OpenAI’s new Superalignment project. What should I ask him?
(I’ve just realised this is close to just a rephrasing of some of the other suggestions. Could be a helpful rephrasing though.)