Linch

• Linch 7 Apr 2020 2:10 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Linch's comment on: [Open Thread] What vir­tual events are you host­ing that you’d like to open to the EA Fo­rum-read­ing pub­lic?

  We’d like to try us­ing this fo­rum to co­a­lesce pos­si­ble ques­tions to ask Cul­len. Please use this com­ment chain to ask and rank ques­tions about the Wind­fall clause!!

  (We will at­tempt, but not guaran­tee, ask­ing him ques­tions in the or­der of high­est-up­voted ques­tions in this thread that wasn’t cov­ered in the talk, as well as some live ques­tions!)

• Linch 7 Apr 2020 1:57 UTC

  3 points

  on: [Open Thread] What vir­tual events are you host­ing that you’d like to open to the EA Fo­rum-read­ing pub­lic?

  What’s Up With the Wind­fall Clause? (on­line EA SF event)

  cross-posted from Face­book. (I will check both this thread and the FB event for com­ments)

  Date: 2020/​04/​06

  Time: 19:00-21:00 (PDT)

  How can we en­sure that the gains from Trans­for­ma­tive AI col­lec­tively benefit hu­man­ity, rather than just the lucky few? How can we in­cen­tivize in­no­va­tion in AI in a way that’s broadly pos­i­tive for hu­man­ity? Other than al­ign­ment, what are dis­tribu­tive is­sues with the sta­tus quo in AI prof­its? What are prac­ti­cal is­sues with differ­ent dis­tribu­tive mechanisms?
  

  In this talk, Cul­len O’Keefe, Re­search Scien­tist at OpenAI and Re­search Affili­ate at FHI, will ar­gue for the “wind­fall clause”: in short, that com­pa­nies should donate ex­cess wind­fall prof­its from Trans­for­ma­tive AI for the com­mon good.
  

  You may be in­ter­ested in read­ing his pa­per sum­ma­riz­ing the core ideas [1], or his AMA on the EA Fo­rum [2].
  

  This will be EA: San Fran­cisco’s inau­gu­ral on­line event (and only our sec­ond gen­eral event).
  

  We’re still look­ing into differ­ent tech­nolog­i­cal op­tions for the best way to host this talk, but please have the Zoom App down­loaded and cre­ate a Zoom ac­count.
  

  As this will be on­line, I see lit­tle rea­son to re­strict this to peo­ple liv­ing within the phys­i­cal Bay Area. Feel free to in­vite friends from all over the world (in a com­pat­i­ble time zone) if they wish to at­tend.
  

  Ten­ta­tive sched­ule:
  Talk: 7:00-7:25
  Q&A: 7:25-8:10
  Struc­tured Mingling: 8:10-9:00.
  (De­tails of ex­act sched­ule TBD)
  

  For the sake of ev­ery­one’s men­tal health, we are ban­ning all dis­cus­sions of The Disease Which Must Not Be Named.
  

  [1] https://​​arxiv.org/​​pdf/​​1912.11595.pdf
  [2] https://​​fo­rum.effec­tivealtru­ism.org/​​posts/​​9cx8TrLEooaw49cAr/​​i-m-cul­len-o-keefe-a-policy-re­searcher-at-ope­nai-ama

[Open Thread] What vir­tual events are you host­ing that you’d like to open to the EA Fo­rum-read­ing pub­lic?

• Linch 2 Apr 2020 23:44 UTC

  2 points

  on: New Top EA Causes for 2020?

  Is it too late to sub­mit new an­swers?

• Linch 2 Apr 2020 7:13 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: RomeoStevens's comment on: New Top EA Causes for 2020?

  Dur­ing a crisis, peo­ple tend to im­ple­ment the preferred poli­cies of who­ever seems to be ac­cu­rately pre­dict­ing each phase of the problem

  This seems in­cred­ibly op­ti­mistic.

• Linch 2 Apr 2020 7:04 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: MichaelA's comment on: What are the best ar­gu­ments that AGI is on the hori­zon?

  I ed­ited that sec­tion, let me know if there are re­main­ing points of con­fu­sion!

• Linch 2 Apr 2020 7:01 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: MichaelA's comment on: What are the best ar­gu­ments that AGI is on the hori­zon?

  Do you in­clude in “Peo­ple work­ing speci­fi­cally on AGI” peo­ple work­ing on AI safety, or just ca­pa­bil­ities?

  Just ca­pa­bil­ities (in other words, peo­ple work­ing to cre­ate AGI), al­though I think the safety/​ca­pa­bil­ities dis­tinc­tion is less clear-cut out­side of a few ded­i­cated safety orgs like MIRI.

  “bullish” in the sense of “think­ing trans­for­ma­tive AI (TAI) is com­ing soon”

  Yes.

  what do you mean by “ex­perts not work­ing on AGI”?

  AI peo­ple who aren’t ex­plic­itly think­ing of AGI when they do their re­search (I think this cor­rectly de­scribes well over 90% of ML re­searchers at Google Brain, for ex­am­ple).

  Why say “even”

  Be­cause it might be sur­pris­ing (to peo­ple ask­ing or read­ing this ques­tion who are imag­in­ing long timelines) to see timelines as short as the ones AI ex­perts be­lieve, so the sec­ond point is qual­ify­ing that AGI ex­perts be­lieve it’s even shorter.

  In gen­eral it looks like my lan­guage choice was more am­bigu­ous than de­sir­able so I’ll edit my an­swer to be clearer!

• Linch 1 Apr 2020 2:14 UTC

  5 points

  on: Find­ing equil­ibrium in a difficult time

  I also like this quote:

  “I wish it need not have hap­pened in my time,” said Frodo.
  ”So do I,” said Gan­dalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to de­cide. All we have to de­cide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

  J.R.R. Tolk­ien, The Fel­low­ship of the Ring

• Linch 21 Mar 2020 8:02 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: William_MacAskill's comment on: Ask Me Any­thing!

  I think there’s some ev­i­dence that Me­tac­u­lus, while a group of fairly smart and well-in­formed peo­ple, are nowhere near as knowl­edge­able as a fairly in­formed EA (per­haps in­clud­ing a typ­i­cal user of this fo­rum?) for the spe­cific ques­tions around ex­is­ten­tial and global catas­trophic risks.

  One ex­am­ple I can point to is that for this ques­tion on cli­mate change and GCR be­fore 2100 (that has been around since Oc­to­ber 2018), a sin­gle not-very-in­for­ma­tive com­ment from me was enough to change the com­mu­nity me­dian from 24% to 10%. This sug­gests to me that Me­tac­u­lus users did not pre­vi­ously have strong ev­i­dence or care­ful rea­son­ing on this ques­tion, or per­haps GCR-re­lated think­ing in gen­eral.

  Now you might think that ac­tual su­perfore­cast­ers are bet­ter, but based on the com­ments given so far for COVID-19, I’m unim­pressed. In par­tic­u­lar the se­lected com­ments point to use of refer­ence classes that EAs and avid Me­tac­u­lus users have known to be flawed for over a week be­fore the re­port came out (eg, us­ing China’s low deaths as ev­i­dence that this can be eas­ily repli­cated in other coun­tries as the de­fault sce­nario).

  Now COVID-19 is not an ex­is­ten­tial risk or GCR, but it is an “out of dis­tri­bu­tion” prob­lem show­ing clear and fast ex­po­nen­tial growth that seems un­usual for most ques­tions su­perfore­cast­ers are known to ex­cel at.

• Linch 20 Mar 2020 5:37 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Denkenberger's comment on: Are there any pub­lic health fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties with COVID-19 that are plau­si­bly com­pet­i­tive with Givewell top char­i­ties per dol­lar?

  Cur­rently at 200 mil­lion a day, though NPR says they’re fac­ing short­ages with the ma­te­ri­als used to make masks.

• Linch 20 Mar 2020 2:33 UTC

  3 points

  on: How would crop pol­li­na­tion work with­out com­mer­cial bee­keep­ing?

  Hmm, if ev­ery­body stopped eat­ing honey and wild bees are not pick­ing up the slack, then pre­sum­ably farm­ers would in­stead pay for com­mer­cial bee­keep­ing to pol­li­nate their fields?

• Linch 19 Mar 2020 3:22 UTC

  3 points

  on: Should re­cent events make us more or less con­cerned about biorisk?

  One rea­son to be­lieve oth­er­wise is be­cause you think ex­is­ten­tial GCBRs will looks so rad­i­cally differ­ent that any broader biose­cu­rity prepara­tory work won’t be use­ful.

[Question] Should re­cent events make us more or less con­cerned about biorisk?

• Linch 18 Mar 2020 18:24 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: willbradshaw's comment on: Should re­cent events make us more or less con­cerned about biorisk?

  It’s go­ing to go pub­lic! Want peo­ple to re­view it lightly in case this type of ques­tion will lead to in­for­ma­tion-haz­ard ter­ri­tory in the an­swers.

• Linch 18 Mar 2020 6:44 UTC

  6 points

  on: AMA: Elie Hassen­feld, co-founder and CEO of GiveWell

  Do you think it makes sense for EAs to treat global health and eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment as the same cause area, given that they seem to be two some­what sep­a­rate fields with differ­ent met­rics, differ­ent the­o­ries of change, differ­ent in­sti­tu­tions etc?

  
  

  (I may not be for­mu­lat­ing this ques­tion cor­rectly).

• Linch 18 Mar 2020 2:25 UTC

  9 points

  on: AMA: Toby Ord, au­thor of “The Precipice” and co-founder of the EA movement

  On bal­ance, what do you think is the prob­a­bil­ity that we are at or close to a hinge of his­tory (ei­ther right now, this decade, or this cen­tury)?

• Linch 18 Mar 2020 2:22 UTC

  4 points

  on: AMA: Toby Ord, au­thor of “The Precipice” and co-founder of the EA movement

  What’s one book that you think most EAs have not yet read and you think that they should (other than your own, of course)?

• Linch 18 Mar 2020 2:02 UTC

  7 points

  on: AMA: Toby Ord, au­thor of “The Precipice” and co-founder of the EA movement

  Can you de­scribe a typ­i­cal day in your life with suffi­cient gran­u­lar­ity that read­ers can have a sense of what “be­ing a re­searcher at a place like FHI” is like?

• Linch 17 Mar 2020 7:13 UTC

  10 points

  on: AMA: Toby Ord, au­thor of “The Precipice” and co-founder of the EA movement

  Are there any spe­cific nat­u­ral ex­is­ten­tial risks that are sig­nifi­cant enough that more than 1% of EA re­sources should be de­voted to it? .1%? .01%?

• Linch 17 Mar 2020 6:42 UTC

  20 points

  on: AMA: Toby Ord, au­thor of “The Precipice” and co-founder of the EA movement

  What do you think is the biggest mis­take that the EA com­mu­nity is cur­rently mak­ing?