SebastianSchmidt

• SebastianSchmidt 3 Sep 2025 15:10 UTC

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  on: Hu­man-in-the-loop AI for MEL in In­dian an­i­mal welfare landscape

  Interesting project! Big fan of work in the intersection of AI and animals though I haven’t thought much about using AI to uplift animal welfare work. Overall, it made me think somewhat about Constance Li and her work on the intersection of AI and animals.
  
  PS. Just played a bit with Lovable tool—it seemed useful, though I’d assume that a bigger bottleneck is to motivate/​educate relevant stakeholders in being interested in ToC in the first place.

• SebastianSchmidt 23 Sep 2024 20:02 UTC

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  in reply to: Henri Thunberg 🔸’s comment on: Giv Effek­tivt (DK) need ~110 more mem­bers to be able to offer tax de­duc­tions of around $66.000)

  Thanks for this Ulrik. It’s a great initiative. +1 to Henri’s comment (I also signed up a while back).

• SebastianSchmidt 13 Jul 2024 9:52 UTC

  3 points

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  in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: Co­op­er­a­tive AI: Three things that con­fused me as a be­gin­ner (and my cur­rent un­der­stand­ing)

  I don’t have anything intelligent to add to this, but I just wanted to say that I found the notion of AI psychologies and character traits fascinating, and I hope to ponder this further.

• SebastianSchmidt 13 Jul 2024 9:50 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Co­op­er­a­tive AI: Three things that con­fused me as a be­gin­ner (and my cur­rent un­der­stand­ing)

  Thanks so much for this blog post. As you know, I’ve been attempting to understand Cooperative AI a bit better over the past weeks.
  More concretely, I found it helpful as a conceptual exploration of what Cooperative AI is. Including how it relates to other adjacent (sub)fields—including the diagram! I also appreciated you flagging the potential dual-use aspect of cooperative intelligence—especially given the fact that you’re working in this field and therefore be prone to wishful thinking.
  
  That said, I would’ve appreciated if you covered a bit more about:
  - Why Cooperative AI is important. I personally think Cooperative AI (at least as I currently understand it) is undervalued on the margin and that we need more focus on potential multi-agent scenarios and complex human interactions.
  - What people in the field of Cooperative AI are actually doing—including how they navigate the dual-use considerations.
  

• SebastianSchmidt 2 May 2024 12:02 UTC

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  on: Launch­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for AI Safety Ca­reers Course In­dia 2024

  I am honored to be part of enabling more people from around the world to contribute to the safe and responsible development of AI.

Launch­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for AI Safety Ca­reers Course In­dia 2024

• SebastianSchmidt 29 Apr 2024 17:17 UTC

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  in reply to: Michael Noetel 🔸’s comment on: Aus­trali­ans are con­cerned about AI risks and ex­pect strong gov­ern­ment action

  Very helpful. I’ll keep it in mind if the use case/​need emerges in the future.

Re­lease of UN’s draft re­lated to the gov­er­nance of AI (a sum­mary of the Si­mon In­sti­tute’s re­sponse)

• SebastianSchmidt 18 Apr 2024 20:21 UTC

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  in reply to: Michael Noetel 🔸’s comment on: Aus­trali­ans are con­cerned about AI risks and ex­pect strong gov­ern­ment action

  That makes sense. We might do some more strategic outreach later this year where a report like this would be relevant but for now i don’t have a clear use case in mind for this so probably better to wait. Approximately how much time would you need to run this?

• SebastianSchmidt 11 Mar 2024 21:55 UTC

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  in reply to: Michael Noetel 🔸’s comment on: Aus­trali­ans are con­cerned about AI risks and ex­pect strong gov­ern­ment action

  Thanks. Hmm. The vibe I’m getting from these answers is P(extinction)>5% (which is higher than the XST you linked).

  Ohh that’s great. We’re starting to do significant work in India and would be interested in knowing similar things there. Any idea of what it’d cost to run there?

• SebastianSchmidt 8 Mar 2024 14:57 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Aus­trali­ans are con­cerned about AI risks and ex­pect strong gov­ern­ment action

  Thanks for sharing. This is a very insightful piece. Im surprised that folks were more concerned about larger scale abstract risks compared to more well defined and smaller scale risks (like bias). I’m also surprised that they are this pro regulation (including a Sox months pause). Given this, I feel a bit confused that they mostly support the development of AI and I wonder what had most shaped their view.

  Overall, I mildly worry that the survey led people to express more concern than they feel. Because this seems surprisingly close to my perception of the views of many existential risks “experts”. What do you think?

  Would love to see this for other countries too. How feasible do you think that would be?

• SebastianSchmidt 29 Jan 2024 11:50 UTC

  4 points

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  on: Im­pact Assess­ment of AI Safety Camp (Arb Re­search)

  Thanks for writing this up and sharing. I strongly appreciate the external research evaluation initiative and was generally impressed with the apparent counterfactual impact.

• SebastianSchmidt 25 Jan 2024 11:13 UTC

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  in reply to: Ben Snodin’s comment on: In­cu­bat­ing AI x-risk pro­jects: some per­sonal reflections

  Thanks for your response Ben. All of these were on my radar but thanks for sharing.
  
  Good luck with what you’ll be working on too!

• SebastianSchmidt 5 Jan 2024 14:48 UTC

  16 points

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  on: Zach Robin­son will be CEA’s next CEO

  Congratulations! I’m looking forward to understanding the strategic direction you and CEA will pursue going forward. Do you have a sense of when you’d be able to share a version of these?

• SebastianSchmidt 1 Jan 2024 17:57 UTC

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  in reply to: Inga’s comment on: Re­think Wel­lbe­ing: First Year Up­date & Marginal Fund­ing Opportunity

  2.
  - How do you define guided self-help? Do you mean facilitated group sessions?
  - Do you have any specific papers/​references that you’ve used to for those estimates?

• SebastianSchmidt 23 Dec 2023 11:31 UTC

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  on: In­cu­bat­ing AI x-risk pro­jects: some per­sonal reflections

  Thanks for writing this up. We’re running an incubation pilot at Impact Academy and found this post very helpful as a reference class (for comparison in terms of success) as well as providing strategic clarity.
  I’m curious, what were the best initiatives (inside and outside of EA) you came across in your search (e.g., y-combinator, charity entrepreneurship, etc.)?
  
  

• SebastianSchmidt 19 Dec 2023 17:43 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Re­think Wel­lbe­ing: First Year Up­date & Marginal Fund­ing Opportunity

  Congratulations on running the pilot and getting these results!
  
  They seem rather promising to me and above a threshold for testing more rigorously and scaling. However, a couple of questions:

  1. When did you measure the end effects and are you planning on doing a follow-up?

  2. How does this compare to interventions such as eight weeks therapy or coaching?

• SebastianSchmidt 4 Dec 2023 9:55 UTC

  4 points

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  on: Tak­ing Into Ac­count Sen­tient Non-Hu­mans in AI Am­bi­tious Value Learn­ing: Sen­tien­tist Co­her­ent Ex­trap­o­lated Volition

  Congratulations! Very happy to see the fruit of your diligent effort.

• SebastianSchmidt 11 Nov 2023 21:03 UTC

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  in reply to: elte’s comment on: Ex­is­ten­tial Hope and Ex­is­ten­tial Risk: Ex­plor­ing the value of op­ti­mistic ap­proaches to shap­ing the long-term future

  Glad it was useful. Looking forward to seeing the course (fortunate that you had reached out to request feedback on it).

• SebastianSchmidt 11 Nov 2023 17:04 UTC

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  in reply to: Zach Stein-Perlman’s comment on: Pres­i­dent Bi­den Is­sues Ex­ec­u­tive Order on Safe, Se­cure, and Trust­wor­thy Ar­tifi­cial Intelligence

  Great to see how concrete and serious the US is now. This basically means that models more powerful than GPT-4 have to be reported to the government.