This is not the request that I made. I asked to not use information adversarially: to not try to cause harm to the third party using it.
You said: “I don’t think I have any reason to ask you to not consider it in your plans insofar as these considerations are not hurting their interests or whatever” when I asked for clarification. This clearly implies you are asking me to not consider this information in my plans if doing so would hurt their interests!
You also clarified multiple other times that you were asking me to promise to not use this information in any future conflicts or anything like that, or to make plans on their basis that would somehow interfere with the other party’s plans, even if I thought they would cause grave harm if I didn’t interfere.
You didn’t signal in any way that any of that stuff was an option.
I am really not very optimistic about making agreements with you in-particular, based on how the one conversation I’ve ever had with you went. So no, that is not an option, though I will still try to do good by what I think you care about. But I do not want to risk you forming more expectations about how I will behave which you then get angry at me for and try to strongarm me into various things I don’t want to do. It’s not been fun dealing with you on this!
(2) is dependent on you not having ways to use the information to hurt the third party.
This is just false. I am not going around trying to randomly hurt people. All I am saying, and will continue to say, is that I am not promising you that I will use this information only in ways you approve of, or the third party would approve of. The bar is much higher than simply “an opportunity presents itself to hurt the third party!”, as I have told you multiple times!
People who donated to keep Lighthaven going are not particularly happy about this.
Feel free to do a survey on this! I am sure almost all of our donors would of course have an exchange rate where instead of them donating, we just provide epsilon value to an AI company, and then they can use their money to do other good things in the world. I would be extremely surprised if your statement was true in any kind of generality.
talked to friends who previously have or considered donating large amounts to Lightcone, and then regretted that/decided not to after learning about all this.
Almost none of the information in this post is correct! If they updated because of takes like this post, then I think they just made a mistake.
To anyone else: please reach out to me if you somehow made updates in this direction, I would be highly surprised if you end up endorsing it. The only thing that seems plausible to me as a real update in the space is that for a high enough tax we will host basically arbitrary events at Lighthaven (not literally arbitrary, but like, I think we should have some price for basically anything, and I expect the tax to sometimes be very high). If you really don’t want that you should at least let me know! You can also leave comments here and I’ll be glad to respond.
Separately, I think it’s good to invite people like Sam Altman to events like the Progress Conference, and would of course want Sam to be at important diplomatic meetings. If you think that’s always bad, then I do think Lighthaven might be bad! I am definitely hoping for it to facilitate conversations between many people I think are causing harm for the world.
Supporting the idea that the criticisms are false with a note on “Mikhail must’ve not had time” is weird, especially given that I explicitly told you all that I find the arguments in your comments invalid and didn’t want to reply in detail from my phone.
Look, “three hours on a Saturday night” is not the right amount of time to give someone if you are asking them for input on a post like this. I mean, you could have just not asked for input at all, but it’s clearly not an amount of time that should give you any confidence you got the benefits of input.
Separately, I think it’s good to invite people like Sam Altman to events like the Progress Conference, and would of course want Sam to be at important diplomatic meetings. If you think that’s always bad, then I do think Lighthaven might be bad! I am definitely hoping for it to facilitate conversations between many people I think are causing harm for the world.
I think it’s aproximatly always bad to invite Sam Altman. We he lies and manipuate people. We know that he succeeded at stealing OpenAI from the non profit. Inviting him to any high-trust space, where most peopel will by defualt assume good faith, (which I would be very surpprised is not the case at the Progress Conference), is in my judgment very bad. Inviting him to a negotiation where most people are already supspisios of eachother might be worth it in some situations, maybe? I have no expertice here.
In general I would like the insentive landscape to be that if you steal OpenAI from the non profit, and work towards hazen the end of the world, you are socialy shunned.
(I don’t think stealing OpenAI was the most impactfull thing from a perspective of X-risk. But it’s just so obviously evil from any world view. I don’t see any possiblity of good faith comunication after that.)
My previous understanding of the situaton is that the Progress Connferene naiviely invited Sam Altman, and Lightcone did not veto this, and for some reason did not prioritise advising them against it. Knowing that you endorse this makes me update in a negative direction.
You said: “I don’t think I have any reason to ask you to not consider it in your plans insofar as these considerations are not hurting their interests or whatever” when I asked for clarification. This clearly implies you are asking me to not consider this information in my plans if doing so would hurt their interests!
You also clarified multiple other times that you were asking me to promise to not use this information in any future conflicts or anything like that, or to make plans on their basis that would somehow interfere with the other party’s plans, even if I thought they would cause grave harm if I didn’t interfere.
I am really not very optimistic about making agreements with you in-particular, based on how the one conversation I’ve ever had with you went. So no, that is not an option, though I will still try to do good by what I think you care about. But I do not want to risk you forming more expectations about how I will behave which you then get angry at me for and try to strongarm me into various things I don’t want to do. It’s not been fun dealing with you on this!
This is just false. I am not going around trying to randomly hurt people. All I am saying, and will continue to say, is that I am not promising you that I will use this information only in ways you approve of, or the third party would approve of. The bar is much higher than simply “an opportunity presents itself to hurt the third party!”, as I have told you multiple times!
Feel free to do a survey on this! I am sure almost all of our donors would of course have an exchange rate where instead of them donating, we just provide epsilon value to an AI company, and then they can use their money to do other good things in the world. I would be extremely surprised if your statement was true in any kind of generality.
Almost none of the information in this post is correct! If they updated because of takes like this post, then I think they just made a mistake.
To anyone else: please reach out to me if you somehow made updates in this direction, I would be highly surprised if you end up endorsing it. The only thing that seems plausible to me as a real update in the space is that for a high enough tax we will host basically arbitrary events at Lighthaven (not literally arbitrary, but like, I think we should have some price for basically anything, and I expect the tax to sometimes be very high). If you really don’t want that you should at least let me know! You can also leave comments here and I’ll be glad to respond.
Separately, I think it’s good to invite people like Sam Altman to events like the Progress Conference, and would of course want Sam to be at important diplomatic meetings. If you think that’s always bad, then I do think Lighthaven might be bad! I am definitely hoping for it to facilitate conversations between many people I think are causing harm for the world.
Look, “three hours on a Saturday night” is not the right amount of time to give someone if you are asking them for input on a post like this. I mean, you could have just not asked for input at all, but it’s clearly not an amount of time that should give you any confidence you got the benefits of input.
I think it’s aproximatly always bad to invite Sam Altman. We he lies and manipuate people. We know that he succeeded at stealing OpenAI from the non profit. Inviting him to any high-trust space, where most peopel will by defualt assume good faith, (which I would be very surpprised is not the case at the Progress Conference), is in my judgment very bad. Inviting him to a negotiation where most people are already supspisios of eachother might be worth it in some situations, maybe? I have no expertice here.
In general I would like the insentive landscape to be that if you steal OpenAI from the non profit, and work towards hazen the end of the world, you are socialy shunned.
(I don’t think stealing OpenAI was the most impactfull thing from a perspective of X-risk. But it’s just so obviously evil from any world view. I don’t see any possiblity of good faith comunication after that.)
My previous understanding of the situaton is that the Progress Connferene naiviely invited Sam Altman, and Lightcone did not veto this, and for some reason did not prioritise advising them against it. Knowing that you endorse this makes me update in a negative direction.