Comment with practically 0 infromational value (due to total absence of context) but 37 12 karma/agreement feels like “twitter” in the bad sence of this concept, not LW. Which is very sad for me as an old reader. You probably mean something related to american politics, but I suppose many users are not american and dont even have much knowledge about this things. Maybe you mean something totally different. Maybe OpenAI and antrophic drama? I cant even make sense from this.
it’s obviously about the department of war situation. it wasn’t intended to be vague, it just didn’t occur to me that it wouldn’t be obvious what it was about.
Btw is it clear that more control of US government on AI companies is bad for safety in the long term? Yes, locally AI can be used for ~bad, things, but it may be easier to coordinate with different countries or to slow progress down in the face of danger. Because government will be 1 agent instead of 4 companies racing with each other (even in 1 country) and is not motivated by increasing profits.
Total absence of context is relative, I think a lot of people here knows he works at OpenAI and the timing of this post heavily implies the OpenAI/Anthropic/DoD drama. Although I also agree that it is quite vague, it is somewhat understandable if he cannot or don’t want to be too specific, and knowing the background of this post I do think there are a small amount of information.
I would bet with high uncertainty that 10% of regular LW readers and 75% of people who have read this quick take know the background context.
Also I just looked it up, according to the 2024 LW Census ~50% of users are American, which is a bit lower than I expected.
I’m an American who semiregularly (recently, more) reads LW and has heard of the DoW thing, and still was unsure what leogao was talking about. Just put the four words “I work at OpenAI.” Since I don’t regularly read the news, for all I know something else happened; or maybe it’s about some recent ‘community drama’ (e.g. a recent post on the EA forum about CEA not taking action against sexual harassment came to mind).
Additionally, one thing I like about LW is timelessness. It’s probably the web forum that most discusses old posts, due to them being more relevant along with culture + affordances for old reading. In 10 years, a sentence like “I work at OpenAI. The Department of War has made me learn a lot about various people around me, and myself, over the past few days.” is still useful. Currently, 4 days is enough to make me unsure what is being referenced.
I don’t want to have to make every shortform a self contained article. it makes sense that full posts should explain the context, but I would find it very exhausting to have to e.g explain that I work at openai every single time I shortform post about anything openai related. if lesswrong shortform is the wrong place to do this, I’m happy to post elsewhere.
Comment with practically 0 infromational value (due to total absence of context) but 37 12 karma/agreement feels like “twitter” in the bad sence of this concept, not LW. Which is very sad for me as an old reader. You probably mean something related to american politics, but I suppose many users are not american and dont even have much knowledge about this things. Maybe you mean something totally different. Maybe OpenAI and antrophic drama? I cant even make sense from this.
He works at OpenAI and has been critical of their contract, so I assume it’s related to that.
it’s obviously about the department of war situation. it wasn’t intended to be vague, it just didn’t occur to me that it wouldn’t be obvious what it was about.
Btw is it clear that more control of US government on AI companies is bad for safety in the long term? Yes, locally AI can be used for ~bad, things, but it may be easier to coordinate with different countries or to slow progress down in the face of danger. Because government will be 1 agent instead of 4 companies racing with each other (even in 1 country) and is not motivated by increasing profits.
Total absence of context is relative, I think a lot of people here knows he works at OpenAI and the timing of this post heavily implies the OpenAI/Anthropic/DoD drama. Although I also agree that it is quite vague, it is somewhat understandable if he cannot or don’t want to be too specific, and knowing the background of this post I do think there are a small amount of information.
I would bet with high uncertainty that 10% of regular LW readers and 75% of people who have read this quick take know the background context.
Also I just looked it up, according to the 2024 LW Census ~50% of users are American, which is a bit lower than I expected.
I’m an American who semiregularly (recently, more) reads LW and has heard of the DoW thing, and still was unsure what leogao was talking about. Just put the four words “I work at OpenAI.” Since I don’t regularly read the news, for all I know something else happened; or maybe it’s about some recent ‘community drama’ (e.g. a recent post on the EA forum about CEA not taking action against sexual harassment came to mind).
Additionally, one thing I like about LW is timelessness. It’s probably the web forum that most discusses old posts, due to them being more relevant along with culture + affordances for old reading. In 10 years, a sentence like “I work at OpenAI. The Department of War has made me learn a lot about various people around me, and myself, over the past few days.” is still useful. Currently, 4 days is enough to make me unsure what is being referenced.
I don’t want to have to make every shortform a self contained article. it makes sense that full posts should explain the context, but I would find it very exhausting to have to e.g explain that I work at openai every single time I shortform post about anything openai related. if lesswrong shortform is the wrong place to do this, I’m happy to post elsewhere.