By the way, tone doesn’t come across well in writing. To be fair, even orally, I am often a bit abrasive.
So just to be clear: I’m thankful that you’re engaging with the conversation. Furthermore, I am assuming that you are doing so genuinely, so thanks for that too.
yes. I don’t think any of them suggest that LessWrong is supporting or enthusiastic about OpenAI
I think you may have misread what I wrote.
My statements were that the LessWrong community has supported DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, and that it had friends in all three companies.
I did not state that it was enthusiastic about it, and much less so that it currently is. When I say “has supported”, I literally mean that it has supported them. Eliezer introducing Demis and Thiel, Paul Christiano doing RLHF at OpenAI and helping with ChatGPT, the whole cluster founding Anthropic, all the people safety-washing the companies, etc. I didn’t make a grand statement about its feelings, just a pragmatic one about some of its actions.
Nevertheless a reaction to my statements, you picked up a thread the top answer recommends people work at OpenAI, and where the second topmost answer expresses happiness at capabilities (Paul’s RLHF) work.
How could he have known that Paul’s work would lead to capabilities 2 years before ChatGPT? By using enmity and keeping in mind that an organisation that races to AGI will leverage all of its internal research (including the one labelled “safety”) for capabilities.
I don’t know how you did footnotes in comments, but...
For instance, the context of Ben Pace’s response was one when many people in the community at the time (plausibly himself too!) recommended people work at OpenAI’s safety teams.
From my point of view, this is pretty damning. You picked one post, and the topmost answers featured two examples of support. The type that you would naturally and should clearly avoid with enemies.
To be clear, the LessWrong community has supported many times DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, and at the same time, felt bad feelings about them too. This is quite a normal awkward situation in the absence of clear enmity.
This is not surprising. Enmity would have helped with clarifying this relationship and not committing this mistake.
Also, remember that I do not view enmity as a single-dimensional axis, and this is a major point of my thesis! My recommendation sums to: be more proactive in deeming others enemies, and at the same time, remain cordial, polite and professional with them.
By the way, tone doesn’t come across well in writing. To be fair, even orally, I am often a bit abrasive.
So just to be clear: I’m thankful that you’re engaging with the conversation. Furthermore, I am assuming that you are doing so genuinely, so thanks for that too.
I think you may have misread what I wrote.
My statements were that the LessWrong community has supported DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, and that it had friends in all three companies.
I did not state that it was enthusiastic about it, and much less so that it currently is. When I say “has supported”, I literally mean that it has supported them. Eliezer introducing Demis and Thiel, Paul Christiano doing RLHF at OpenAI and helping with ChatGPT, the whole cluster founding Anthropic, all the people safety-washing the companies, etc. I didn’t make a grand statement about its feelings, just a pragmatic one about some of its actions.
Nevertheless a reaction to my statements, you picked up a thread the top answer recommends people work at OpenAI, and where the second topmost answer expresses happiness at capabilities (Paul’s RLHF) work.
How could he have known that Paul’s work would lead to capabilities 2 years before ChatGPT? By using enmity and keeping in mind that an organisation that races to AGI will leverage all of its internal research (including the one labelled “safety”) for capabilities.
I don’t know how you did footnotes in comments, but...
For instance, the context of Ben Pace’s response was one when many people in the community at the time (plausibly himself too!) recommended people work at OpenAI’s safety teams.
He mentions in his comment that he is happy that Paul and Chris get more money at OpenAI than they would have had otherwise, the same reasoning would have applied to other researchers working with them.
From my point of view, this is pretty damning. You picked one post, and the topmost answers featured two examples of support. The type that you would naturally and should clearly avoid with enemies.
To be clear, the LessWrong community has supported many times DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, and at the same time, felt bad feelings about them too. This is quite a normal awkward situation in the absence of clear enmity.
This is not surprising. Enmity would have helped with clarifying this relationship and not committing this mistake.
Also, remember that I do not view enmity as a single-dimensional axis, and this is a major point of my thesis! My recommendation sums to: be more proactive in deeming others enemies, and at the same time, remain cordial, polite and professional with them.