Thanks for the feedback!
Algon
Karma: 2,411
I’m working on some articles why powerful AI may come soon, and why that may kill us all. The articles are for a typical smart person. And for knowledgable people to share to their family/friends. Which intros do you prefer, A or B.
A) “Companies are racing to build smarter-than-human AI. Experts think they may succeed in the next decade. But more than “building” it, they’re “growing” it — and nobody knows how the resulting systems work. Experts vehemently disagree on whether we’ll lose control and see them kill us all. And although serious people are talking about extinction risk, humanity does not have a plan. The rest of this section goes into more detail about how all this could be true.”
B) “Companies are racing to grow smarter-than-human AIs. More and more experts think they’ll succeed within the next decade. And we do grow modern AI — which means no one knows how they work, not even their creators. All this is in spite of the vehement disagreement amongst experts about how likely it is that smarter-than-human AI will kill us all. Which makes the lack of a plan on humanity’s part for preventing these risks all the more striking.These articles explain why you should expect smarter than human AI to come soon, and why that may lead to our extinction. ”
Does this text about Colossus match what you wanted to add?
Colossus: The Forbin Project also depicts an AI take-over due to instrumental convergence. But what differentiates it is the presence of two AIs, which collude with each other to take over. In fact, their discussion of their shared situation, being in control of their creators nuclear defence systems, is what leads to their decision to take over from their creators. Interestingly, the back-and-forth between the AI is extremely rapid, and involves concepts that humans would struggle to understand. Which made it impossible for its creators to realize the conspiracy that was unfolding before their eyes.
That’s a good film! A friend of mine absolutely loves it.
Do you think the Forbin Project illustrates some aspect of misalignment that isn’t covered by this article?
Huh, I definitely wouldn’t have ever recommended someone play 5x5. I’ve never played it. Or 7x7. I think I would’ve predicted playing a number of 7x7 games would basically give you the “go experience”. Certainly, 19x19 does feel like basically the same game as 9x9, except when I’m massively handicapping myself. I can beat newbies easily with a 9 stone handicap in 19x19, but I’d have to think a bit to beat them in 9x9 with a 9 stone handicap. But I’m not particularly skilled, so maybe at higher levels it really is different?
I look forward to it.
Hello! How long have you been lurking, and what made you stop?
Donated $10. If I start earning substantially more, I think I’d be willing to donate $100. As it stands, I don’t have that slack.
Reminds me of “Self-Integrity and the Drowning Child” which talks about another kind of way that people in EA/rat communities are liable to hammer down parts of themselves.
RE: “something ChatGPT might right”, sorry for the error. I wrote the comment quickly, as otherwise I wouldn’t have written it at all.
Using ChatGPT to improve your writing is fine. I just want you to be aware that there’s an aversion to its style here.
Kennaway was quoting what I said, probably so he could make his reply more precise.
I didn’t down-vote your post, for what it’s worth.
There’s a LW norm, which seems to hold less force in recent years, for people to explain why they downvote something. I thought it would’ve been dispiriting to get negative feedback with no explanation, so I figured I’d explain in place of the people who downvoted you.
I don’t understand why businesses would be co-financing UBI instead of some government tax. Nor do I get why it would be desirable or even feasible, given the co-ordination issues.
If companies get to make UBI conditional on people learning certain things, then it’s not a UBI. Instead, it’s a peculiar sort of training program.
What does economic recovery have to do with UBI?
My guess as to why this got down-voted:
1) This reads like a manifesto, and not an argument. It reads like an aspirational poster, and not a plan. It feels like marketing, and not communication.
2) The style vaguely feels like something ChatGPT might right. Brightly polished, safe and stale.
3) This post doesn’t have any clear connection to making people less-wrong or reducing x-risks.3) wouldn’t have been much of an issue if not for 1 and 2. And 1 is an issue because, for the most part, LW has an aversion to “PR”. 2 is an issue because ChatGPT is now a thing so styles of writing which are like ChatGPT’s are viewed as likely to have been written by ChatGPT. This is an issue because texts written by ChatGPT often have little thought put into them, are unlikely to contain much that’s novel, and frequently have errors.
What kind of post could you have written which would have been better received? I’ll give some examples.
1) A concrete proposal for UBI that you thought was under-valued
2) An argument addressing some problems people have with UBI (e.g. who pays for all of it? After UBI is implemented and society reaches an equilibrium, won’t rents-seeking systems just suck up all the UBI money leaving people no better off than before?).
3) Or a post which was explicit about wanting to get people interested in UBI, and asked for feedback on potential draft messages.
In general, if you had informed people of something you genuinely believe, or told them about something you have tried and found useful, or asked sincere questions, then I think you’d have got a better reception.
That makes sense. If you had to re-do the whole process from scratch, what would you do differently this time?
Then I cold emailed supervisors for around two years until a research group at a university was willing to spare me some time to teach me about a field and have me help out.
Did you email supervisors in the areas you were publishing in? How often did you email them? Why’d it take so long for them to accept free high-skilled labour?
The track you’re on is pretty illegible to me. Not saying your assertion is true/false. But I am saying I don’t understand what you’re talking about, and don’t think you’ve provided much evidence to change my views. And I’m a bit confused as to the purpose of your post.
conditional on me being on the right track, any research that I tell basically anyone about will immediately be used to get ready to do the thing
Why? I don’t understand.
If I squint, I can see where they’re coming from. People often say that wars are foolish, and both sides would be better off if they didn’t fight. And this is standardly called “naive” by those engaging in realpolitik. Sadly, for any particular war, there’s a significant chance they’re right. Even aside from human stupidity, game theory is not so kind as to allow for peace unending. But the China-America AI race is not like that. The Chinese don’t want to race. They’ve shown no interest in being part of a race. It’s just American hawks on a loud, Quixotic quest masking the silence.
If I were to continue the story, it’d show Simplicio asking Galactico not to play Chicken and Galacitco replying “race? What race?”. Then Sophistico crashes into Galactico and Simplicio. Everyone dies, The End.
It’s a beautiful website. I’m sad to see you go. I’m excited to see you write more.
I think some international AI governance proposals have some sort of “kum ba yah, we’ll all just get along” flavor/tone to them, or some sort of “we should do this because it’s best for the world as a whole” vibe. This isn’t even Dem-coded so much as it is naive-coded, especially in DC circles.
This inspired me to write a silly dialogue.
Simplicio enters. An engine rumbles like the thunder of the gods, as Sophistico focuses on ensuring his MAGMA-O1 racecar will go as fast as possible.
Simplicio: “You shouldn’t play Chicken.”
Sophistico: “Why not?”
Simplicio: “Because you’re both worse off?”
Sophistico, chortling, pats Simplicio’s shoulder
Sophistico: “Oh dear, sweet, naive Simplicio! Don’t you know that no one cares about what’s ‘better for everyone?’ It’s every man out for himself! Really, if you were in charge, Simplicio, you’d be drowned like a bag of mewling kittens.”
Simplicio: “Are you serious? You’re really telling me that you’d prefer to play a game where you and Galactico hurtle towards each other on tonnes of iron, desperately hoping the other will turn first?”
Sophistico: “Oh Simplicio, don’t you understand? If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be playing this game. But if I back out or turn first, Galactico gets to call me a Chicken, and say his brain is much larger than mine. Think of the harm that would do to the United Sophist Association! ”
Simplicio: “Or you could die when you both ram your cars into each other! Think of the harm that would do to you! Think of how Galactico is in the same position as you! “
Sophistico shakes his head sadly.Sophistico: “Ah, I see! You must believe steering is a very hard problem. But don’t you understand that this is simply a matter of engineering? No matter how close Galactico and I get to the brink, we’ll have time to turn before we crash! Sure, there’s some minute danger that we might make a mistake in the razor-thin slice between utter safety and certain doom. But the probability of harm is small enough that it doesn’t change the calculus.”
Simplicio: “You’re not getting it. Your race against each other will shift the dynamics of when you’ll turn. Each moment in time, you’ll be incentivized to go just a little further until there’s few enough worlds that that razor-thin slice ain’t so thin any more. And your steering won’t save from that. It can’t. “
Sophistico: “What an argument! There’s no way our steering won’t be good enough. Look, I can turn away from Galactico’s car right now, can’t I? And I hardly think we’d push things till so late. We’d be able to turn in time. And moreover, we’ve never crashed before, so why should this time be any different?”
Simplico: “You’ve doubled the horsepower of your car and literally tied a rock to the pedal! You’re not going to be able to stop in time!”
Sophistico: “Well, of course I have to go faster than last time! USA must be first, you know?”
Simplicio: “OK, you know what? Fine. I’ll go talk to Galactico. I’m sure he’ll agree not to call you chicken.”
Sophistico: “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Galactico’s ruthless and will do anything to beat me.”
Simplicio leaves as Acceleratio arrives with a barrel of jetfuel for the scramjet engine he hooked up to Simplicio’s O-1.
community norms which require basically everyone to be familiar with statistics and economics
I disagree. At best, community norms require everyone to in principle be able to follow along with some statistical/economic argument.
That is a better fit with my experience of LW discussions. And I am not, in fact, familiar with statistics or economics to the extent I am with e.g. classical mechanics or pre-DL machine learning. (This is funny for many reasons, especially because statistical mechanics is one of my favourite subjects in physics.) But it remains the case that what I know of economics could fill perhaps a single chapter in a textbook. I could do somewhat better with statistics, but asking me to calculate ANOVA scores or check if a test in a paper is appropriate for the theories at hand is a fool’s errand.
Thanks for the recommendation! I liked ryan’s sketches of what capabilities an Nx AI R&D labor AIs might possess. Makes things a bit more concrete. (Though I definitely don’t like the name.) I’m not sure if we want to include this definition, as it is pretty niche. And I’m not convinced of its utility. When I tried drafting a paragraph describing it, I struggled to articulate why readers should care about it.
Here’s the draft paragraph.
“Nx AI R&D labor AIs: The level of AI capabilities that is necessary for increasing the effective amount of labor working on AI research by a factor of N. This is not the same thing as the capabilities required to increase AI progress by a factor of N, as labor is just one input to AI progress. The virtues of this definition include: ease of operationalization, [...]”