I host regular events for people, and occasionally write things, too. My website is jenn.site.
jenn
Karma: 3,800
Wild Animal Suffering
I very much agree with this! I’ve written this post largely to post in the co-working slack to start a discussion between the two groups :)
I find that in general, if one does not put in the work of establishing rapport, building common understanding, and demonstrating understanding the other party’s frameworks, there is no reason for the other party to take one’s disagreements seriously. This makes sense; even in very tightly connected sub-fields of professional industries, established frameworks/conventions/world models are different enough that it’s often reasonable to say “yeah that might make sense inside your community of practice, but it is outside the overton window/will not have any traction/is fnord shaped over here”.
I agree that reasonable people update on reasonable arguments, and I think professionals tend to be reasonable people. I do not think there is a short[1], clear argument for why space property rights (or, indeed, GCR from AI) should be taken seriously.
- ^
as in, you can explain it in two sentences in a casual conversation.
- ^
thanks for linking! In particular, I found “it’s more that the acculturation is not always pleasant or enjoyable” to be a reasonable take.
can you please say more about this?
I think the word normie emits more heat than light, and also is underspecified here. The cluster that I’m interested in engaging with are university educated, generally non-STEM white collar professionals who are used to working in offices, and decently far along in their careers.
I acknowledge that many rationalists think of that group as the prototypical “normies”! However they actually make up not that large a percentage of the total population, even in developed nations.
Appreciate the corrections! Taking notes for when I start conducting field research :p
I agree that it would be weird to bag every single profession together and speak of them in general terms. To clarify where I’m coming from, I find that the professionals who are transferring into AI safety largely come from a few subfields that all seem interrelated: consulting, public service policy, procurement, nonprofit advocacy. While these subfields all have their own unique norms as well, I think it’s reasonable to look at this ~PMCish collection and speak of it in a collective.
...I sort of consider programmers to already be fairly rationalist by default, and find bridging inferential gaps with them to be generally less challenging.
Old School EA
i don’t feel annoyance often, but one thing that really pushes my buttons is happening upon a piece of anti-ai misinformation that is clearly AI generated. my enemies deserve higher quality thinking on their side.
but since anti-AI people have not read enough AI generated text to be able to instinctively pick up the tells, they’re tricked into reading and clapping for incredibly longwinded and sloppy argumentation delivered in an authoritative tone written by clankers. unlike me. i only fall for longwinded and sloppy argumentation delivered in an authoritative tone written by meat humans who are high status in my internet subculture. because i’ve read several million words of ai generated vampire fanfiction. this makes me superior.
anyways, what was i saying. the specific thing that drives me nuts is that i feel like what these posters of ai-generated drivel implicitly believe is that most people are too stupid and gullible to be using ai tools, but the posters themselves are part of a special rarefied few for whom it’s okay for whatever reason, which is why they feel entitled to post AI slop without disclosure. and just. fuck entirely off with that!!! at least i’m honest about my superiority complex and AI takes ykwim?
AI Safety Acculturation is Neglected
I think this poem conveys my thinking better than I can:
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.Jack Gilbert, 2012
Excerpts from UChicago Law School’s memo from last month, Rethinking Legal Education in the AI Era, which is an interesting peek into how one prestigious institution is orienting towards AI.
Introduction:
Artificial Intelligence is already impacting higher education and the legal profession, and the pace of change appears only to be accelerating. It is thus critical for us to use this moment to carefully reflect on how legal education should adapt. This memo describes the approach we are taking to legal education in the AI era.
humans are expected to remain in the loop due to anti-ai sentiment:
AI may transform the legal profession, but many aspects of legal practice are likely to remain the domain of humans, not merely because humans are good at them, but because clients, employers, judges, and society will want humans to perform them… To be sure, there are ways in which AI can assist humans with these tasks. But legal education should renew its focus on training students for the aspects of legal practice for which humans are likely to remain essential.
all electronic devices will be banned in the classroom in first year:
During the 1L year, the value of effortful struggle, even with concepts that are second nature to experienced lawyers, is paramount. Student expertise at judging the quality of AI output is at its nadir.
...
Across all 1L sections, we will prohibit the use of electronic devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones in the classroom. There will be some limited exceptions to this policy. For instance, professors can designate classroom “scribes” who can use electronic devices to take notes for the class, professors can authorize electronic device use for specific tech-enabled activities (such as interactive in-class polling), and we will ensure that disabilities are accommodated in conformity with applicable law, as appropriate for the program of study. Additionally, examinations will be in-class without access to the internet, electronic files, or apps.
i hope this works out because it seems wise but wouldn’t be surprised if a significant percentage or even a majority of students request accommodations to get around this.
law firms are now overwhelmingly AI-pilled, so students will also receive training in using AI tools:
Many (if not most) students will spend their 1L summers in professional environments where they will be expected to use AI tools for research and writing tasks. Thus, the LRW curriculum must also include instruction in the responsible, effective, and ethical use of AI. At the same time, even AI skills training must itself be AI-resilient.
...
Client needs and expectations will create pressure for graduates to be able to immediately use AI responsibly, effectively, and ethically. As a practical matter, this means that for many graduates, law school clinics are the best opportunity to receive close and careful supervision of their use of AI tools.
how can a law school both ban devices and also train students in AI use? it seems like here’s two streams of courses, one for legal principles (“core”, including courses on tort law, contracts, criminal law, etc) and one for research and writing skills (“LRW”). devices are banned in the first stream only. in the second, they’re piloting a structure where students will write without AI but use AI for all other parts of their coursework and study:
We will thus be piloting a new structure to the LRW curriculum during the 2026–2027 academic year. Our approach will treat writing without AI as the foundation and will layer writing with AI onto it. Throughout the year, students will write without AI, while also using AI for research, revision, iterating on drafts, and preparation for oral argument. Students and their instructors will review together both their writing and their use of AI. In this way, students will develop their own writing skills independent of generative AI tools while also developing their ability to supervise AI and critique its output.
past first year, they are encouraging their teaching staff to be “creative” about “ai-resistant pedagogy”, i.e. discouraging AI use:
• In-class student workshops of their papers;
• Writing reaction papers or portions of longer papers in supervised, in-class settings;
• Group presentations or panel discussions by students with related reaction paper topics;
• Students, individually or in groups, leading portions of class discussion relevant to their reaction paper topics; and
• One-on-one discussion of a research paper with the professor outside of class.they are also adding a new requirement to their capstone project:
all students will be required to engage in an oral discussion of their [capstone] with their supervising professor, in an in-person setting.
they acknowledge that this comes with tradeoffs:
Some responses, such as requiring writing to take place in supervised, in-class settings, address the need to cultivate practice while ensuring original human effort. Yet such requirements lose an important aspect of the exercise of writing, which is sustained and independent effort across hours, days, and weeks to create a significant piece of work. This is a valuable formative exercise for thinkers and lawyers, and we cannot wholly abandon it in favor of writing methods that are easier to administer in AI-resilient ways.
Mom’s Advice For Hosting A Class Reunion
it’s a little more frustrating and demotivating than i thought it would be, building a community the second time around. the first time, in waterloo, i had nothing to really compare it to—i and dedicated regulars poured resources and attention into the community, and it flourished more year over year, but that’s a process that happens so slowly that you don’t perceive the change. the community is always the best it’s ever been.
running events in toronto is still satisfying—especially the puzzlelike nature of event design. but it leaves me a little wistful at the end of every meetup—my body is confused about why the vibes aren’t as good as they used to be in my previous city, and the answer, which is that it just takes time and repeated exposure for a community to gel and cohere and then finally bloom into conviviality, is not one that is satisfying because there’s nothing i can do to “fix” it. you just have to make events happen anyways, and trust the process.
Very brief thought on AI 2040 as a Canadian: Canada seems to be quite hostile to both data centres* and the US right now. I’m not sure any politician is going to survive agreeing to being the place the US nukes if China defects from an international agreement! I’m also not sure how much this matters at all in the grand scheme of things.
*except Alberta, which might be the only province that matters anyways...
[edit: the post originally read ”...agreeing to be the place China nukes if the US defects...” because I got confused writing down where the data centres are. but the core argument still applies]
as part of my research I got claude to read every single biennial review, and across all ~50 of them there was not a single reference to the sexual undertones of this exhibition.
it’s me, im the cursed unilateralist
this is rat discourse!!! i am rat discoursing about the whitney biennial. there is no retreat 😤
The Whitney Biennial Should Admit That Emilie Gossiaux Wants to Fuck Their Dog
I kind of want to diarypost about the little solstice I ran last night but too much diaryposting and turning all my friends into content seems corrosive. I suppose that’s why they invented these things called “diaries” 😔
What I will say is that it was a really strange wonderful evening that I think bound everyone there closer together. I’ve been having these thoughts about what’s lost when one scales a community and the experience is making me want to double down on smallness.
This post has been very interesting food for thought for the past few days, so thanks for writing it up. I’ve been running rationality meetups since 2019, and many good things have come to me because of my organizing work. I see worryingly little difference between my plan and the closest plausible wormtongue plan—in one, I do good work and incidentally get conferred status for being competent, in the other I optimize for getting status.
I will have to think more on the idea of virtuous and costly divergences.