Joe Rogero

Vir­tual AI Safety Un­con­fer­ence 2024

Now Ac­cept­ing Player Ap­pli­ca­tions for Band of Blades

• Joe Rogero 16 Nov 2023 19:43 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Think­ing By The Clock

  Love this post. I’ve also used the five-minute technique at work, especially when facilitating meetings. In fact, there’s a whole technique called think-pair-share that goes something like:

  1. Everyone think about it for X minutes. Take notes.

  2. Partner up and talk about your ideas for 2X minutes.

  3. As a group, discuss the best ideas and takeaways for 4X minutes.

  There’s an optional step involving groups of four, but I’d rarely bother with that one unless it’s a really huge meeting (and at that point I’m actively trying to shrink it because huge committees are shit decision-makers).

• Joe Rogero 9 Aug 2023 15:49 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Thoughts on shar­ing in­for­ma­tion about lan­guage model capabilities

  This was a good post, and shifted my view slightly on accelerating vs halting AI capabilities progress.

  I was confused by your “overhang” argument all the way until footnote 9, but I think I have the gist. You’re saying that even if absolute progress in capabilities increases as a result of earlier investment, progress relative to safety will be slower.

  A key assumption seems to be that we are not expecting doom immediately; i.e. the next major jump in capabilities is deemed nearly impossible to kill us all with misaligned AI. I’m not sure I buy this assumption fully; it seems to have non-negligible probability to me and that seems relevant to the wisdom of endorsing faster progress in capabilities.

  But if we assume the next jump in capabilities, or the next low-hanging fruit plucked by investment, won’t be the beginning of the end...then it does sorta make sense that accelerating capabilities in the short run might accelerate safety and policy enough to compensate.

• Joe Rogero 28 Jul 2023 17:27 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Grant ap­pli­ca­tions and grand narratives

  I found this a very useful post. I would also emphasize how important it is to be specific, whether one’s project involves a grand x-risk moonshot or a narrow incremental improvement.

  • There are approximately X vegans in America; estimates of how many might suffer from nutritional deficiencies range from Y to Z; this project would...

  • An improvement in epistemic health on [forum] would potentially affect X readers, which include Y donors who gave at least $Z to [forum] causes last year...

  • A 1-10% gain in productivity for the following people and organizations who use this platform...

  For any project, large or small, even if the actual benefits are hard to quantify, the potential scope of impact can often be bounded and clarified. And that can be useful to grantmakers too. Not everything has to be convertible to “% reduction in x-risk” or “$ saved” or “QALYs gained”, but this shouldn’t stop us from specifying our actual expected impact as thoroughly as we can.

• Joe Rogero 18 Jul 2023 14:46 UTC

  9 points

  0

  on: Open Thread—July 2023

  Greetings from The Kingdom of Lurkers Below. Longtime reader here with an intro and an offer. I’m a former Reliability Engineer with expertise in data analysis, facilitation, incident investigation, technical writing, and more. I’m currently studying deep learning and cataloguing EA projects and AI safety efforts, as well as facilitating both formal and informal study groups for AI Safety Fundamentals.

  I have, and am willing to offer to EA or AI Safety focused individuals and organizations, the following generalist skills:

  • Facilitation. Organize and run a meeting, take notes, email follow-ups and reminders, whatever you need. I don’t need to be an expert in the topic, I don’t need to personally know the participants. I do need a clear picture of the meeting’s purpose and what contributions you’re hoping to elicit from the participants.

  • Technical writing. More specifically, editing and proofreading, which don’t require I fully understand the subject matter. I am a human Hemingway Editor. I have been known to cut a third of the text out of a corporate document while retaining all relevant information to the owner’s satisfaction. I viciously stamp out typos. I helped edit the last EA Newsletter.

  • Presentation review and speech coaching. I used to be terrified of public speaking. I still am, but now I’m pretty good at it anyway. I have given prepared and impromptu talks to audiences of dozens-to-hundreds and I have coached speakers giving company TED talks to thousands. A friend who reached out to me for input said my feedback was “exceedingly helpful”. If you plan to give a talk and want feedback on your content, slides, or technique, I would be delighted to advise.

  I am willing to take one-off or recurring requests. I reserve the right to start charging if this starts taking up more than a couple hours a week, but for now I’m volunteering my time and the first consult will always be free (so you can gauge my awesomeness for yourself). Contact me via DM or at optimiser.joe@gmail.com if you’re interested.