What service did you use for this?
Nathan Young
Karma: 2,347
I anecdotally had the sense that this was a deeply unpopular opinion; certainly many of the people I talked about these results with thought it would be deeply unpopular.
Comment to post your guesses.
I thought 10% yes, 10% no, 80% not sure.
Billy Perrigo
A suggested update after discussing The Darwinian Honeymoon—Why I am not as impressed by human progress as I used to be by @Elias Schmied
There are two seperate frames around human progress and alignment:
1. What level of minimum human competence does building AGI require?
2. What level of mimum human competenece does AGI alignment require?If the 2 is entirely inside 1, then AGI is likely to be easy. If 2 is large and outside 1, then AGI alignment is likely to be hard.
In this sence there is some base level of difficulty of the universe relating to 1 and 2.
And technological progress can there fore go under 1 or 2. And technology that is part of 1 isn’t evidence for 2, because any AGI in that universe would require that technology.
Type 1 techology:
- Semiconductors
- Coding languages
- LLMsType 2 technologies:
- Nuclear treaties — coordination on catastrophic-risk technology
- Prediction markets — institutional epistemics about uncertain futures
- Animal welfare progress — moral circle expansion to non-reciprocating entities
- Democracy (ambiguous) — constraints on concentrated powerKind of hand wavey, but I think this suggested that some technologies may be evidence for alignment being easier than the universe’s difficulty, and some technologies may just be part of the package needed for AGI in this universe and hence not evidence for alignment being easier than it might have otherwise been.
I think my outside view is something more like: humans tend to solve problems in the interests of humans. That doesn’t feel that damaged by this piece.
Rapid comment:
I agree a bit and think animal welfare (and AI) are a key area to criticise capitalism on.
But I also think that chicken welfare is likely to improve.
I don’t work primarily in prediction markets/forecasting. I work trying to build AI community notes. The forecasting work (maybe like 5-10hrs a week) I do is paid at a rate I am happy to work for it.
[COI: I work at the Swift Centre as a forecaster, I have worked for a prediction market, I am very involved in forecasting. It is not my current work however, which is on community notes]
A few things points attempting to say things other commenters haven’t, though I largely agree with the critical comments and the things they agree with Marcus on:
I agree that the $100M doesn’t seem super well allocated. Not because forecasting is useless, but because the money flowed to big institutions and platforms rather than smaller, weirder, mechanism-design bets. I like Metaculus, but it has absorbed a lot of money in the last 5 years and not clearly changed much. I don’t know if I think FRI has been worth it, I am glad someone has done the research but, again, how much are we talking? I would have preferred smaller projects were funded on the margin. Coefficient’s strategy in forecasting has felt poor to me, often ignoring the community who in my view come up with the most interesting projects and going for marginal spending on incumbents.
Nobody funds mechanism design or institutional epistemics. I recently spoke to someone at a household name enormous tech company who described their institutional process. It was almost unbelievably dysfunctional to me. Who is funding the work to help institutions think better? It doesn’t promise near-term wins and frankly should’t be the priority of any non-research org. So basically no one. Forecasting is an attempt. How much value is there in the joint stock company, or in democracy. To me, that’s what we are talking about. Figuring out fundamentally better ways of making decisions. It is a problem at scale, it is neglected, and given the deregulation of prediction markets, tractable (though maybe bad, more later).
On “feels useful when it isn’t” (point 6). I don’t entirely disagree. I deliberately try not to spend time forecasting unless I’m being paid to. It can be a distraction. Where I disagree is that some forecasting is genuinely mentally sharpening, at least for me as a thinking discipline. And I think it’s a not unreasonable status hierarchy. Do I endorse the status that Peter Wildeford or Eli Leifland have gotten from forecasting? Yes. Frankly, who do I not endorse having got status from being a forecaster?
Why don’t AI 2027 and Ajeya count? Tangible forecasting outputs that demonstrably moved discourse and decision-making. Why don’t these count as valuable forecasting outputs. AI 2027 is clearly informed by judgemental forecasters and was read by (I think) the Vice President. Habryka said something like ‘too much time has been wasted down the resolution criteria mines’ and I disagree but even if one agrees, I’m not sure even he thinks the whole field is a waste of time.Prediction markets may be net-harmful, but not useless. I’ve said publicly I’m less sure PMs are net-positive — bankruptcies and intimate partner violence are real and huge problems that may be as large as any coordinaton benefits. But ‘bad on net’ and ‘useless’ are different claims, and the later seems more obviously incorrect to me. I would be more interested in a post entitled “EA forecasting efforts have caused massive harm”.
Scott Alexander
Sure so disagree vote, I think he’s pretty clearly a journalist.
Zvi Mowshowitz
I think my journalist directory is still cool and useful and I would like it if more journos were added and ranked.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LvYq2FEkPgoRLXgNd/which-journalists-would-you-give-quotes-to-one-journalist
Shakeel Hashim
Lynette Bye
Anthropic vs USG. What will happen by May 1st? Long careful forecast.
I have agreed to this bet for £25. Jehan bought me a korean dinner. Please hold me socially accountable if it resolves yes and I don’t pay up.
It’s 5 years from today 70:1.
Sure but do you think the adherents of capitalism who are the correct relationship are better?
Does liberal capitalism have enough vital energy to sustain itself?
A thing I like about Christianity is that some Christians really believe what they say. Some Christians, across history, and today, would die for their beliefs.
I am less sure of liberal capitalists. It seems that big companies have not really been willing to spend very much to maintain the system that gives them so much wealth. Where have we seen companies attempt to push back, even despite their huge wealth? Against Tariffs? Against Trump bullying law firms? Against decisions that happen on the basis of one’s personal interactions with Trump?
I wonder if this system has enough vital energy to sustain itself if with trillions in capital so few are willing to take a stand.
Let’s taboo the word “spammy”. Sounds like you think it was misguided of me to ask? Like it showed poor judgement? “an obviously wasteful fashion”.
I don’t think it was an obviously wasteful fashion. Epstein was someone who exchanged money for status. Had he funded MIRI, perhaps he would have invited Yud and Nate to some of his events. Perhaps they would have attended. Perhaps a high status person would have met and respected them and thought “hmm this Epstein guy seems okay”.
But notably, I think one should be able to ask such questions. I have been in communities where it is considered bad form to ask such questions and I didn’t like that. So now, if I have concerns, I tend to ask. If I understand correctly, @habryka wishes he’d been more public with his disagreements with SBF. Well maybe I wish I’d asked a few of my personal questions about that publicly. So I’m doing that here.
If people don’t like it they can downvote the comment and get on with their lives. In that sense the forum has voted. But if you want to discuss this personally, no I don’t feel bad to ask questions that concern me. Your (and Yud’s) initial response did cause me to change my mind, but this tone of ‘you shouldn’t even have asked about it’ seems bad. I am yet to be convinced of that. Seems plausible to me that while we should trust legal systems to do their job, that’s not the world we live in and Epstein was someone who traded money for reputation and MIRI was perhaps closer to doing that deal than I’d have liked, hence my question.
Surely SBF was also involved in similar trades. Should people have taken money from him, if they had suspicions? What about after the trial? If they hadn’t followed the trial but considered raising money from him, would that have been an error?
This video of Jackie Chan directing an action scene:
https://x.com/kungfupete/status/2059686222424072569?s=20