Director & Movement Builder—AI Safety ANZ
Advisory Board Member (Growth) - Giving What We Can
The catchphrase I walk around with in my head regarding the optimal strategy for AI Safety is something like: Creating Superintelligent Artificial Agents* (SAA) without a worldwide referendum is ethically unjustifiable. Until a consensus is reached on whether to bring into existence such technology, a global moratorium is required (*we already have AGI).
I thought it might be useful to spell that out.
Probably a good time to leave this here: https://www.clearerthinking.org/tools/the-intrinsic-values-test
This makes me wonder: does the benefit of having Safety-minded folk inside of big labs outweigh the cost of large orgs like 80k signalling that the work of big labs isn’t evil (I believe it is).
Hi Benjamin—would be interested in your take on a couple of things:
1. By recommending people work at big labs, do you think this has a positive Halo Effect for the labs’ brand? I.e. 80k is known for wanting people to do good in the world, so by recommending people invest their careers at a lab, then those positive brand associations get passed onto the lab (this is how most brand partnerships work).
2. If you think the answer to #1 is Yes, then do you believe the cost of this Halo Effect is outweighed by the benefit of having safety minded EA / Rationalist folk inside big labs?
I think acting on the margins is still very underrated. For e.g. I think 5x the amount of advocacy for a Pause on capabilities development of frontier AI models would be great. I also think in 12 months time it would be fine for me to reevaluate this take and say something like ‘ok that’s enough Pause advocacy’.
Basically, you shouldn’t feel ‘locked in’ to any view. And if you’re starting to feel like you’re part of a tribe, then that could be a bad sign you’ve been psychographically locked in.
Thanks for posting and I hope you’re doing ok!
I have two questions:
1/ when someone says they “believe in God” does this mean something like “I assign a ≥ 50% probability to there being an omnipotent omnipresent and omniscient intelligence?”
2/ how do you update on the non-religious-related views of someone (like Huberman) after they say they believe in God? Do they become less trustworthy on other topics?
Are you interested in receiving any advice from someone who used to have OCD/GAD but now lives with almost not enough anxiety?
Haha no yoga. Some combination of the following:
- Meta cognitive therapy + CBT with this guy for 4 years
- Lots of exercise (resistance training and cardio)
- Sleeping lots
- Found meaningful work + less a stressful industry
- Stable relationship (monogomous)
- This one is the curved ball, as I had already cured my OCD/GAD by the time I found it, but it definitely lifted my wellbeing a lot https://lochkelly.org/
I’ll add that for some period I was on 100mg of sertraline, but I dont think that cured me of anything.
[GIF] A feature I’d love on the forum: while posts are read back to you, the part of the text that is being read is highlighted. This exists on Naturalreaders.com and would love to see it here (great for people who have wandering minds like me).
I can’t stress this enough: the two most important things to happen to me in my life have been (1) my daughter being born and (2) receiving a pointing-out instruction from Loch Kelly.
I like the fact that despite not being (relatively) young when they died, the LW banner states that Kahneman & Vinge have died “FAR TOO YOUNG”, pointing to the fact that death is always bad and/or it is bad when people die when they were still making positive contributions to the world (Kahneman published “Noise” in 2021!).
I have heard rumours that an AI Safety documentary is being made. Separate to this, a good friend of mine is also seriously considering making one, but he isn’t “in” AI Safety. If you know who this first group is and can put me in touch with them, it might be worth getting across each others plans.
Thank you for this post. It says to me that community builders need to be very careful in how they treat young, people. For better and worse, they are more impressionable.