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LessWrong posts by zvi

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17:07

“The Third Gemini” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2024/02/20

[Editor's Note: I forgot to cross-post this on Thursday, sorry about that. Note that this post does not cover Gemini 1.5, which was announced after I posted this. I will cover 1.5 later this week.] We have now had a little over a week with Gemini Advanced, based on Gemini Ultra. A few reviews are in. Not that many, though, compared to what I would have expected, or what I feel the situation calls for. This is yet another case of there being an obvious thing lots of people should do, and almost no

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57:16

“Monthly Roundup #15: February 2024” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2024/02/20

Another month. More things. Much roundup. Bad News Jesse Smith writes in Asterisk that our HVAC workforce is both deeply incompetent and deeply corrupt. This certainly matches my own experience. Calculations are almost always flubbed when they are done at all, outright fraudulent paperwork is standard, no one has the necessary skills. It certainly seems like the Biden Administration is doing its best to hurt Elon Musk? Claim here is that they cancelled a Starlink contract without

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14:43

“More on the Apple Vision Pro” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2024/02/13

Previously: On the Apple Vision Pro The reviews are coming in. What say the people, other than the complaining about the two to three hour battery life? Then later I’ll get to my own thoughts after the demo. Reviews and Reactions Ben Thompson reviews the Apple Vision Pro. He continues to find it a technical marvel, but is ultimately disappointed for uses other than entertainment. There is no support for multiple users beyond a highly unwieldy guest mode. There is insufficient width

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75:01

“AI #49: Bioweapon Testing Begins” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2024/02/01

Two studies came out on the question of whether existing LLMs can help people figure out how to make bioweapons. RAND published a negative finding, showing no improvement. OpenAI found a small improvement, bigger for experts than students, from GPT-4. That's still harmless now, the question is what will happen in the future as capabilities advance. Another news item was that Bard with Gemini Pro impressed even without Gemini Ultimate, taking the second spot on the Arena leaderboard behind only

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56:41

“2024 ACX Predictions: Blind/Buy/Sell/Hold” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2024/01/15

My 2023 ACX predictions showed a clear lack of confidence in taking on the market. I won 30 markets for an average of +185 each, and lost 12 for an average loss of -185 each1. When one goes 30-12, hitting a 71% mark versus the about 58% average price initially paid, that is worth noticing. It is possible that I generally benefited from 2023 being a year where not much happened outside of AI, but I think it's time to know what we really think. That means this year I’m going to add a phase,

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81:51

“Dating Roundup #2: If At First You Don’t Succeed” by...

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2024/01/14

Developments around relationships and dating have a relatively small speed premium, also there are once again enough of them for a full post. The first speculated on why you’re still single. We failed to settle the issue. A lot of you are indeed still single. So the debate continues. You’re Single Because You’re Not Even Trying What does it mean to not even be trying? It does not only mean the things Alexander pointed us to last time, like 62% of singles being on zero dating apps,

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19:48

“AI Impacts Survey: December 2023 Edition” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2024/01/05

Katja Grace and AI impacts survey thousands of researchers on a variety of questions, following up on a similar 2022 survey as well as one in 2016. I encourage opening the original to get better readability of graphs and for context and additional information. I’ll cover some of it, but there's a lot. A Very Large Survey Full of Contradictions Here is the abstract, summarizing many key points: In the largest survey of its kind, we surveyed 2,778 researchers who had published in

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60:04

“How to construct a portfolio that benefits from AGI...

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/11/06

habrykaHey Everyone! As part of working on dialogues over the last few weeks I've asked a bunch of people what kind of conversations they would be most interested in reading, and one of the most common one has been "I would really like to read a bunch of people trying to figure out how to construct a portfolio that goes well when AGI becomes a bigger deal".You are three people who would be reasonably high on my list to figure this out with, and so here we are. Not because you are world experts at

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99:48

“AI #35: Responsible Scaling Policies” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/10/26

There is much talk about so-called Responsible Scaling Policies, as in what we will do so that what we are doing can be considered responsible. Would that also result in actually responsible scaling? It would help. By themselves, in their current versions, no. The good scenario is that these policies are good starts and lay groundwork and momentum to get where we need to go. The bad scenario is that this becomes safetywashing, used as a justification for rapid and dangerous scaling of frontier

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108:18

“AI #34: Chipping Away at Chip Exports” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/10/19

It did not get the bulk of the attention, but the actual biggest story this week was that America tightened the rules on its chip exports, closing the loophole Nvidia was using to create the A800 and H800. Perhaps the new restrictions will actually have teeth. Also new capabilities continue to come in based on the recent GPT upgrades, along with the first signs of adversarial attacks. Also a lot of rhetoric, including, yes, that manifesto. Yes, I do cover it. Table of

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58:56

“Fertility Roundup #2” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/10/17

The world is slowly waking up to the fertility crisis. There is more acknowledgement of the problem, and there is more talk of potential practical solutions. I do not believe the topic is a realistic target for Balsa Policy Institute, but I will continue to keep an eye on the ball and issue periodic roundups like this one. In Brief A basic problem is that we do not consider infertility a big deal for things such as DALYs. Many would strongly disagree. Fertility clinics that get new

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83:35

“AI #33: Cool New Interpretability Paper” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/10/12

This has been a rough week for pretty much everyone. While I have had to deal with many things, and oh how I wish I could stop checking any new sources for a while, others have had it far worse. I am doing my best to count my blessings and to preserve my mental health, and here I will stick to AI. As always, the AI front does not stop. Table of Contents Introduction. Table of Contents. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Lots of new things to decode. Language Models Don’t Offer

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54:21

“Childhood Roundup #3” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/10/10

It's time once again for a roundup of all the childhood-related stories I’ve noticed since the last such post that don’t fit in elsewhere. In addition to the standard post, I have a personal note, which is that unfortunately our current nanny's health does not allow her to continue, and thus we in the process of searching and doing interviews for a new full-time nanny for our three children here in Manhattan. I hope to have someone in place by the end of the week. If you are or know someone we

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80:57

“AI #32: Lie Detector” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/10/05

Can you tell if an AI is lying to you? A new paper claims that we essentially can do exactly that, at least under the right conditions. Another paper claims we can inject various sentiments into responses, getting the AI to do what we wish. Interpretability is making progress. It is exciting to think about the implications. In the short term, it would be great if we could use this to steer responses and to detect and correct hallucinations. There's a lot of potential here to explore. In the

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16:45

“Response to Quintin Pope’s Evolution Provides No...

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/10/05

Response to: Evolution Provides No Evidence For the Sharp Left Turn, due to it winning first prize in The Open Philanthropy Worldviews contest. Quinton's post is an argument about a key historical reference class and what it tells us about AI. Instead of arguing that the reference makes his point, he is instead arguing that it doesn’t make anyone's point - that we understand the reasons for humanity's sudden growth in capabilities. He says this jump was caused by gaining access to cultural

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67:02

“Monthly Roundup #11: October 2023” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/10/03

It never stops. I’m increasingly building distinct roundups for various topics, in particular I’m splitting medical and health news out. Let's get to the rest of it. Bad News A simple model of why everything sucks: It is all optimized almost entirely for the marginal user, who the post calls Marl. Marl hates when there are extra buttons on the screen or any bit of complexity is offered, even when he is under zero obligation to use it or care, let alone being asked to think, so everything gets

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77:02

“AI #31: It Can Do What Now?” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/09/28

It slices. It dices. Or, at least, it sees, hears, talks, creates stunningly good images and browses the web. Welcome to the newly updated GPT-4. That's all in two weeks. Throw in Microsoft 365 Copilot finally coming online soon. Are we back? I’m guessing we’re back. Also it's that much closer to being all over. At some point this stops being a ying-yang thing and more of a we-all-die thing. For now, however? We’re so back. Are we so back that AGI has been achieved internally at OpenAI

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89:57

“AI #30: Dalle-3 and GPT-3.5-Instruct-Turbo” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/09/21

We are about to see what looks like a substantial leap in image models. OpenAI will be integrating Dalle-3 into ChatGPT, the pictures we’ve seen look gorgeous and richly detailed, with the ability to generate pictures to much more complex specifications than existing image models. Before, the rule of thumb was you could get one of each magisteria, but good luck getting two things you want from a given magisteria. Now, perhaps, you can, if you are willing to give up on adult content and images of

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27:14

“Housing Roundup #6” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/09/20

The listings will continue until people can afford houses in places they want to live. New City By the Bay, Who Dis They want to live in San Francisco, but San Francisco has no interest in building homes. What to do? The city's answer is to spend massively to support its homeless population, causing it to grow, while letting the housing shortage get worse. Some tech billionaires instead propose to go to Solano 60 miles away, and start the initiative California Forever on 55k acres to build a

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113:51

“AI #3” by Zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi ·

2023/09/14

Welcome to week three of the AI era. Another long week and another giant post. I intend to take a nice four-day vacation in Mexico starting today, during which I won’t do any writing. I’m sure the pace of things will slow down real soon now. I mean, they have to. Don’t they? If not, I’m going to have to learn to make some deeper cuts on what gets included. Table of Contents Executive Summary Market Perspectives They Took Our Jobs In Other AI News Our Price Cheap Bullet

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