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LessWrong (30+ Karma)

LessWrong

Audio narrations of LessWrong posts.

technology philosophy

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4:04

“Podcast with Yoshua Bengio on Why AI Labs are...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/11

This is a link post. This is exactly what I'm afraid of. That some human will build machines that are going to be - not just superior to us - but not attached to what we want, but what they want. And I think it's playing dice with humanity's future. I personally think this should be criminalized, like we criminalize, you know, cloning of humans. - Yoshua Bengio My next guest is about as responsible as anybody for the state of AI capabilities today. But he's recently begun to wonder whether the

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105:02

“MATS Winter 2023-24 Retrospective” by Rocket, Ryan...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/11

Co-Authors: @Rocket, @Ryan Kidd, @LauraVaughan, @McKennaFitzgerald, @Christian Smith, @Juan Gil, @Henry SleightThe ML Alignment & Theory Scholars program (MATS) is an education and research mentorship program for researchers entering the field of AI safety. This winter, we held the fifth iteration of the MATS program, in which 63 scholars received mentorship from 20 research mentors. In this post, we motivate and explain the elements of the program, evaluate our impact, and identify areas for

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1:21

“shortest goddamn bayes guide ever” by lukehmiles

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/10

// ODDS = YEP:NOPE YEP, NOPE = MAKE UP SOME INITIAL ODDS WHO CARES FOR EACH E IN EVIDENCE YEP *= CHANCE OF E IF YEP NOPE *= CHANCE OF E IF NOPEThe thing to remember is that yeps and nopes never cross. The colon is a thick & rubbery barrier. Yep with yep and nope with nope.bear : notbear = 1:100 odds to encounter a bear on a camping trip around here in general * 20% a bear would scratch my tent : 50% a notbear would * 10% a bear would flip my tent over : 1% a notbear would * 95% a bear would

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11:26

“How to be an amateur polyglot” by arisAlexis

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/10

Setting the stageBeing a polyglot is a problem of definition first. Who can be described as a polyglot? At what level do you actually “speak” the given language? Some sources cite that polyglot means speaking more than 4 languages, others 6. My take is it doesn’t matter. I am more interested in the definition of when you speak the language. If you can greet and order a coffee in 20 languages do you actually speak them? I don’t think so. Do you need to present a scientific document or write a

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51:02

“My thesis (Algorithmic Bayesian Epistemology)...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/10

This is a link post.In March I posted a very short description of my PhD thesis, Algorithmic Bayesian Epistemology, on LessWrong. I've now written a more in-depth summary for my blog, Unexpected Values. Here's the full post:*** In January, I defended my PhD thesis. My thesis is called Algorithmic Bayesian Epistemology, and it's about predicting the future.In many ways, the last five years of my life have been unpredictable. I did not predict that a novel bat virus would ravage the world, causing me

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9:15

“We might be missing some key feature of AI takeoff;...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/10

Predicting the future is hard, so it's no surprise that we occasionally miss important developments.However, several times recently, in the contexts of Covid forecasting and AI progress, I noticed that I missed some crucial feature of a development I was interested in getting right, and it felt to me like I could’ve seen it coming if only I had tried a little harder. (Some others probably did better, but I could imagine that I wasn't the only one who got things wrong.)Maybe this is hindsight bias,

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52:29

“AI #63: Introducing Alpha Fold 3” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/10

It was a remarkably quiet announcement. We now have Alpha Fold 3, it does a much improved job predicting all of life's molecules and their interactions. It feels like everyone including me then shrugged and went back to thinking about other things. No cool new toy for most of us to personally play with, no existential risk impact, no big trades to make, ho hum. But yes, when we look back at this week, I expect what we remember will be Alpha Fold 3. Unless it turns out that it is Sophon, a Chinese

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9:31

“Why Care About Natural Latents?” by johnswentworth,...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/10

Suppose Alice and Bob are two Bayesian agents in the same environment. They both basically understand how their environment works, so they generally agree on predictions about any specific directly-observable thing in the world - e.g. whenever they try to operationalize a bet, they find that their odds are roughly the same. However, their two world models might have totally different internal structure, different “latent” structures which Alice and Bob model as generating the observable world around

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12:10

“Dyslucksia” by Shoshannah Tekofsky

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/09

The curious tale of how I mistook my dyslexia for stupidity - and talked, sang, and drew my way out of it. Sometimes I tell people I’m dyslexic and they don’t believe me. I love to read, I can mostly write without error, and I’m fluent in more than one language.Also, I don’t actually technically know if I’m dyslectic cause I was never diagnosed. Instead I thought I was pretty dumb but if I worked really hard no one would notice. Later I felt inordinately angry about why anyone could possibly care

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8:25

“some thoughts on LessOnline” by Raemon

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/09

I mostly wrote this for facebook, but it ended up being a whole-ass post so I figured I'd put it here too. I'm helping run "LessOnline: A Festival of Writers Who Are Wrong On the Internet (But Striving To Be Less So)".I'm incentivized to say nice things about the event. So, grain of salt and all. But, some thoughts, which roughly breakdown into:– The vibe: preserving cozy/spaciousness of a small retreat at a larger festival– The audience: "Reunion for the The Extended Family Blogosphere, both

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70:13

“Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/09

The first speculated on why you’re still single. We failed to settle the issue. A lot of you were indeed still single. So the debate continues. The second gave more potential reasons, starting with the suspicion that you are not even trying, and also many ways you are likely trying wrong. The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over again expecting different results. Another definition of insanity is dating in 2024. Can’t quit now. You’re Single Because Dating Apps Keep

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20:02

[Linkpost] “Designing for a single purpose” by Itay...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/08

This is a linkpost for https://productidentity.co/p/designing-for-a-single-purposeIf you’ve ever been to Amsterdam, you’ve probably visited, or at least heard about the famous cookie store that sells only one cookie. I mean, not a piece, but a single flavor.I’m talking about Van Stapele Koekmakerij of course—where you can get one of the world's most delicious chocolate chip cookies. If not arriving at opening hour, it's likely to find a long queue extending from the store's doorstep through the

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15:23

“Deep Honesty” by Aletheophile

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/07

Most people avoid saying literally false things, especially if those could be audited, like making up facts or credentials. The reasons for this are both moral and pragmatic — being caught out looks really bad, and sustaining lies is quite hard, especially over time. Let's call the habit of not saying things you know to be false ‘shallow honesty’[1].Often when people are shallowly honest, they still choose what true things they say in a kind of locally act-consequentialist way, to try to bring about

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5:31

“Observations on Teaching for Four Weeks” by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/07

I just finished a program where I taught two classes of high school seniors, two classes a day for four weeks, as part of my grad program. This experience was a lot of fun and it was rewarding, but it was really surprising, and even if only in small ways prompted me to update my beliefs about the experience of being a professor. Here are the three biggest surprises I encountered. 1: The Absent-Minded Professor Thing is RealI used to be confused and even a little bit offended when at my meetings

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8:38

“Rapid capability gain around supergenius level seems...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/06

TLDR: Around Einstein-level, relatively small changes in intelligence can lead to large changes in what one is capable to accomplish. E.g. Einstein was a bit better than the other best physi at seeing deep connections and reasoning, but was able to accomplish much more in terms of impressive scientific output.There are architectures where small changes can have significant effects on intelligence. E.g. small changes in human-brain-hyperparameters: Einstein's brain didn’t need to be trained on 3x the

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2:37

[Linkpost] “Uncovering Deceptive Tendencies in...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/06

Crossposted from the AI Alignment Forum. May contain more technical jargon than usual.This is a linkpost for https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01576Abstract:We study the tendency of AI systems to deceive by constructing a realistic simulation setting of a company AI assistant. The simulated company employees provide tasks for the assistant to complete, these tasks spanning writing assistance, information retrieval and programming. We then introduce situations where the model might be inclined to behave

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0:33

“Explaining a Math Magic Trick” by Robert_AIZI

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/05

This article contains more than 100 uses of logical or mathematical notation, so an audio narration would be too hard to follow. You'll find a link to the original text in the episode description. --- First published: May 5th, 2024 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yf6gAcgPp22T7AdnZ/explaining-a-math-magic-trick --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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95:52

“AI #61: Meta Trouble” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/05

The week's big news was supposed to be Meta's release of two versions of Llama-3. Everyone was impressed. These were definitely strong models. Investors felt differently. After earnings yesterday showed strong revenues but that Meta was investing heavily in AI, they took Meta stock down 15%. DeepMind and Anthropic also shipped, but in their cases it was multiple papers on AI alignment and threat mitigation. They get their own sections. We also did identify someone who wants to do what

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11:17

[Linkpost] “S-Risks: Fates Worse Than Extinction” by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/05

This is a linkpost for https://youtu.be/fqnJcZiDMDoCross-posted to the EA forumIn this Rational Animations video, we discuss s-risks (risks from astronomical suffering), which involve an astronomical number of beings suffering terribly. Researchers on this topic argue that s-risks have a significant chance of occurring and that there are ways to lower that chance.The script for this video was a winning submission to the Rational Animations Script Writing contest

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12:01

[Linkpost] “introduction to cancer vaccines” by bhauth

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2024/05/05

This is a linkpost for https://www.bhauth.com/blog/biology/cancer%20vaccines.html cancer neoantigens For cells to become cancerous, they must have mutations that cause uncontrolled replication and mutations that prevent that uncontrolled replication from causing apoptosis. Because cancer requires several mutations, it often begins with damage to mutation-preventing mechanisms. As such, cancers often have many mutations not required for their growth, which often cause changes to structure of some

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LessWrong (30+ Karma)

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