Lex Fridman posts timestamped transcripts of his interviews. It's an 83 minute read here and a 115 minute watch on Youtube.
It's neat to see Altman's side of the story. I don't know whether his charisma is more like +2SD or +5SD above the average American (concept origin: planecrash, likely doesn't follow a normal distribution), and I only have a vague grasp of what kinds of shenanigans +5SDish types can do when they pull out the stops in face-to-face interactions, so maybe you'll prefer to read the transcript over watching the video (although they're largely related to reading and responding to your facial expression and body language on the fly, not projecting their own).
If you've missed it, Gwern's side of the story is here.
...Lex Fridman(00:01:05) Take me through the OpenAI board saga that started on Thursday, November 16th, maybe Friday, November 17th for you.
Sam Altman(00:01:13) That was
TL;DR: Someone should probably write a grant to produce a spreadsheet/dataset of past instances where people claimed a new technology would lead to societal catastrophe, with variables such as “multiple people working on the tech believed it was dangerous.”
Slightly longer...
I'm not sure. IMHO a major disaster is happening with the climate. Essentially, people have a false belief that there is some kind of set-point, and that after a while the temperature will return to that, but this isn't the case. Venus is an extreme example of an Earth-like planet with a very different climate. There is nothing in physics or chemistry that says Earth's temperature could not one day exceed 100 C.
It's always interesting to ask people how high they think sea-level might rise if all the ice melted. This is an uncontroversial calculation which involves no modelling - just looking at how much ice there is, and how much sea-surface area there is. People tend to think it would be maybe a couple of metres. It would actually be 60 m (200 feet). That will take time, but very little time on a cosmic scale, maybe a couple of thousand years.
Right now, if anything what we're seeing is worse than the average prediction. The glaciers and ice sheets are melting faster. The temperature is increasing faster. Etc. Feedback loops are starting to be powerful. There's a real chance that the Gulf Stream will stop or reverse, which would be a disaster for Europe, ironically freezing us as a result of global warming ...
Among serious climate scientists, the feeling of doom is palpable. I wouldn't say they are exaggerating. But we, as a global society, have decided that we'd rather have our oil and gas and steaks than prevent the climate disaster. The US seems likely to elect a president who makes it a point of honour to support climate-damaging technologies, just to piss off the scientists and liberals.
Venus is an extreme example of an Earth-like planet with a very different climate. There is nothing in physics or chemistry that says Earth's temperature could not one day exceed 100 C.
[...]
[Regarding ice melting -- ] That will take time, but very little time on a cosmic scale, maybe a couple of thousand years.
I'll be blunt, remarks like these undermine your credibility. But regardless, I just don't have any experience or contributions to make on climate change, other than re-emphasizing my general impression that, as a person who cares a lot about existential risk and has talked to various other people who also care a lot about existential risk, there seems to be very strong scientific evidence suggesting that extinction is unlikely.
Acronyms & abbreviations that I've come across during my time in EA. Big thanks to the CEA team for their help compiling this.
Are there any I've misunderstood or missed? Please add more in the comments!
acronym | meaning |
:))) | big smile |
~ | approximately / roughly |
80k | 80,000 hours |
Authors of linked report: Josh Rosenberg, Ezra Karger, Avital Morris, Molly Hickman, Rose Hadshar, Zachary Jacobs, Philip Tetlock[1]
Today, the Forecasting Research Institute (FRI) released “Roots of Disagreement on AI Risk: Exploring the Potential and Pitfalls of Adversarial...
On a slight tangent from the above: I think I might have once come across an analysis of EAs' scores on the Big Five scale, which IIRC found that EAs' most extreme Big Five trait was high openness. (Perhaps it was Rethink Charity's annual survey of EAs as e.g. analyzed by ElizabethE here, where [eyeballing these results] on a scale from 1-14, the EA respondents scored an average of 11 for openness, vs. less extreme scores on the other four dimensions?)
If EAs really do have especially high average openness, and high openness is a central driver of high AI x...
I am watching Episode 419 of the podcast with the guest Sam Altman. It is around 2 hours that I plan to watch it completely. I am 30 minutes in, and I don't think he is going to reveal why exactly he was fired.
Feel free to provide spoilers for the rest of the episode, or if it will have some hint. I will finish it though, because of my itch to keep myself updated. Planning to watch it all over the weekend. I do not feel very comfortable while watching the episode. Did anyone else feel that way?
This is a draft amnesty post.
This description of labor induction abortion says:
The skin on your abdomen is numbed with a painkiller, and then a needle is used to inject a medication (digoxin or potassium chloride) through your abdomen into the fluid around the fetus or the fetus to stop the heartbeat.
That sounds like local anesthesia for the mother, which from what I understand is achieved through an injection which numbs the tissue in a specific area rather than through an IV drip. So I don't think this protocol would have any anesthetic effect on the fetus, though I'm not a medical ...
This is a (late!) Draft Amnesty Week draft. It may not be polished, up to my usual standards, fully thought through, or fully fact-checked. |
Commenting and feedback guidelines:
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Epistemic status: Tentative — I have thought about this for some time (~2 years) and have firsthand experience, but have done minimal research into the literature.
TL;DR: Language learning is probably not the best use of your time. Some exceptions might be (1) learning English as a non-native speaker, (2) if you are particularly apt at learning languages, (3) if you see it as leisure and so minimize opportunity costs, (4) if you are aiming at regional specialist roles (e.g., China specialist) and are playing the long game, and ...
Agreed. I disagree with the general practice of capping the probability distribution over animals' sentience at 1x that of humans'. (I wouldn't put much mass above 1x, but it should definitely be more than zero mass.)
What would be the pros and cons of adding a semi-hidden-but-permanent Hot Takes section to the Forum? All of my takes are Hot and due to time constraints I would otherwise not post at all. Some would argue that someone like me should not post Hot Takes at all. Anyway, in true lazy fashion here is ChatGPT on the pros and cons:
Pros:
Cons: