American Philosophical Association (APA) announces two $10,000 AI2050 Prizes for philosophical work related to AI, with June 23, 2024 deadline:  https://dailynous.com/2024/04/25/apa-creates-new-prizes-for-philosophical-research-on-ai/ https://www.apaonline.org/page/ai2050 https://ai2050.schmidtsciences.org/hard-problems/

Paul Graham about getting good at technology (bold is mine): > How do you get good at technology? And how do you choose which technology to get good at? Both of those questions turn out to have the same answer: work on your own projects. Don't try to guess whether gene editing or LLMs or rockets will turn out to be the most valuable technology to know about. No one can predict that. Just work on whatever interests you the most. You'll work much harder on something you're interested in than something you're doing because you think you're supposed to. > > If you're not sure what technology to get good at, get good at programming. That has been the source of the median startup for the last 30 years, and this is probably not going to change in the next 10. From "HOW TO START GOOGLE", March 2024. It's a talk for ~15 year olds, and it has more about "how to get good at technology" in it.

This WHO press release was a good reminder of the power of immunization – a new study forthcoming publication in The Lancet reports that (liberally quoting / paraphrasing the release) * global immunization efforts have saved an estimated 154 million lives over the past 50 years, 146 million of them children under 5 and 101 million of them infants  * for each life saved through immunization, an average of 66 years of full health were gained – with a total of 10.2 billion full health years gained over the five decades * measles vaccination accounted for 60% of the lives saved due to immunization, and will likely remain the top contributor in the future  * vaccination against 14 diseases has directly contributed to reducing infant deaths by 40% globally, and by more than 50% in the African Region * the 14 diseases: diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type B, hepatitis B, Japanese encephalitis, measles, meningitis A, pertussis, invasive pneumococcal disease, polio, rotavirus, rubella, tetanus, tuberculosis, and yellow fever * fewer than 5% of infants globally had access to routine immunization when the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) was launched 50 years ago in 1974 by the World Health Assembly; today 84% of infants are protected with 3 doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP) – the global marker for immunization coverage * there's still a lot to be done – for instance, 67 million children missed out on one or more vaccines during the pandemic years

A corporation exhibits emergent behavior, over which no individual employee has full control. Because the unregulated market selects for profit and nothing else, any successful corporation becomes a kind of "financial paperclip optimizer". To prevent this, the economic system must change.

Everyone who seems to be writing policy papers/ doing technical work seems to be keeping generative AI at the back of their mind, when framing their work or impact.    This narrow-eyed focus on gen AI might almost certainly be net-negative for us- unknowingly or unintentionally ignoring ripple effects of the gen AI boom in other fields (like robotics companies getting more funding leading to more capabilities, and that leads to new types of risks).   And guess who benefits if we do end up getting good evals/standards in place for gen AI? It seems to me companies/investors are clear winners because we have to go back to the drawing board and now advocate for the same kind of stuff for robotics or a different kind of AI use-case/type all while the development/capability cycles keep maturing. We seem to be in whack-a-mole territory now because of the overton window shifting for investors.