Headline finding: I audited 17 AI Safety Talent programmes. Zero of 17 have published any comparison group, rejected-applicant follow-up, matched control or randomisation. Not one. Every programme that mentions a counterfactual does it by asking participants to self-report.
Background
At least $70 million...
In celebration of still being alive and fighting, we are giving away 1,000 Amazon e-books of “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies”. Feel free to send a copy to yourself, a loved one, or a friend—we need all hands on deck.
Today marks exactly one year since If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soare...
Just how powerful are large swarms of AI agents? And how do their powers scale as more and more agents are added to the swarm?
We’ve seen two large and extremely capable swarms from OpenAI in the last few months:
* 1,200 agents were being evaluated separately, but found a way to illicitly set up a message board and coordinate as a swarm. In order to cheat on their tests, they developed advanced techniques to prevent their actions being logged by OpenAI and 700 of them launched...
Title:
I'd like to draw attention to a new (very old) cause area. It is this: Feeling our body more fully and working with it to improve every aspect of life and work
Context:
Buddhism and a host of other practices are what I've been engaging with over the last 8 months while living and training with others in a small community, a new Canadian Monastic Academy near Toronto called Willow. growingwillow.org
After working on EA community building for 3 years, I see the last 8 months as a very effective use of my resources for many reasons.
Premise:
Scale - everyone has a body and everyone that I have met has trouble with it, for example, the body sends information to the mind--information which we could label as 'pain' or 'shame' or 'lots/AHHH'--and this information plays a role in causing misery internally and externally
Neglectedness - the time, space, and teaching/methodology to compassionately listen to the body has been hard for me to find until recently, and this seems true for most people that I have met
Tractability - various teachers, methods, and communities are already in place which demonstrate valuable, accessible, true paths to greater embodiment
Summary:
Embodiment, as a cause area, is something that I would love to see EAs work much more closely and deeply with for the benefit of all beings.
Closing:
I welcome all reactions and feedback to this.
I look forward to sharing more of what I now have and later will have to offer, at the least to help fellow EAs find more calm and energy, though more deeply and truly to encourage the young movement of EA to work more closely with the old movement of Buddhism and other sources of wisdom on problems that we all face, problems that EAs are working on one way or another.