This is a special post for quick takes by Gideon Futerman. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Comment Permalink
I wish more work focused on digital minds really focused on answering the following questions, rather than merely investigating how plausible it is that digital minds similar to current day AI's could be sentient:
-
What does good sets of scenarios for post-AGI governance need to look like to create good/avoid terrible (or whatever normative focus we want) futures, assuming digital minds are the dominant moral patients going into the future 1a) How does this differ dependent on what sorts of things can be digital minds eg whether sentient AIs are likely to happen 'by accident' by creating useful AIs (including ASI systems or sub-systems) vs whether sentient AIs have to be delibrately built? How do we deal with this trade off?
-
Which of these good sets of scenarios need certain actions to be taken pre-ASI development (actions beyond simply ensuring we don't all die)? Therefore, what actions would we ideally take now to help bring about such good futures? This includes, in my view, what, if any, thicker concept of alignment than 'intent alignment' ought we to use.
-
Given the strategic, political, geopolitical and technological situation we are in, how, if at all, can we make concrete progress to this? We obviously can't just 'do research' and hope this solves everything. Rather, we ought to use this to guide specific actions that can have impact. I guess this step feels rather hard to do without 1 and 2, but also, as far as I can tell, no one is really doing this?
I'm sure someone has expressed this same set of questions elsewhere, but i've not seen them yet, and at least to me, seem pretty neglected and important
I think work of the sort you're discussing isn't typically called digital minds work. I would just describe this as "trying to ensure better futures (from a scope-sensitive longtermist perspective) other than via avoiding AI takeover, human power grabs, or extinction (from some other source)".
This just incidentally ends up being about digital entities/beings/value because that's where the vast majority of the value probably lives.
The way you phrase (1) seems to imply that you think large fractions of expected moral value (in the long run) will be in the minds of laborers (AIs we created to be useful) rather than things intentionally created to provide value/disvalue. I'm skeptical.
You're sort of right on the first point, and I've definitely counted that work in my views on the area. I generally prefer to refer to it as 'making sure the future goes well for non-humans' - but I've had that misinterpreted as just focused on animals. I
I think for me the fact that the minds will be non-human, and probably digital, matter a lot. Firstly, I think arguments for longtermism probably don't work if the future is mostly just humans. Secondly, the fact that these beings are digital minds, and maybe digital minds very different to us, means a lot of common responses that are given for how to make the future go well (eg make sure they're preferred government 'wins' the ASI race) definitely looks less promising me. Plus you run into trickier problems like what Carlsmith discusses in his Otherness and Control series, and on the other end, if conscious AIs are 'small minds' ala insects (lots of small conscious digital minds that are maybe not individually very smart) you run into a bunch of the same issues of how to adequately treat them. So this is sort of why I call it 'digital minds', but I guess thats fairly semantic.
On you're second point, I basically think it could go either way. I think this depends on a bunch of things, including if, how strong and what type (ie what values are encoded) of 'lock in' we get, how 'adaptive' consciousness is etc. At least to me, I could see it going either way (not saying 50-50 credence towards both, but my guess is I'm at least less skeptical than you). Also, its possible that these are the more likely scenarios to have abundant suffering (although this also isn't obvious to me given potential motivations for causing deliberate suffering).
I'd also like to see more work on digital minds macrostrategy questions such as 1-3. To that end, I'll take this opportunity to mention that the Future Impact Group is accepting applications for projects on digital minds (among other topics) through EoD on March 8 for its part-time fellowship program. I'm set to be a project lead for the upcoming cohort and would welcome applications from people who'd want to work with me on a digital minds macrostrategy project. (I suggest some possible projects here but am open to others.)
I think the other project leads listed for AI sentience are all great and would highly recommend applying to work with any of them on a digital minds project (though I'm unsure if any of them are open to macrostrategy projects).
Curated and popular this week
·
Note: I am not a malaria expert. This is my best-faith attempt at answering a question that was bothering me, but this field is a large and complex field, and I’ve almost certainly misunderstood something somewhere along the way.
Summary
While the world made incredible progress in reducing malaria cases from 2000 to 2015, the past 10 years have seen malaria cases stop declining and start rising. I investigated potential reasons behind this increase through reading the existing literature and looking at publicly available data, and I identified three key factors explaining the rise:
1. Population Growth: Africa's population has increased by approximately 75% since 2000. This alone explains most of the increase in absolute case numbers, while cases per capita have remained relatively flat since 2015.
2. Stagnant Funding: After rapid growth starting in 2000, funding for malaria prevention plateaued around 2010.
3. Insecticide Resistance: Mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant to the insecticides used in bednets over the past 20 years. This has made older models of bednets less effective, although they still have some effect. Newer models of bednets developed in response to insecticide resistance are more effective but still not widely deployed.
I very crudely estimate that without any of these factors, there would be 55% fewer malaria cases in the world than what we see today. I think all three of these factors are roughly equally important in explaining the difference.
Alternative explanations like removal of PFAS, climate change, or invasive mosquito species don't appear to be major contributors.
Overall this investigation made me more convinced that bednets are an effective global health intervention.
Introduction
In 2015, malaria rates were down, and EAs were celebrating. Giving What We Can posted this incredible gif showing the decrease in malaria cases across Africa since 2000:
Giving What We Can said that
> The reduction in malaria has be
·
Cross-posted from my blog.
Contrary to my carefully crafted brand as a weak nerd, I go to a local CrossFit gym a few times a week. Every year, the gym raises funds for a scholarship for teens from lower-income families to attend their summer camp program. I don’t know how many Crossfit-interested low-income teens there are in my small town, but I’ll guess there are perhaps 2 of them who would benefit from the scholarship. After all, CrossFit is pretty niche, and the town is small.
Helping youngsters get swole in the Pacific Northwest is not exactly as cost-effective as preventing malaria in Malawi. But I notice I feel drawn to supporting the scholarship anyway. Every time it pops in my head I think, “My money could fully solve this problem”. The camp only costs a few hundred dollars per kid and if there are just 2 kids who need support, I could give $500 and there would no longer be teenagers in my town who want to go to a CrossFit summer camp but can’t. Thanks to me, the hero, this problem would be entirely solved. 100%.
That is not how most nonprofit work feels to me.
You are only ever making small dents in important problems
I want to work on big problems. Global poverty. Malaria. Everyone not suddenly dying. But if I’m honest, what I really want is to solve those problems. Me, personally, solve them. This is a continued source of frustration and sadness because I absolutely cannot solve those problems.
Consider what else my $500 CrossFit scholarship might do:
* I want to save lives, and USAID suddenly stops giving $7 billion a year to PEPFAR. So I give $500 to the Rapid Response Fund. My donation solves 0.000001% of the problem and I feel like I have failed.
* I want to solve climate change, and getting to net zero will require stopping or removing emissions of 1,500 billion tons of carbon dioxide. I give $500 to a policy nonprofit that reduces emissions, in expectation, by 50 tons. My donation solves 0.000000003% of the problem and I feel like I have f
·
> How the dismal science can help us end the dismal treatment of farm animals
By Martin Gould
----------------------------------------
Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
----------------------------------------
This year we’ll be sharing a few notes from my colleagues on their areas of expertise. The first is from Martin. I’ll be back next month. - Lewis
In 2024, Denmark announced plans to introduce the world’s first carbon tax on cow, sheep, and pig farming. Climate advocates celebrated, but animal advocates should be much more cautious. When Denmark’s Aarhus municipality tested a similar tax in 2022, beef purchases dropped by 40% while demand for chicken and pork increased.
Beef is the most emissions-intensive meat, so carbon taxes hit it hardest — and Denmark’s policies don’t even cover chicken or fish. When the price of beef rises, consumers mostly shift to other meats like chicken. And replacing beef with chicken means more animals suffer in worse conditions — about 190 chickens are needed to match the meat from one cow, and chickens are raised in much worse conditions.
It may be possible to design carbon taxes which avoid this outcome; a recent paper argues that a broad carbon tax would reduce all meat production (although it omits impacts on egg or dairy production). But with cows ten times more emissions-intensive than chicken per kilogram of meat, other governments may follow Denmark’s lead — focusing taxes on the highest emitters while ignoring the welfare implications.
Beef is easily the most emissions-intensive meat, but also requires the fewest animals for a given amount. The graph shows climate emissions per tonne of meat on the right-hand side, and the number of animals needed to produce a kilogram of meat on the left. The fish “lives lost” number varies significantly by
You're sort of right on the first point, and I've definitely counted that work in my views on the area. I generally prefer to refer to it as 'making sure the future goes well for non-humans' - but I've had that misinterpreted as just focused on animals. I
I think for me the fact that the minds will be non-human, and probably digital, matter a lot. Firstly, I think arguments for longtermism probably don't work if the future is mostly just humans. Secondly, the fact that these beings are digital minds, and maybe digital minds very different to us, means a lot of common responses that are given for how to make the future go well (eg make sure they're preferred government 'wins' the ASI race) definitely looks less promising me. Plus you run into trickier problems like what Carlsmith discusses in his Otherness and Control series, and on the other end, if conscious AIs are 'small minds' ala insects (lots of small conscious digital minds that are maybe not individually very smart) you run into a bunch of the same issues of how to adequately treat them. So this is sort of why I call it 'digital minds', but I guess thats fairly semantic.
On you're second point, I basically think it could go either way. I think this depends on a bunch of things, including if, how strong and what type (ie what values are encoded) of 'lock in' we get, how 'adaptive' consciousness is etc. At least to me, I could see it going either way (not saying 50-50 credence towards both, but my guess is I'm at least less skeptical than you). Also, its possible that these are the more likely scenarios to have abundant suffering (although this also isn't obvious to me given potential motivations for causing deliberate suffering).