All of pseudobison's Comments + Replies

On my reading, "human-level automated alignment researcher" means a system that is human-level at alignment research, but not AGI. You can take the position that in order to be human-level at alignment research, it will need to be AGI, but I don't think that's necessarily true, and in any case it's certainly not obvious. For myself, I keep being surprised at how capable systems can get at particular abilities without being fully general. (Years ago I wrongly believed that AGI would be necessary for artificial systems to reach the level of language capability they have right now; back in the 70's, Hofstadter wrongly believed AGI would be necessary for superhuman chess ability; etc.)

8
Roman Leventov
10mo
It's hard to imagine more general and capability-demanding activity as doing good (superhuman!) science in such an absurdly cross-disciplinary field as AI safety (and among the disciplines that are involved there are those that are notoriously not very scientific yet: psychology, sociology, economics, the studies of consciousness, ethics, etc.). So if there is an AI that can do that but still is not counted as AGI, I don't know what the heck 'AGI' should even refer to. Compare with chess, which is a very narrow problem which can be formally defined and doesn't require AI to operate with any science (and world models) whatsoever.

I was thinking for example of my energy and water bills, which both list various ways that one can pay. Looking at my energy bill now, I see that bank transfer is listed as the first option, followed by debit/credit card (if one calls on the phone), cheque, and finally direct debit. I find bank transfer the easiest for usage-based utilities, as I prefer to pay exactly what I owe rather than make estimated monthly payments as I'd need to do with direct debit... I'm a little paranoid about whether I will be refunded in a timely manner for overpayments, or if... (read more)

Distrust any attempt to get you to make a bank transfer, you have less recourse when it comes to reversing these compared to a card payment.

In my experience living in the UK (8 years), bank transfers are extremely commonly used by small and large companies alike, and even for interpersonal transactions (say, paying your half of the bill to an acquaintance who has picked up the bill at a restaurant that wouldn't split the check), just because of the convenience and speed of them. Every utility and rent bill I've ever gotten has included bank transfer de... (read more)

2
Rasool
1y
Thanks that is a good point, I've adjusted the wording. Agreed with the interpersonal transactions (in fact it's amazing being able to bank transfer your acquaintances instantly and for free!), and with rent, but I must say I don't see it offered that commonly with regular companies - do you have any examples? With utilities there is the bank transfer option but one is better off trying to use direct debit for extra protection via the Direct Debit Guarantee

In addition to the 80,000 Hours career guide already mentioned, it's worth noting that they can schedule a free 1:1 call to help you think through your options, help you work out next practical steps etc.: https://80000hours.org/speak-with-us/

1
slowwber
1y
Thank you! I Will give them a call this week!

I recently filled out the Airtable form, but was surprised to see when I got my e-mail receipt that many of the answers I provided did not appear.

How would you suggest that I and others affected by this proceed? Thanks!

[edit: extraneous information removed]

3
Eli Rose
1y
(I work at Open Phil assisting with this effort.) Thanks for pointing this out; it looks like there was a technical error which excluded these from the email receipt, which we've now fixed. The information was still received on our end, so you don't need to take any extra actions.

Folks employed at universities might consider theconversation.com. Pieces published there are sometimes picked up by other outlets. They especially like it if your proposal links into something currently in the news. They prefer being pitched first but I have succeeded in the past with a full piece ready-to-go. They will expect you or a coauthor to be an 'expert' in the topic you are writing on, but this is broadly construed; I would just fill out my profile in a way that shows you have some academic background relevant to the topic.

sidenote: There has been an argument that 'radically transformative AI' is a better term for the Industrial Revolution definition, given the semantic bleaching already taking place with 'transformative AI'.

Good thought, thanks. The "Work as Meaning Inventory" (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1069072711436160 , items in Table 1) might be relevant, as it also has elements of 'what do you prefer' as well as a 'greater good motivations' subscale.

Congrats on the TIME article!

What are the numbers in parentheses? The number of people who clicked the links from the article?

0
Gleb_T
8y
Thank you! Yup, the numbers of people who clicked on the links to EA orgs from the article - should have made that more clear :-)