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Summary of posts on XPT forecasts on AI risk and timelines

Can someone give me the TLDR on the implications of these results in light of the fact that Samotsvety's group seemingly/perhaps had much higher odds for AI catastrophe? I didn't read the exact definitions they used for catastrophe, but:

Samotsvety's group (n=13) gave "What's your probability of misaligned AI takeover by 2100, barring pre-APS-AI catastrophe?" at 25%
(source https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EG9xDM8YRz4JN4wMN/samotsvety-s-ai-risk-forecasts)

Whereas XPT gave
"AI Catastrophic risk (>10% of humans die within 5 years)" for year... (read more)

rosehadshar

9mo

Good question. There's a little bit on how to think about the XPT results in relation to other forecasts here (not much). Extrapolating from there to Samotsvety in particular: * Reasons to favour XPT (superforecaster) forecasts: * Larger sample size * The forecasts were incentivised (via reciprocal scoring, a bit more detail here) * The most accurate XPT forecasters in terms of reciprocal scoring also gave the lowest probabilities on AI risk (and reciprocal scoring accuracy may correlate with actual accuracy) * Speculative reasons to favour Samotsvety forecasts: * (Guessing) They've spent longer on average thinking about it * (Guessing) They have deeper technical expertise than the XPT superforecasters I also haven't looked in detail at the respective resolution criteria, but at first glance the forecasts also seem relatively hard to compare directly. (I agree with you though that the discrepancy is large enough that it suggests a large disagreement were the two groups to forecast the same question - just expect that it will be hard to work out how large.)

How be productive before your baby turns one

spreadlove56832y1

Thanks for writing this 🙂 I found value in it. I'd like to write more acknowledging the valuable parts, but due to limited time and energy, I'll only be mentioning the following parts. I hope it's constructive though!

This article ( https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-brain-caffeine-utero.html ) claims "Investigators analyzed brain scans of more than 9,000 nine and ten-year-old participants in the ABCD study. They found clear changes in how the white matter tracks—which form connections between brain regions—were organized in children whose mother... (read more)

Larks

Do you have a causal mechanism in mind through which maternal caffeine consumption could be bad even after breastfeeding has ended?

ruthgrace

I would like to push back on the points in your comment. I think parents in this forum are familiar with the concept of weighing a for sure benefit against much more uncertain risk. Caffeine, White noise, and temperature control can have a very significant and immediate benefit to parental and child well-being. For caffeine, I think most parents would report that it helps for thinking straight and staying calm to have that kind of cognitive boost in the morning. Maybe things would be different if we were 50 years into the future, and caffeine became a scheduled drug based on its addictive properties, but given that caffeine usage is so common, and the benefits are so great, I don't think it makes sense to be advising parents to avoid caffeine at this time -- It's not going to make your kid worse off than other kids in any meaningful way (unless you are having an unreasonable amount of caffeine). If you are worried about your child's brain development, there are many other interventions that have much less of a negative effect on the parent that I would advise doing instead, like iron and vitamin D fortification, and filtering flouride out of tap water. Similarly for white noise and temperature control. If baby is not sleeping that's probably much worse for their development, and also much worse for everyone's well-being, than any risks associated with white noise and temperature control. Overall, I would say that this level of worrying and research about these kinds of details is counter to my parenting goal of trying to enjoy the experience of being with my kids. Anything you Google related to parenting will come up with risks. The only reliably helpful parenting advice I've found is stuff by Emily Oster, an economist who looks at the data and writes about what is actually worth worrying about, and what isn't.

Parenting: Things I wish I could tell my past self

spreadlove56832y1

I'm not familiar with Emily Oster's works, or very knowledgable about this subject, but this Redditor seems to be deep in the subject of the scientific literature around daycare, and he/she disagree's with Emily Oster's opinions on daycare/childcare recommendations. See https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceBasedParenting/comments/mz1bp0/on_cribsheet_on_childcare/ and also https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceBasedParenting/comments/n3u548/notes_on_the_science_of_childcare/ and then he has also made a post on the slatestarcodex subreddit which I haven't linked to.

EA Fundraising Through Advantage Sports Betting: A Guide ($500/Hour in Select States)

spreadlove56832y1

Has anyone done analysis as to what extent opportunity exists for people who take the standard deduction / don't itemize deductions on their taxes? Or is itemizing deductions a pretty strong requirement? If there is any, albeit reduced, opportunity available, and if it's worth it in terms of time investment required, I'd love to participate.

Sorry if this has been covered already. I haven't invested the time to do much more than skim the post, but I think having this question answered without myself and others having to read the whole post thoroughly will have value.

Sam Anschell

Thanks for bringing this up, I feel like such an analysis could enable many more EAs to participate. If you take the standard deduction you basically have to ask yourself "Is a promo worth it if individually, bets won are worth my marginal tax rate % less than they actually pay out?" For example, lets say your marginal tax rate (including state tax) is 28% and you're considering the Wynnbet $1,000 risk free first bet promo for site credit that does not return the stake. If you make your first bet and free bet at +100 odds you have: (.5 win probability) ($1000 profit *.72 take home) +(.5 lose probability)((-$1000 loss but unlock free bet) + (.5 free bet win probability)($1000 free bet profit *.72 take home)) =.5(720) + .5(-1000 + 360) = $40 EV (compared to the $250 EV of making these same bets if itemizing.) This is profitable but not worth the time. However this is also not an efficient betting strategy. Let's say instead you make your first bet and your free bet at +300 odds. The math would look like: (.25 win probability) ($3000 profit *.72 take home) = $540 (.75 lose probability) [(-$1000 loss but unlock free bet) + ((.25 win probability)($3000 profit on risk free bet *.72 take home) + .75 lose probability (0 because it was a free bet))] = $-352.5 Total is $540-$352.5 = $187.5 EV ( compared to the roughly $562.5 EV of making these same bets if itemizing.) In theory this is potentially worth the time, depending on the opportunity cost of the bettor. You will have to pay taxes on aggregate profits even if you itemize so this $187.5 after tax EV return is better than it looks. Many caveats though: 1. Risk of after-tax loss is much higher. This matters to the extent that we care about the experience of the EAs placing these bets, and humans hate the realistic possibility of losing thousands of dollars. 2. Tighter margins puts more strain on our assumptions. If bets are losing to the vig by 7% on a certain book (due to an absence of beatable lines)

Could GiveWell create a cryptocurrency to raise a lot of money?

spreadlove56833y2

No problem. I thought maybe if GiveWell was exceedingly straightforward and included something in their page about the crypto saying something like "Let us be very clear, this is a speculative investment with zero intrinsic investment value. More people will lose money than will gain money by investing in this coin. We advise you not to invest in it. However, if people are going to invest in speculative coins anyways, at least this one will save thousands of lives." then it might be reasonable, but I understand if people are of the opinion that it has too many reputation downsides/risks for GiveWell.

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