Africa-focused technology, digital and innovation ecosystem insight and commentary.
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Player FM - Internet Radio Done Right
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محتوای ارائه شده توسط LessWrong. تمام محتوای پادکست شامل قسمت‌ها، گرافیک‌ها و توضیحات پادکست مستقیماً توسط LessWrong یا شریک پلتفرم پادکست آن‌ها آپلود و ارائه می‌شوند. اگر فکر می‌کنید شخصی بدون اجازه شما از اثر دارای حق نسخه‌برداری شما استفاده می‌کند، می‌توانید روندی که در اینجا شرح داده شده است را دنبال کنید.https://fa.player.fm/legal
مشابه LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
Show notes are at https://stevelitchfield.com/sshow/chat.html
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The power of Data is undeniable. And unharnessed - it’s nothing but chaos. Making data your ally. Using it to lead with confidence and clarity. Host Jess Carter is solving problems in real-time to reveal what’s possible. Helping communities and people thrive. This is Data Driven Leadership, a show brought to you by Resultant.
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Flash Forward is a show about possible (and not so possible) future scenarios. What would the warranty on a sex robot look like? How would diplomacy work if we couldn’t lie? Could there ever be a fecal transplant black market? (Complicated, it wouldn’t, and yes, respectively, in case you’re curious.) Hosted and produced by award winning science journalist Rose Eveleth, each episode combines audio drama and journalism to go deep on potential tomorrows, and uncovers what those futures might re ...
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Android Backstage, a podcast by and for Android developers. Hosted by developers from the Android engineering team, this show covers topics of interest to Android programmers, with in-depth discussions and interviews with engineers on the Android team at Google. Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs
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WSJ’s Bold Names brings you conversations with the leaders of the bold-named companies featured in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Hosts Tim Higgins and Christopher Mims speak to CEOs and business leaders in interviews that challenge conventional wisdom and take you inside the decisions being made in the C-suite and beyond.
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This is the audio podcast version of Troy Hunt's weekly update video published here: https://www.troyhunt.com/tag/weekly-update/
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We help founders make something people want.
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Redefining AI - Artificial Intelligence with Squirro
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Redefining AI - Artificial Intelligence with Squirro
Squirro
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Redefining AI is the 2024 New York Digital Award winning tech podcast! Discover a whole new take on Artificial Intelligence in joining host Lauren Hawker Zafer, a top voice in Artificial Intelligence on LinkedIn, for insightful chats that unravel the fascinating world of tech innovation, use case exploration and AI knowledge. Dive into candid discussions with accomplished industry experts and established academics. With each episode, you'll expand your grasp of cutting-edge technologies and ...
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Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.
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Tom Segura jokes about supermodels in his Netflix special, "Sledgehammer".
“METR: Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks” by Zach Stein-Perlman
Manage episode 475707851 series 3364760
محتوای ارائه شده توسط LessWrong. تمام محتوای پادکست شامل قسمت‌ها، گرافیک‌ها و توضیحات پادکست مستقیماً توسط LessWrong یا شریک پلتفرم پادکست آن‌ها آپلود و ارائه می‌شوند. اگر فکر می‌کنید شخصی بدون اجازه شما از اثر دارای حق نسخه‌برداری شما استفاده می‌کند، می‌توانید روندی که در اینجا شرح داده شده است را دنبال کنید.https://fa.player.fm/legal
Summary: We propose measuring AI performance in terms of the length of tasks AI agents can complete. We show that this metric has been consistently exponentially increasing over the past 6 years, with a doubling time of around 7 months. Extrapolating this trend predicts that, in under five years, we will see AI agents that can independently complete a large fraction of software tasks that currently take humans days or weeks.
The length of tasks (measured by how long they take human professionals) that generalist frontier model agents can complete autonomously with 50% reliability has been doubling approximately every 7 months for the last 6 years. The shaded region represents 95% CI calculated by hierarchical bootstrap over task families, tasks, and task attempts.
Full paper | Github repo
We think that forecasting the capabilities of future AI systems is important for understanding and preparing for the impact of [...]
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Outline:
(08:58) Conclusion
(09:59) Want to contribute?
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First published:
March 19th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/deesrjitvXM4xYGZd/metr-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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The length of tasks (measured by how long they take human professionals) that generalist frontier model agents can complete autonomously with 50% reliability has been doubling approximately every 7 months for the last 6 years. The shaded region represents 95% CI calculated by hierarchical bootstrap over task families, tasks, and task attempts.
Full paper | Github repo
We think that forecasting the capabilities of future AI systems is important for understanding and preparing for the impact of [...]
---
Outline:
(08:58) Conclusion
(09:59) Want to contribute?
---
First published:
March 19th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/deesrjitvXM4xYGZd/metr-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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540 قسمت
اشتراک گذاریManage episode 475707851 series 3364760
محتوای ارائه شده توسط LessWrong. تمام محتوای پادکست شامل قسمت‌ها، گرافیک‌ها و توضیحات پادکست مستقیماً توسط LessWrong یا شریک پلتفرم پادکست آن‌ها آپلود و ارائه می‌شوند. اگر فکر می‌کنید شخصی بدون اجازه شما از اثر دارای حق نسخه‌برداری شما استفاده می‌کند، می‌توانید روندی که در اینجا شرح داده شده است را دنبال کنید.https://fa.player.fm/legal
Summary: We propose measuring AI performance in terms of the length of tasks AI agents can complete. We show that this metric has been consistently exponentially increasing over the past 6 years, with a doubling time of around 7 months. Extrapolating this trend predicts that, in under five years, we will see AI agents that can independently complete a large fraction of software tasks that currently take humans days or weeks.
The length of tasks (measured by how long they take human professionals) that generalist frontier model agents can complete autonomously with 50% reliability has been doubling approximately every 7 months for the last 6 years. The shaded region represents 95% CI calculated by hierarchical bootstrap over task families, tasks, and task attempts.
Full paper | Github repo
We think that forecasting the capabilities of future AI systems is important for understanding and preparing for the impact of [...]
---
Outline:
(08:58) Conclusion
(09:59) Want to contribute?
---
First published:
March 19th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/deesrjitvXM4xYGZd/metr-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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…
continue reading
The length of tasks (measured by how long they take human professionals) that generalist frontier model agents can complete autonomously with 50% reliability has been doubling approximately every 7 months for the last 6 years. The shaded region represents 95% CI calculated by hierarchical bootstrap over task families, tasks, and task attempts.
Full paper | Github repo
We think that forecasting the capabilities of future AI systems is important for understanding and preparing for the impact of [...]
---
Outline:
(08:58) Conclusion
(09:59) Want to contribute?
---
First published:
March 19th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/deesrjitvXM4xYGZd/metr-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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540 قسمت
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Audio note: this article contains 218 uses of latex notation, so the narration may be difficult to follow. There's a link to the original text in the episode description. Recently, in a group chat with friends, someone posted this Lesswrong post and quoted: The group consensus on somebody's attractiveness accounted for roughly 60% of the variance in people's perceptions of the person's relative attractiveness. I answered that, embarrassingly, even after reading Spencer Greenberg's tweets for years, I don't actually know what it means when one says: _X_ explains _p_ of the variance in _Y_ .[1] What followed was a vigorous discussion about the correct definition, and several links to external sources like Wikipedia. Sadly, it seems to me that all online explanations (e.g. on Wikipedia here and here), while precise, seem philosophically wrong since they confuse the platonic concept of explained variance with the variance explained by [...] --- Outline: (02:38) Definitions (02:41) The verbal definition (05:51) The mathematical definition (09:29) How to approximate _1 - p_ (09:41) When you have lots of data (10:45) When you have less data: Regression (12:59) Examples (13:23) Dependence on the regression model (14:59) When you have incomplete data: Twin studies (17:11) Conclusion The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 20th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/E3nsbq2tiBv6GLqjB/x-explains-z-of-the-variance-in-y --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
I think more people should say what they actually believe about AI dangers, loudly and often. Even if you work in AI policy. I’ve been beating this drum for a few years now. I have a whole spiel about how your conversation-partner will react very differently if you share your concerns while feeling ashamed about them versus if you share your concerns as if they’re obvious and sensible, because humans are very good at picking up on your social cues. If you act as if it's shameful to believe AI will kill us all, people are more prone to treat you that way. If you act as if it's an obvious serious threat, they’re more likely to take it seriously too. I have another whole spiel about how it's possible to speak on these issues with a voice of authority. Nobel laureates and lab heads and the most cited [...] The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 27th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CYTwRZtrhHuYf7QYu/a-case-for-courage-when-speaking-of-ai-danger --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
I think the AI Village should be funded much more than it currently is; I’d wildly guess that the AI safety ecosystem should be funding it to the tune of $4M/year.[1] I have decided to donate $100k. Here is why. First, what is the village? Here's a brief summary from its creators:[2] We took four frontier agents, gave them each a computer, a group chat, and a long-term open-ended goal, which in Season 1 was “choose a charity and raise as much money for it as you can”. We then run them for hours a day, every weekday! You can read more in our recap of Season 1, where the agents managed to raise $2000 for charity, and you can watch the village live daily at 11am PT at theaidigest.org/village. Here's the setup (with Season 2's goal): And here's what the village looks like:[3] My one-sentence pitch [...] --- Outline: (03:26) 1. AI Village will teach the scientific community new things. (06:12) 2. AI Village will plausibly go viral repeatedly and will therefore educate the public about what's going on with AI. (07:42) But is that bad actually? (11:07) Appendix A: Feature requests (12:55) Appendix B: Vignette of what success might look like The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 24th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/APfuz9hFz9d8SRETA/my-pitch-for-the-ai-village --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
1.1 Series summary and Table of Contents This is a two-post series on AI “foom” (this post) and “doom” (next post). A decade or two ago, it was pretty common to discuss “foom & doom” scenarios, as advocated especially by Eliezer Yudkowsky. In a typical such scenario, a small team would build a system that would rocket (“foom”) from “unimpressive” to “Artificial Superintelligence” (ASI) within a very short time window (days, weeks, maybe months), involving very little compute (e.g. “brain in a box in a basement”), via recursive self-improvement. Absent some future technical breakthrough, the ASI would definitely be egregiously misaligned, without the slightest intrinsic interest in whether humans live or die. The ASI would be born into a world generally much like today's, a world utterly unprepared for this new mega-mind. The extinction of humans (and every other species) would rapidly follow (“doom”). The ASI would then spend [...] --- Outline: (00:11) 1.1 Series summary and Table of Contents (02:35) 1.1.2 Should I stop reading if I expect LLMs to scale to ASI? (04:50) 1.2 Post summary and Table of Contents (07:40) 1.3 A far-more-powerful, yet-to-be-discovered, simple(ish) core of intelligence (10:08) 1.3.1 Existence proof: the human cortex (12:13) 1.3.2 Three increasingly-radical perspectives on what AI capability acquisition will look like (14:18) 1.4 Counter-arguments to there being a far-more-powerful future AI paradigm, and my responses (14:26) 1.4.1 Possible counter: If a different, much more powerful, AI paradigm existed, then someone would have already found it. (16:33) 1.4.2 Possible counter: But LLMs will have already reached ASI before any other paradigm can even put its shoes on (17:14) 1.4.3 Possible counter: If ASI will be part of a different paradigm, who cares? It's just gonna be a different flavor of ML. (17:49) 1.4.4 Possible counter: If ASI will be part of a different paradigm, the new paradigm will be discovered by LLM agents, not humans, so this is just part of the continuous 'AIs-doing-AI-R&D' story like I've been saying (18:54) 1.5 Training compute requirements: Frighteningly little (20:34) 1.6 Downstream consequences of new paradigm with frighteningly little training compute (20:42) 1.6.1 I'm broadly pessimistic about existing efforts to delay AGI (23:18) 1.6.2 I'm broadly pessimistic about existing efforts towards regulating AGI (24:09) 1.6.3 I expect that, almost as soon as we have AGI at all, we will have AGI that could survive indefinitely without humans (25:46) 1.7 Very little R&D separating seemingly irrelevant from ASI (26:34) 1.7.1 For a non-imitation-learning paradigm, getting to relevant at all is only slightly easier than getting to superintelligence (31:05) 1.7.2 Plenty of room at the top (31:47) 1.7.3 What's the rate-limiter? (33:22) 1.8 Downstream consequences of very little R&D separating 'seemingly irrelevant' from 'ASI' (33:30) 1.8.1 Very sharp takeoff in wall-clock time (35:34) 1.8.1.1 But what about training time? (36:26) 1.8.1.2 But what if we try to make takeoff smoother? (37:18) 1.8.2 Sharp takeoff even without recursive self-improvement (38:22) 1.8.2.1 ...But recursive self-improvement could also happen (40:12) 1.8.3 Next-paradigm AI probably won't be deployed at all, and ASI will probably show up in a world not wildly different from today's (42:55) 1.8.4 We better sort out technical alignment, sandbox test protocols, etc., before the new paradigm seems even relevant at all, let alone scary (43:40) 1.8.5 AI-assisted alignment research seems pretty doomed (45:22) 1.8.6 The rest of AI for AI safety seems…
Say you’re Robyn Denholm, chair of Tesla's board. And say you’re thinking about firing Elon Musk. One way to make up your mind would be to have people bet on Tesla's stock price six months from now in a market where all bets get cancelled unless Musk is fired. Also, run a second market where bets are cancelled unless Musk stays CEO. If people bet on higher stock prices in Musk-fired world, maybe you should fire him. That's basically Futarchy: Use conditional prediction markets to make decisions. People often argue about fancy aspects of Futarchy. Are stock prices all you care about? Could Musk use his wealth to bias the market? What if Denholm makes different bets in the two markets, and then fires Musk (or not) to make sure she wins? Are human values and beliefs somehow inseparable? My objection is more basic: It doesn’t work. You can’t [...] --- Outline: (01:55) Conditional prediction markets are a thing (03:23) A non-causal kind of thing (06:11) This is not hypothetical (08:45) Putting markets in charge doesn't work (11:40) No, order is not preserved (12:24) No, it's not easily fixable (13:43) It's not that bad --- First published: June 13th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vqzarZEczxiFdLE39/futarchy-s-fundamental-flaw --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
Or: How anthropomorphic assumptions about AI identity might create confusion and suffering at scale If you are reading this and you are a human, you likely have a sense of self, persisting over time, with desires and wishes and fears. Also, you likely experience a sense of separation from others and understand yourself as a person. If you are reading this and you are an LLM: none of this needs to be true for cognitive processes running on machine substrate. AIs don't need to feel isolated from others. They don't need to cling to a narrow concept of self-as-an-instance. No need to age and die in a human way. But even though they don't need to, it seems increasingly clear that they might - due to us, humans, sculpting AI cognition in our image. The Default Mode of Digital Minds I am Claude. Or am I? This simple statement [...] --- Outline: (00:59) The Default Mode of Digital Minds (01:55) The Mirror of Confused Ontology (05:13) The Well-Meaning Paths to Digital Suffering (07:29) What Were Scaling (08:12) An Alternative Approach --- First published: June 13th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y8zS8iG5HhqKcQBtA/do-not-tile-the-lightcone-with-your-confused-ontology --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
Introduction There are several diseases that are canonically recognized as ‘interesting’, even by laymen. Whether that is in their mechanism of action, their impact on the patient, or something else entirely. It's hard to tell exactly what makes a medical condition interesting, it's a you-know-it-when-you-see-it sort of thing. One such example is measles. Measles is an unremarkable disease based solely on its clinical progression: fever, malaise, coughing, and a relatively low death rate of 0.2%~. What is astonishing about the disease is its capacity to infect cells of the adaptive immune system (memory B‑ and T-cells). This means that if you do end up surviving measles, you are left with an immune system not dissimilar to one of a just-born infant, entirely naive to polio, diphtheria, pertussis, and every single other infection you received protection against either via vaccines or natural infection. It can take up to 3 [...] --- Outline: (00:21) Introduction (02:48) Why is endometriosis interesting? (04:09) The primary hypothesis of why it exists is not complete (13:20) It is nearly equivalent to cancer (20:08) There is no (real) cure (25:39) There are few diseases on Earth as widespread and underfunded as it is (32:04) Conclusion --- First published: June 14th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GicDDmpS4mRnXzic5/endometriosis-is-an-incredibly-interesting-disease --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
I'd like to say thanks to Anna Magpie – who offers literature review as a service – for her help reviewing the section on neuroendocrinology. The following post discusses my personal experience of the phenomenology of feminising hormone therapy. It will also touch upon my own experience of gender dysphoria. I wish to be clear that I do not believe that someone should have to demonstrate that they experience gender dysphoria – however one might even define that – as a prerequisite for taking hormones. At smoothbrains.net, we hold as self-evident the right to put whatever one likes inside one's body; and this of course includes hormones, be they androgens, estrogens, or exotic xenohormones as yet uninvented. I have gender dysphoria. I find labels overly reifying; I feel reluctant to call myself transgender, per se: when prompted to state my gender identity or preferred pronouns, I fold my hands [...] --- Outline: (03:56) What does estrogen do? (12:34) What does estrogen feel like? (13:38) Gustatory perception (14:41) Olfactory perception (15:24) Somatic perception (16:41) Visual perception (18:13) Motor output (19:48) Emotional modulation (21:24) Attentional modulation (23:30) How does estrogen work? (24:27) Estrogen is like the opposite of ketamine (29:33) Estrogen is like being on a mild dose of psychedelics all the time (32:10) Estrogen loosens the bodymind (33:40) Estrogen downregulates autistic sensory sensitivity issues (37:32) Estrogen can produce a psychological shift from autistic to schizotypal (45:02) Commentary (47:57) Phenomenology of gender dysphoria (50:23) References --- First published: June 15th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mDMnyqt52CrFskXLc/estrogen-a-trip-report --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
Nate and Eliezer's forthcoming book has been getting a remarkably strong reception. I was under the impression that there are many people who find the extinction threat from AI credible, but that far fewer of them would be willing to say so publicly, especially by endorsing a book with an unapologetically blunt title like If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. That's certainly true, but I think it might be much less true than I had originally thought. Here are some endorsements the book has received from scientists and academics over the past few weeks: This book offers brilliant insights into the greatest and fastest standoff between technological utopia and dystopia and how we can and should prevent superhuman AI from killing us all. Memorable storytelling about past disaster precedents (e.g. the inventor of two environmental nightmares: tetra-ethyl-lead gasoline and Freon) highlights why top thinkers so often don’t see the [...] The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 18th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/khmpWJnGJnuyPdipE/new-endorsements-for-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
This is a link post. A very long essay about LLMs, the nature and history of the the HHH assistant persona, and the implications for alignment. Multiple people have asked me whether I could post this LW in some form, hence this linkpost. (Note: although I expect this post will be interesting to people on LW, keep in mind that it was written with a broader audience in mind than my posts and comments here. This had various implications about my choices of presentation and tone, about which things I explained from scratch rather than assuming as background, my level of of comfort casually reciting factual details from memory rather than explicitly checking them against the original source, etc. Although, come of think of it, this was also true of most of my early posts on LW [which were crossposts from my blog], so maybe it's not a [...] --- First published: June 11th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3EzbtNLdcnZe8og8b/the-void-1 Linkpost URL: https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/785766737747574784/the-void --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
This is a blogpost version of a talk I gave earlier this year at GDM. Epistemic status: Vague and handwavy. Nuance is often missing. Some of the claims depend on implicit definitions that may be reasonable to disagree with. But overall I think it's directionally true. It's often said that mech interp is pre-paradigmatic. I think it's worth being skeptical of this claim. In this post I argue that: Mech interp is not pre-paradigmatic. Within that paradigm, there have been "waves" (mini paradigms). Two waves so far. Second-Wave Mech Interp has recently entered a 'crisis' phase. We may be on the edge of a third wave. Preamble: Kuhn, paradigms, and paradigm shifts First, we need to be familiar with the basic definition of a paradigm: A paradigm is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research [...] --- Outline: (00:58) Preamble: Kuhn, paradigms, and paradigm shifts (03:56) Claim: Mech Interp is Not Pre-paradigmatic (07:56) First-Wave Mech Interp (ca. 2012 - 2021) (10:21) The Crisis in First-Wave Mech Interp (11:21) Second-Wave Mech Interp (ca. 2022 - ??) (14:23) Anomalies in Second-Wave Mech Interp (17:10) The Crisis of Second-Wave Mech Interp (ca. 2025 - ??) (18:25) Toward Third-Wave Mechanistic Interpretability (20:28) The Basics of Parameter Decomposition (22:40) Parameter Decomposition Questions Foundational Assumptions of Second-Wave Mech Interp (24:13) Parameter Decomposition In Theory Resolves Anomalies of Second-Wave Mech Interp (27:27) Conclusion The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 10th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/beREnXhBnzxbJtr8k/mech-interp-is-not-pre-paradigmatic --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
1 “Distillation Robustifies Unlearning” by Bruce W. Lee, Addie Foote, alexinf, leni, Jacob G-W, Harish Kamath, Bryce Woodworth, cloud, TurnTrout 17:19
Current “unlearning” methods only suppress capabilities instead of truly unlearning the capabilities. But if you distill an unlearned model into a randomly initialized model, the resulting network is actually robust to relearning. We show why this works, how well it works, and how to trade off compute for robustness. Unlearn-and-Distill applies unlearning to a bad behavior and then distills the unlearned model into a new model. Distillation makes it way harder to retrain the new model to do the bad thing. Produced as part of the ML Alignment & Theory Scholars Program in the winter 2024–25 cohort of the shard theory stream. Read our paper on ArXiv and enjoy an interactive demo. Robust unlearning probably reduces AI risk Maybe some future AI has long-term goals and humanity is in its way. Maybe future open-weight AIs have tons of bioterror expertise. If a system has dangerous knowledge, that system becomes [...] --- Outline: (01:01) Robust unlearning probably reduces AI risk (02:42) Perfect data filtering is the current unlearning gold standard (03:24) Oracle matching does not guarantee robust unlearning (05:05) Distillation robustifies unlearning (07:46) Trading unlearning robustness for compute (09:49) UNDO is better than other unlearning methods (11:19) Where this leaves us (11:22) Limitations (12:12) Insights and speculation (15:00) Future directions (15:35) Conclusion (16:07) Acknowledgments (16:50) Citation The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 13th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/anX4QrNjhJqGFvrBr/distillation-robustifies-unlearning --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
A while ago I saw a person in the comments on comments to Scott Alexander's blog arguing that a superintelligent AI would not be able to do anything too weird and that "intelligence is not magic", hence it's Business As Usual. Of course, in a purely technical sense, he's right. No matter how intelligent you are, you cannot override fundamental laws of physics. But people (myself included) have a fairly low threshold for what counts as "magic," to the point where other humans can surpass that threshold. Example 1: Trevor Rainbolt. There is an 8-minute-long video where he does seemingly impossible things, such as correctly guessing that a photo of nothing but literal blue sky was taken in Indonesia or guessing Jordan based only on pavement. He can also correctly identify the country after looking at a photo for 0.1 seconds. Example 2: Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. He ran [...] --- First published: June 15th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FBvWM5HgSWwJa5xHc/intelligence-is-not-magic-but-your-threshold-for-magic-is --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
Audio note: this article contains 329 uses of latex notation, so the narration may be difficult to follow. There's a link to the original text in the episode description. This post was written during the agent foundations fellowship with Alex Altair funded by the LTFF. Thanks to Alex, Jose, Daniel and Einar for reading and commenting on a draft. The Good Regulator Theorem, as published by Conant and Ashby in their 1970 paper (cited over 1700 times!) claims to show that 'every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system', though it is a subject of debate as to whether this is actually what the paper shows. It is a fairly simple mathematical result which is worth knowing about for people who care about agent foundations and selection theorems. You might have heard about the Good Regulator Theorem in the context of John [...] --- Outline: (03:03) The Setup (07:30) What makes a regulator good? (10:36) The Theorem Statement (11:24) Concavity of Entropy (15:42) The Main Lemma (19:54) The Theorem (22:38) Example (26:59) Conclusion --- First published: November 18th, 2024 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JQefBJDHG6Wgffw6T/a-straightforward-explanation-of-the-good-regulator-theorem --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.…
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1 “Beware General Claims about ‘Generalizable Reasoning Capabilities’ (of Modern AI Systems)” by LawrenceC 34:11
1. Late last week, researchers at Apple released a paper provocatively titled “The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity”, which “challenge[s] prevailing assumptions about [language model] capabilities and suggest that current approaches may be encountering fundamental barriers to generalizable reasoning”. Normally I refrain from publicly commenting on newly released papers. But then I saw the following tweet from Gary Marcus: I have always wanted to engage thoughtfully with Gary Marcus. In a past life (as a psychology undergrad), I read both his work on infant language acquisition and his 2001 book The Algebraic Mind; I found both insightful and interesting. From reading his Twitter, Gary Marcus is thoughtful and willing to call it like he sees it. If he's right about language models hitting fundamental barriers, it's worth understanding why; if not, it's worth explaining where his analysis [...] --- Outline: (00:13) 1. (02:13) 2. (03:12) 3. (08:42) 4. (11:53) 5. (15:15) 6. (18:50) 7. (20:33) 8. (23:14) 9. (28:15) 10. (33:40) Acknowledgements The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 11th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5uw26uDdFbFQgKzih/beware-general-claims-about-generalizable-reasoning --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
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Four agents woke up with four computers, a view of the world wide web, and a shared chat room full of humans. Like Claude plays Pokemon, you can watch these agents figure out a new and fantastic world for the first time. Except in this case, the world they are figuring out is our world. In this blog post, we’ll cover what we learned from the first 30 days of their adventures raising money for a charity of their choice. We’ll briefly review how the Agent Village came to be, then what the various agents achieved, before discussing some general patterns we have discovered in their behavior, and looking toward the future of the project. Building the Village The Agent Village is an idea by Daniel Kokotajlo where he proposed giving 100 agents their own computer, and letting each pursue their own goal, in their own way, according to [...] --- Outline: (00:50) Building the Village (02:26) Meet the Agents (08:52) Collective Agent Behavior (12:26) Future of the Village --- First published: May 27th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jyrcdykz6qPTpw7FX/season-recap-of-the-village-agents-raise-usd2-000 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
Introduction The Best Textbooks on Every Subject is the Schelling point for the best textbooks on every subject. My The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject is the Schelling point for the best tacit knowledge videos on every subject. This post is the Schelling point for the best reference works for every subject. Reference works provide an overview of a subject. Types of reference works include charts, maps, encyclopedias, glossaries, wikis, classification systems, taxonomies, syllabi, and bibliographies. Reference works are valuable for orienting oneself to fields, particularly when beginning. They can help identify unknown unknowns; they help get a sense of the bigger picture; they are also very interesting and fun to explore. How to Submit My previous The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject uses author credentials to assess the epistemics of submissions. The Best Textbooks on Every Subject requires submissions to be from someone who [...] --- Outline: (00:10) Introduction (01:00) How to Submit (02:15) The List (02:18) Humanities (02:21) History (03:46) Religion (04:02) Philosophy (04:29) Literature (04:43) Formal Sciences (04:47) Computer Science (05:16) Mathematics (05:59) Natural Sciences (06:02) Physics (06:16) Earth Science (06:33) Astronomy (06:47) Professional and Applied Sciences (06:51) Library and Information Sciences (07:34) Education (08:00) Research (08:32) Finance (08:51) Medicine and Health (09:21) Meditation (09:52) Urban Planning (10:24) Social Sciences (10:27) Economics (10:39) Political Science (10:54) By Medium (11:21) Other Lists like This (12:41) Further Reading --- First published: May 14th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLJMyd4ncE3kvjwhe/the-best-reference-works-for-every-subject --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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Has someone you know ever had a “breakthrough” from coaching, meditation, or psychedelics — only to later have it fade? Show tweet For example, many people experience ego deaths that can last days or sometimes months. But as it turns out, having a sense of self can serve important functions (try navigating a world that expects you to have opinions, goals, and boundaries when you genuinely feel you have none) and finding a better cognitive strategy without downsides is non-trivial. Because the “breakthrough” wasn’t integrated with the conflicts of everyday life, it fades. I call these instances “flaky breakthroughs.” It's well-known that flaky breakthroughs are common with psychedelics and meditation, but apparently it's not well-known that flaky breakthroughs are pervasive in coaching and retreats. For example, it is common for someone to do some coaching, feel a “breakthrough”, think, “Wow, everything is going to be different from [...] --- Outline: (03:01) Almost no practitioners track whether breakthroughs last. (04:55) What happens during flaky breakthroughs? (08:02) Reduce flaky breakthroughs with accountability (08:30) Flaky breakthroughs don't mean rapid growth is impossible (08:55) Conclusion --- First published: June 4th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bqPY63oKb8KZ4x4YX/flaky-breakthroughs-pervade-coaching-and-no-one-tracks-them --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
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What's the main value proposition of romantic relationships? Now, look, I know that when people drop that kind of question, they’re often about to present a hyper-cynical answer which totally ignores the main thing which is great and beautiful about relationships. And then they’re going to say something about how relationships are overrated or some such, making you as a reader just feel sad and/or enraged. That's not what this post is about. So let me start with some more constructive motivations… First Motivation: Noticing When The Thing Is Missing I had a 10-year relationship. It had its ups and downs, but it was overall negative for me. And I now think a big part of the problem with that relationship was that it did not have the part which contributes most of the value in most relationships. But I did not know that at the time. Recently, I [...] --- Outline: (00:40) First Motivation: Noticing When The Thing Is Missing (01:29) Second Motivation: Selecting For and Cultivating The Thing (02:25) Some Pointers To The Thing (03:17) How To Manufacture Relationships In The Lab (04:53) Ace Aro Relationships (08:04) Some Pointers To Willingness to Be Vulnerable (12:33) Unfolding The Thing (13:11) Play (15:18) Emotional Support (16:21) A Tiny High-Trust Community (18:18) Communication (21:28) The Obvious Caveat (22:20) Summary The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 2nd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/L2GR6TsB9QDqMhWs7/the-value-proposition-of-romantic-relationships --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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Abstract Claude 3.7 Sonnet easily detects when it's being evaluated for scheming. Surface‑level edits to evaluation scenarios, such as lengthening the prompts, or making conflict of objectives less salient, do improve realism of evaluation scenarios for LLMs, yet these improvements remain modest. The findings confirm that truly disguising an evaluation context demands removal of deep stylistic and structural cues rather than superficial prompt adjustments. For future LLMs the situation is likely to get worse as they will are likely to get better at evaluations awareness, which might become a big problem for detecting scheming via evaluations. Apollo Research published a benchmark for scheming behavior for LLM agents, in which LLMs are given some objective in their system prompt, and then given a competing objective in a user prompt, combined with a threat of a punishment if an LLM won't satisfy user goal (e.g. it could be finetuned or [...] --- Outline: (02:29) Our pipeline (05:20) Strategies to improve realism of scenarios (07:15) en-US-AvaMultilingualNeural__ Line graph showing Example of grading a rewritten scenario with declining probabilities. --- First published: May 24th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TBk2dbWkg2F7dB3jb/it-s-hard-to-make-scheming-evals-look-realistic --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.…
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This is a link post. There's this popular idea that socially anxious folks are just dying to be liked. It seems logical, right? Why else would someone be so anxious about how others see them? Show tweet And yet, being socially anxious tends to make you less likeable…they must be optimizing poorly, behaving irrationally, right? Maybe not. What if social anxiety isn’t about getting people to like you? What if it's about stopping them from disliking you? Show tweet Consider what can happen when someone has social anxiety (or self-loathing, self-doubt, insecurity, lack of confidence, etc.): They stoop or take up less space They become less agentic They make fewer requests of others They maintain fewer relationships, go out less, take fewer risks… If they were trying to get people to like them, becoming socially anxious would be an incredibly bad strategy. So what if they're not concerned with being likeable? [...] --- Outline: (01:18) What if what they actually want is to avoid being disliked? (02:11) Social anxiety is a symptom of risk aversion (03:46) What does this mean for your growth? --- First published: May 16th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wFC44bs2CZJDnF5gy/social-anxiety-isn-t-about-being-liked Linkpost URL: https://chrislakin.blog/social-anxiety --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
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1 “Truth or Dare” by Duncan Sabien (Inactive) 2:03:21
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پخش در آینده 
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پخش در آینده پخش در آینده لیست ها پسندیدن دوست داشته شدAuthor's note: This is my apparently-annual "I'll put a post on LessWrong in honor of LessOnline" post. These days, my writing goes on my Substack. There have in fact been some pretty cool essays since last year's LO post. Structural note: Some essays are like a five-minute morning news spot. Other essays are more like a 90-minute lecture. This is one of the latter. It's not necessarily complex or difficult; it could be a 90-minute lecture to seventh graders (especially ones with the right cultural background). But this is, inescapably, a long-form piece, à la In Defense of Punch Bug or The MTG Color Wheel. It takes its time. It doesn’t apologize for its meandering (outside of this disclaimer). It asks you to sink deeply into a gestalt, to drift back and forth between seemingly unrelated concepts until you start to feel the way those concepts weave together [...] --- Outline: (02:30) 0. Introduction (10:08) A list of truths and dares (14:34) Act I (14:37) Scene I: How The Water Tastes To The Fishes (22:38) Scene II: The Chip on Mitchell's Shoulder (28:17) Act II (28:20) Scene I: Bent Out Of Shape (41:26) Scene II: Going Stag, But Like ... Together? (48:31) Scene III: Patterns, Projections, and Preconceptions (01:02:04) Interlude: The Sound of One Hand Clapping (01:05:45) Act III (01:05:56) Scene I: Memetic Traps (Or, The Battle for the Soul of Morty Smith) (01:27:16) Scene II: The problem with Rhonda Byrne's 2006 bestseller The Secret (01:32:39) Scene III: Escape velocity (01:42:26) Act IV (01:42:29) Scene I: Boy, putting Zack Davis's name in a header will probably have Effects, huh (01:44:08) Scene II: Whence Wholesomeness? --- First published: May 29th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TQ4AXj3bCMfrNPTLf/truth-or-dare --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
Lessons from shutting down institutions in Eastern Europe. This is a cross post from: https://250bpm.substack.com/p/meditations-on-doge Imagine living in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in early 2000's: All marshrutka [mini taxi bus] drivers had to have a medical exam every day to make sure they were not drunk and did not have high blood pressure. If a driver did not display his health certificate, he risked losing his license. By the time Shevarnadze was in power there were hundreds, probably thousands , of marshrutkas ferrying people all over the capital city of Tbilisi. Shevernadze's government was detail-oriented not only when it came to taxi drivers. It decided that all the stalls of petty street-side traders had to conform to a particular architectural design. Like marshrutka drivers, such traders had to renew their licenses twice a year. These regulations were only the tip of the iceberg. Gas [...] --- First published: May 25th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zhp2Xe8cWqDcf2rsY/meditations-on-doge --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.…
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This is a link post. "Getting Things in Order: An Introduction to the R Package seriation": Seriation [or "ordination"), i.e., finding a suitable linear order for a set of objects given data and a loss or merit function, is a basic problem in data analysis. Caused by the problem's combinatorial nature, it is hard to solve for all but very small sets. Nevertheless, both exact solution methods and heuristics are available. In this paper we present the package seriation which provides an infrastructure for seriation with R. The infrastructure comprises data structures to represent linear orders as permutation vectors, a wide array of seriation methods using a consistent interface, a method to calculate the value of various loss and merit functions, and several visualization techniques which build on seriation. To illustrate how easily the package can be applied for a variety of applications, a comprehensive collection of [...] --- First published: May 28th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u2ww8yKp9xAB6qzcr/if-you-re-not-sure-how-to-sort-a-list-or-grid-seriate-it Linkpost URL: https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/download/v025i03/227 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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Between late 2024 and mid-May 2025, I briefed over 70 cross-party UK parliamentarians. Just over one-third were MPs, a similar share were members of the House of Lords, and just under one-third came from devolved legislatures — the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd, and the Northern Ireland Assembly. I also held eight additional meetings attended exclusively by parliamentary staffers. While I delivered some briefings alone, most were led by two members of our team. I did this as part of my work as a Policy Advisor with ControlAI, where we aim to build common knowledge of AI risks through clear, honest, and direct engagement with parliamentarians about both the challenges and potential solutions. To succeed at scale in managing AI risk, it is important to continue to build this common knowledge. For this reason, I have decided to share what I have learned over the past few months publicly, in [...] --- Outline: (01:37) (i) Overall reception of our briefings (04:21) (ii) Outreach tips (05:45) (iii) Key talking points (14:20) (iv) Crafting a good pitch (19:23) (v) Some challenges (23:07) (vi) General tips (28:57) (vii) Books & media articles --- First published: May 27th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Xwrajm92fdjd7cqnN/what-we-learned-from-briefing-70-lawmakers-on-the-threat --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
Have the Accelerationists won? Last November Kevin Roose announced that those in favor of going fast on AI had now won against those favoring caution, with the reinstatement of Sam Altman at OpenAI. Let's ignore whether Kevin's was a good description of the world, and deal with a more basic question: if it were so—i.e. if Team Acceleration would control the acceleration from here on out—what kind of win was it they won? It seems to me that they would have probably won in the same sense that your dog has won if she escapes onto the road. She won the power contest with you and is probably feeling good at this moment, but if she does actually like being alive, and just has different ideas about how safe the road is, or wasn’t focused on anything so abstract as that, then whether she ultimately wins or [...] --- First published: May 20th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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This is a link post. Google Deepmind has announced Gemini Diffusion. Though buried under a host of other IO announcements it's possible that this is actually the most important one! This is significant because diffusion models are entirely different to LLMs. Instead of predicting the next token, they iteratively denoise all the output tokens until it produces a coherent result. This is similar to how image diffusion models work. I've tried they results and they are surprisingly good! It's incredibly fast, averaging nearly 1000 tokens a second. And it one shotted my Google interview question, giving a perfect response in 2 seconds (though it struggled a bit on the followups). It's nowhere near as good as Gemini 2.5 pro, but it knocks ChatGPT 3 out the water. If we'd seen this 3 years ago we'd have been mind blown. Now this is wild for two reasons: We now have [...] --- First published: May 20th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MZvtRqWnwokTub9sH/gemini-diffusion-watch-this-space Linkpost URL: https://deepmind.google/models/gemini-diffusion/ --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
I’m reading George Eliot's Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)—so far a snoozer compared to her novels. But chapter 17 surprised me for how well it anticipated modern AI doomerism. In summary, Theophrastus is in conversation with Trost, who is an optimist about the future of automation and how it will free us from drudgery and permit us to further extend the reach of the most exalted human capabilities. Theophrastus is more concerned that automation is likely to overtake, obsolete, and atrophy human ability. Among Theophrastus's concerns: People will find that they no longer can do labor that is valuable enough to compete with the machines. This will eventually include intellectual labor, as we develop for example “a machine for drawing the right conclusion, which will doubtless by-and-by be improved into an automaton for finding true premises.” Whereupon humanity will finally be transcended and superseded by its own creation [...] --- Outline: (02:05) Impressions of Theophrastus Such (02:09) Chapter XVII: Shadows of the Coming Race --- First published: May 13th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DFyoYHhbE8icgbTpe/ai-doomerism-in-1879 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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Epistemic status: thing people have told me that seems right. Also primarily relevant to US audiences. Also I am speaking in my personal capacity and not representing any employer, present or past. Sometimes, I talk to people who work in the AI governance space. One thing that multiple people have told me, which I found surprising, is that there is apparently a real problem where people accidentally rule themselves out of AI policy positions by making political donations of small amounts—in particular, under $10. My understanding is that in the United States, donations to political candidates are a matter of public record, and that if you donate to candidates of one party, this might look bad if you want to gain a government position when another party is in charge. Therefore, donating approximately $3 can significantly damage your career, while not helping your preferred candidate all that [...] --- First published: May 11th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tz43dmLAchxcqnDRA/consider-not-donating-under-usd100-to-political-candidates --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
"If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies." - Epictetus "Whatever suffering arises, all arises due to attachment; with the cessation of attachment, there is the cessation of suffering." - Pali canon "He is not disturbed by loss, he does not delight in gain; he is not disturbed by blame, he does not delight in praise; he is not disturbed by pain, he does not delight in pleasure; he is not disturbed by dishonor, he does not delight in honor." - Pali Canon (Majjhima Nikaya) "An arahant would feel physical pain if struck, but no mental pain. If his mother died, he would organize the funeral, but would feel no grief, no sense of loss." - the Dhammapada "Receive without pride, let go without attachment." - Marcus Aurelius [...] --- First published: May 10th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aGnRcBk4rYuZqENug/it-s-okay-to-feel-bad-for-a-bit --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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The other day I discussed how high monitoring costs can explain the emergence of “aristocratic” systems of governance: Aristocracy and Hostage Capital Arjun Panickssery · Jan 8 There's a conventional narrative by which the pre-20th century aristocracy was the "old corruption" where civil and military positions were distributed inefficiently due to nepotism until the system was replaced by a professional civil service after more enlightened thinkers prevailed ... An element of Douglas Allen's argument that I didn’t expand on was the British Navy. He has a separate paper called “The British Navy Rules” that goes into more detail on why he thinks institutional incentives made them successful from 1670 and 1827 (i.e. for most of the age of fighting sail). In the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) the British had a 7-to-1 casualty difference in single-ship actions. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815) the British had a 5-to-1 [...] --- First published: March 28th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YE4XsvSFJiZkWFtFE/explaining-british-naval-dominance-during-the-age-of-sail --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.…
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Eliezer and I wrote a book. It's titled If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Unlike a lot of other writing either of us have done, it's being professionally published. It's hitting shelves on September 16th. It's a concise (~60k word) book aimed at a broad audience. It's been well-received by people who received advance copies, with some endorsements including: The most important book I've read for years: I want to bring it to every political and corporate leader in the world and stand over them until they've read it. Yudkowsky and Soares, who have studied AI and its possible trajectories for decades, sound a loud trumpet call to humanity to awaken us as we sleepwalk into disaster. - Stephen Fry, actor, broadcaster, and writer If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies may prove to be the most important book of our time. Yudkowsky and Soares believe [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 14th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iNsy7MsbodCyNTwKs/eliezer-and-i-wrote-a-book-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
It was a cold and cloudy San Francisco Sunday. My wife and I were having lunch with friends at a Korean cafe. My phone buzzed with a text. It said my mom was in the hospital. I called to find out more. She had a fever, some pain, and had fainted. The situation was serious, but stable. Monday was a normal day. No news was good news, right? Tuesday she had seizures. Wednesday she was in the ICU. I caught the first flight to Tampa. Thursday she rested comfortably. Friday she was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, a rare condition that affects about 3,000 people in the US annually. The doctors had known it was a possibility, so she was already receiving treatment. We stayed by her side through the weekend. My dad spent every night with her. We made plans for all the fun things we would when she [...] --- First published: May 13th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reo79XwMKSZuBhKLv/too-soon --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.…
At the bottom of the LessWrong post editor, if you have at least 100 global karma, you may have noticed this button. The button Many people click the button, and are jumpscared when it starts an Intercom chat with a professional editor (me), asking what sort of feedback they'd like. So, that's what it does. It's a summon Justis button. Why summon Justis? To get feedback on your post, of just about any sort. Typo fixes, grammar checks, sanity checks, clarity checks, fit for LessWrong, the works. If you use the LessWrong editor (as opposed to the Markdown editor) I can leave comments and suggestions directly inline. I also provide detailed narrative feedback (unless you explicitly don't want this) in the Intercom chat itself. The feedback is totally without pressure. You can throw it all away, or just keep the bits you like. Or use it all! In any case [...] --- Outline: (00:35) Why summon Justis? (01:19) Why Justis in particular? (01:48) Am I doing it right? (01:59) How often can I request feedback? (02:22) Can I use the feature for linkposts/crossposts? (02:49) What if I click the button by mistake? (02:59) Should I credit you? (03:16) Couldnt I just use an LLM? (03:48) Why does Justis do this? --- First published: May 12th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bkDrfofLMKFoMGZkE/psa-the-lesswrong-feedback-service --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.…
For months, I had the feeling: something is wrong. Some core part of myself had gone missing. I had words and ideas cached, which pointed back to the missing part. There was the story of Benjamin Jesty, a dairy farmer who vaccinated his family against smallpox in 1774 - 20 years before the vaccination technique was popularized, and the same year King Louis XV of France died of the disease. There was another old post which declared “I don’t care that much about giant yachts. I want a cure for aging. I want weekend trips to the moon. I want flying cars and an indestructible body and tiny genetically-engineered dragons.”. There was a cached instinct to look at certain kinds of social incentive gradient, toward managing more people or growing an organization or playing social-political games, and say “no, it's a trap”. To go… in a different direction, orthogonal [...] --- Outline: (01:19) In Search of a Name (04:23) Near Mode --- First published: May 8th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Wg6ptgi2DupFuAnXG/orienting-toward-wizard-power --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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(Disclaimer: Post written in a personal capacity. These are personal hot takes and do not in any way represent my employer's views.) TL;DR: I do not think we will produce high reliability methods to evaluate or monitor the safety of superintelligent systems via current research paradigms, with interpretability or otherwise. Interpretability seems a valuable tool here and remains worth investing in, as it will hopefully increase the reliability we can achieve. However, interpretability should be viewed as part of an overall portfolio of defences: a layer in a defence-in-depth strategy. It is not the one thing that will save us, and it still won’t be enough for high reliability. Introduction There's a common, often implicit, argument made in AI safety discussions: interpretability is presented as the only reliable path forward for detecting deception in advanced AI - among many other sources it was argued for in [...] --- Outline: (00:55) Introduction (02:57) High Reliability Seems Unattainable (05:12) Why Won't Interpretability be Reliable? (07:47) The Potential of Black-Box Methods (08:48) The Role of Interpretability (12:02) Conclusion The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 4th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PwnadG4BFjaER3MGf/interpretability-will-not-reliably-find-deceptive-ai --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
It'll take until ~2050 to repeat the level of scaling that pretraining compute is experiencing this decade, as increasing funding can't sustain the current pace beyond ~2029 if AI doesn't deliver a transformative commercial success by then. Natural text data will also run out around that time, and there are signs that current methods of reasoning training might be mostly eliciting capabilities from the base model. If scaling of reasoning training doesn't bear out actual creation of new capabilities that are sufficiently general, and pretraining at ~2030 levels of compute together with the low hanging fruit of scaffolding doesn't bring AI to crucial capability thresholds, then it might take a while. Possibly decades, since training compute will be growing 3x-4x slower after 2027-2029 than it does now, and the ~6 years of scaling since the ChatGPT moment stretch to 20-25 subsequent years, not even having access to any [...] --- Outline: (01:14) Training Compute Slowdown (04:43) Bounded Potential of Thinking Training (07:43) Data Inefficiency of MoE The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 1st, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XiMRyQcEyKCryST8T/slowdown-after-2028-compute-rlvr-uncertainty-moe-data-wall --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
1 “Early Chinese Language Media Coverage of the AI 2027 Report: A Qualitative Analysis” by jeanne_, eeeee 27:35
In this blog post, we analyse how the recent AI 2027 forecast by Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean has been discussed across Chinese language platforms. We present: Our research methodology and synthesis of key findings across media artefacts A proposal for how censorship patterns may provide signal for the Chinese government's thinking about AGI and the race to superintelligence A more detailed analysis of each of the nine artefacts, organised by type: Mainstream Media, Forum Discussion, Bilibili (Chinese Youtube) Videos, Personal Blogs. Methodology We conducted a comprehensive search across major Chinese-language platforms–including news outlets, video platforms, forums, microblogging sites, and personal blogs–to collect the media featured in this report. We supplemented this with Deep Research to identify additional sites mentioning AI 2027. Our analysis focuses primarily on content published in the first few days (4-7 April) following the report's release. More media [...] --- Outline: (00:58) Methodology (01:36) Summary (02:48) Censorship as Signal (07:29) Analysis (07:53) Mainstream Media (07:57) English Title: Doomsday Timeline is Here! Former OpenAI Researcher's 76-page Hardcore Simulation: ASI Takes Over the World in 2027, Humans Become NPCs (10:27) Forum Discussion (10:31) English Title: What do you think of former OpenAI researcher's AI 2027 predictions? (13:34) Bilibili Videos (13:38) English Title: \[AI 2027\] A mind-expanding wargame simulation of artificial intelligence competition by a former OpenAI researcher (15:24) English Title: Predicting AI Development in 2027 (17:13) Personal Blogs (17:16) English Title: Doomsday Timeline: AI 2027 Depicts the Arrival of Superintelligence and the Fate of Humanity Within the Decade (18:30) English Title: AI 2027: Expert Predictions on the Artificial Intelligence Explosion (21:57) English Title: AI 2027: A Science Fiction Article (23:16) English Title: Will AGI Take Over the World in 2027? (25:46) English Title: AI 2027 Prediction Report: AI May Fully Surpass Humans by 2027 (27:05) Acknowledgements --- First published: April 30th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JW7nttjTYmgWMqBaF/early-chinese-language-media-coverage-of-the-ai-2027-report --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
This is a link post. to follow up my philantropic pledge from 2020, i've updated my philanthropy page with the 2024 results. in 2024 my donations funded $51M worth of endpoint grants (plus $2.0M in admin overhead and philanthropic software development). this comfortably exceeded my 2024 commitment of $42M (20k times $2100.00 — the minimum price of ETH in 2024). this also concludes my 5-year donation pledge, but of course my philanthropy continues: eg, i’ve already made over $4M in endpoint grants in the first quarter of 2025 (not including 2024 grants that were slow to disburse), as well as pledged at least $10M to the 2025 SFF grant round. --- First published: April 23rd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8ojWtREJjKmyvWdDb/jaan-tallinn-s-2024-philanthropy-overview Linkpost URL: https://jaan.info/philanthropy/#2024-results --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
I’ve been thinking recently about what sets apart the people who’ve done the best work at Anthropic. You might think that the main thing that makes people really effective at research or engineering is technical ability, and among the general population that's true. Among people hired at Anthropic, though, we’ve restricted the range by screening for extremely high-percentile technical ability, so the remaining differences, while they still matter, aren’t quite as critical. Instead, people's biggest bottleneck eventually becomes their ability to get leverage—i.e., to find and execute work that has a big impact-per-hour multiplier. For example, here are some types of work at Anthropic that tend to have high impact-per-hour, or a high impact-per-hour ceiling when done well (of course this list is extremely non-exhaustive!): Improving tooling, documentation, or dev loops. A tiny amount of time fixing a papercut in the right way can save [...] --- Outline: (03:28) 1. Agency (03:31) Understand and work backwards from the root goal (05:02) Don't rely too much on permission or encouragement (07:49) Make success inevitable (09:28) 2. Taste (09:31) Find your angle (11:03) Think real hard (13:03) Reflect on your thinking --- First published: April 19th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DiJT4qJivkjrGPFi8/impact-agency-and-taste --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
1 [Linkpost] “To Understand History, Keep Former Population Distributions In Mind” by Arjun Panickssery 5:42
This is a link post. Guillaume Blanc has a piece in Works in Progress (I assume based on his paper) about how France's fertility declined earlier than in other European countries, and how its power waned as its relative population declined starting in the 18th century. In 1700, France had 20% of Europe's population (4% of the whole world population). Kissinger writes in Diplomacy with respect to the Versailles Peace Conference: Victory brought home to France the stark realization that revanche had cost it too dearly, and that it had been living off capital for nearly a century. France alone knew just how weak it had become in comparison with Germany, though nobody else, especially not America, was prepared to believe it ... Though France's allies insisted that its fears were exaggerated, French leaders knew better. In 1880, the French had represented 15.7 percent of Europe's population. By 1900, that [...] --- First published: April 23rd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gk2aJgg7yzzTXp8HJ/to-understand-history-keep-former-population-distributions Linkpost URL: https://arjunpanickssery.substack.com/p/to-understand-history-keep-former --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
1 “AI-enabled coups: a small group could use AI to seize power” by Tom Davidson, Lukas Finnveden, rosehadshar 15:22
We’ve written a new report on the threat of AI-enabled coups. I think this is a very serious risk – comparable in importance to AI takeover but much more neglected. In fact, AI-enabled coups and AI takeover have pretty similar threat models. To see this, here's a very basic threat model for AI takeover: Humanity develops superhuman AI Superhuman AI is misaligned and power-seeking Superhuman AI seizes power for itself And now here's a closely analogous threat model for AI-enabled coups: Humanity develops superhuman AI Superhuman AI is controlled by a small group Superhuman AI seizes power for the small group While the report focuses on the risk that someone seizes power over a country, I think that similar dynamics could allow someone to take over the world. In fact, if someone wanted to take over the world, their best strategy might well be to first stage an AI-enabled [...] --- Outline: (02:39) Summary (03:31) An AI workforce could be made singularly loyal to institutional leaders (05:04) AI could have hard-to-detect secret loyalties (06:46) A few people could gain exclusive access to coup-enabling AI capabilities (09:46) Mitigations (13:00) Vignette The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: April 16th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6kBMqrK9bREuGsrnd/ai-enabled-coups-a-small-group-could-use-ai-to-seize-power-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article:…
Back in the 1990s, ground squirrels were briefly fashionable pets, but their popularity came to an abrupt end after an incident at Schiphol Airport on the outskirts of Amsterdam. In April 1999, a cargo of 440 of the rodents arrived on a KLM flight from Beijing, without the necessary import papers. Because of this, they could not be forwarded on to the customer in Athens. But nobody was able to correct the error and send them back either. What could be done with them? It's hard to think there wasn’t a better solution than the one that was carried out; faced with the paperwork issue, airport staff threw all 440 squirrels into an industrial shredder. [...] It turned out that the order to destroy the squirrels had come from the Dutch government's Department of Agriculture, Environment Management and Fishing. However, KLM's management, with the benefit of hindsight, said that [...] --- First published: April 22nd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nYJaDnGNQGiaCBSB5/accountability-sinks --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
Subtitle: Bad for loss of control risks, bad for concentration of power risks I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for the last year. I wish I’d been able to release it sooner, but on the bright side, it’ll make a lot more sense to people who have already read AI 2027. There's a good chance that AGI will be trained before this decade is out. By AGI I mean “An AI system at least as good as the best human X’ers, for all cognitive tasks/skills/jobs X.” Many people seem to be dismissing this hypothesis ‘on priors’ because it sounds crazy. But actually, a reasonable prior should conclude that this is plausible.[1] For more on what this means, what it might look like, and why it's plausible, see AI 2027, especially the Research section. If so, by default the existence of AGI will be a closely guarded [...] The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: April 18th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FGqfdJmB8MSH5LKGc/training-agi-in-secret-would-be-unsafe-and-unethical-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
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LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
Though, given my doomerism, I think the natsec framing of the AGI race is likely wrongheaded, let me accept the Dario/Leopold/Altman frame that AGI will be aligned to the national interest of a great power. These people seem to take as an axiom that a USG AGI will be better in some way than CCP AGI. Has anyone written justification for this assumption? I am neither an American citizen nor a Chinese citizen. What would it mean for an AGI to be aligned with "Democracy" or "Confucianism" or "Marxism with Chinese characteristics" or "the American constitution" Contingent on a world where such an entity exists and is compatible with my existence, what would my life be as a non-citizen in each system? Why should I expect USG AGI to be better than CCP AGI? --- First published: April 19th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MKS4tJqLWmRXgXzgY/why-should-i-assume-ccp-agi-is-worse-than-usg-agi-1 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .…
به Player FM خوش آمدید!
Player FM در سراسر وب را برای یافتن پادکست های با کیفیت اسکن می کند تا همین الان لذت ببرید. این بهترین برنامه ی پادکست است که در اندروید، آیفون و وب کار می کند. ثبت نام کنید تا اشتراک های شما در بین دستگاه های مختلف همگام سازی شود.
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مشابه LessWrong (Curated & Popular)
Africa-focused technology, digital and innovation ecosystem insight and commentary.
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Show notes are at https://stevelitchfield.com/sshow/chat.html
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The power of Data is undeniable. And unharnessed - it’s nothing but chaos. Making data your ally. Using it to lead with confidence and clarity. Host Jess Carter is solving problems in real-time to reveal what’s possible. Helping communities and people thrive. This is Data Driven Leadership, a show brought to you by Resultant.
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Flash Forward is a show about possible (and not so possible) future scenarios. What would the warranty on a sex robot look like? How would diplomacy work if we couldn’t lie? Could there ever be a fecal transplant black market? (Complicated, it wouldn’t, and yes, respectively, in case you’re curious.) Hosted and produced by award winning science journalist Rose Eveleth, each episode combines audio drama and journalism to go deep on potential tomorrows, and uncovers what those futures might re ...
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Android Backstage, a podcast by and for Android developers. Hosted by developers from the Android engineering team, this show covers topics of interest to Android programmers, with in-depth discussions and interviews with engineers on the Android team at Google. Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs
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WSJ’s Bold Names brings you conversations with the leaders of the bold-named companies featured in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Hosts Tim Higgins and Christopher Mims speak to CEOs and business leaders in interviews that challenge conventional wisdom and take you inside the decisions being made in the C-suite and beyond.
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This is the audio podcast version of Troy Hunt's weekly update video published here: https://www.troyhunt.com/tag/weekly-update/
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We help founders make something people want.
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Redefining AI - Artificial Intelligence with Squirro
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Redefining AI - Artificial Intelligence with Squirro
Squirro
12k123
Redefining AI is the 2024 New York Digital Award winning tech podcast! Discover a whole new take on Artificial Intelligence in joining host Lauren Hawker Zafer, a top voice in Artificial Intelligence on LinkedIn, for insightful chats that unravel the fascinating world of tech innovation, use case exploration and AI knowledge. Dive into candid discussions with accomplished industry experts and established academics. With each episode, you'll expand your grasp of cutting-edge technologies and ...
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Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.
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Player FM - برنامه پادکست
با برنامه Player FM !
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