trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Compilation of currently existing project ideas to significantly impact the world
by diegocaleiro — 2015-03-08T04:59:39.765Z

One of the problems the LW, EA, CFAR X-risk community has been faced with recently discussed on Slate Star Codex is the absorption of people interested in researching, volunteering, helping, participating in the community. A problem worth subdividing into how to get new people into the social community, which is addressed on the link above, and separate problem, absorbing their skills, ability, and willingness to volunteer, to which this post is dedicated:

What should specific person Smith do to help in the project of preventing X-risk, improving the world, saving lives? We assume here Smith will not be a donor - in which case the response would be "donate" - joined the community not long ago and has a skill set X.

Soon this problem will become worse due to influx of more people brought in by the soon to be published books by MacAskill, Yudkowsky and Singer coming out. There will be more people wanting to do something, and able to do some sorts of projects, but who are not being allocated any specific project that matches their skill set and values.

Now is a good time to solve it. I was talking about this problem today with Stephen Frey and we considered it would be a good idea to have a list of specific technical or research projects that can be broken down into smaller chunks for people to pick up and do. A Getting Things Done list for researchers and technology designers. Preferably those would be tractable projects that can be done in fewer than three months. There are some lists of open problems in AI and Superintelligence control, but not for many X-risks or other problems that some of the community frequently considers important.

So I decided to make a compilation of the questions and problems we already have listed here, and then ask someone (Oliver Habryka or a volunteer in the comment section here) to transform the compiled set into a standardized format.

A tentative category list

Area: X-risk, AI, Anti-aging, Cryonics, Rationality, IA, Self-Improvement, Differential Technological Development, Strategy, Civilizational Inadequacy, etc... describes what you have to value/disvalue in order for this project to match your values.

Project: description of which actions need to be taken in 3 month period for this project to be considered complete.

Context: if part of a larger project, which is it, and how will it connect to other parts. Also justific

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Existential biotech hazard that was designed in the 90s?
by EGI — 2015-03-08T01:08:54.154Z

Does anyone know something about this alteration of Klebsiella planticola? Paywalled paper here. (If someone has got access please PM me, I would like to read the paper to write a more fleshed out article.)

While I am not convinced that it would really have spread to every terrestrial ecosystem, or even every wheat field and I am not even sure if it could compete successfully with the wild type, I certainly would not bet the world on that. Even if it might only have become a nasty crop bug instead of an ecosystem killer, I think this may be the closest encounter with a true existential risk we have had so far. This suggests, that even our current low end biotech may be the greatest existential risk we face at the moment. Or is this just hyped bullshit for some reason I do not see right now (without reading the paper)?

Edit: Upon reading the original paper I am quite sure Cracked.com greatly exagerated the potential threat. 10^8 cfu (colony formin units) K. planticolata per gram soil (dry weight) was added on day 0, but after 8 weeks only 10^2 cfu survived (this is true for both wild type and modified K. planticolata). This suggests, that K. planticolata in the wild has typical densities more like 10^2 cfu per g than 10^8 cfu per g. 10^2 cfu per g is nowhere near enough to produce lethal ethanol concentrations in the soil, even if the modified strain could compete in the wild. Furthermore the concentration of the modified K. planticolata decreased faster than the concentration of the wild type suggesting reduced fitness of the GMO. On the other hand after 8 weeks both K. planticolata strains arrived at the same density of 100 cfu per g indicating comparable medium term survivability in unsterilized soil (I am not sure if indigenous K. planticolata which could compete with the GMO was present in the soil sample used). Yes, they did avoid the obvious failure mode of not differentiating between wild type and modified K. planticolata during recovery of K. planticola strains from the samples.
Meetup : Pittsburgh HPMoR Wrap Party
by Kenoubi — 2015-03-07T20:00:16.570Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Pittsburgh HPMoR Wrap Party

WHEN:
14 March 2015 12:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Bagel Factory, 420 S Craig St, Pittsburgh, PA

I'll be wearing a black t-shirt that says "If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong." I promise to be there until at least 15:00.
Venue has food and coffee.
See also https://www.facebook.com/events/824097430998639/.

Discussion article for the meetup : Pittsburgh HPMoR Wrap Party
Statistical learning theory and robust concept learning
by jessicata — 2015-03-07T04:13:37.000Z

In Magical Categories,
Eliezer argues that concepts learned by induction do not necessarily generalize
well to new environments. This is partially because of the complexity and
fragility of value, and partially because the training data might not
cover all the cases that will need to be covered. I will give a brief overview
of statistical learning theory approaches to concept learning and
then discuss relevance to AI safety research.
All of the content about statistical
learning theory (except active learning) is taken from the Stanford
CS229T lecture notes,
which I highly recommend reading if you are interested in this topic.

Statistical learning theory provides some guarantees about the performance
of induced hypotheses in various settings. I will discuss the settings
of uniform convergence, online learning, and active learning, and what
can be achived in each setting. In all settings, we will have some set of
hypotheses under consideration, H. We will interpret a hypothesis
as a function from the input type X to the output type Y. For example, in
an image classification task, X could be a set of images and Y could be the
unit interval (representing a probability that the image is in the class). The
hypothesis set H could be, for example, the set of logistic
regression classifiers. If h is our hypothesis and (x,y) is a single data
point, then we will accrue loss l(h(x),y).

Now let us look at each setting specifically. In the uniform convergence setting, there is some distribution over
(x,y) pairs. We will observe some of these as training data and find the
hypothesis in our class that minimizes loss on this dataset. Then, we will
score the hypothesis against a test set of pairs taken from the same distribution.
It turns out that if our hypothesis set is "small", then the hypothesis we find
will probably not do much worse on the training set than on the true distribution (i.e.
it will not overfit), and therefore it will be close to optimal on the true
distribution (since it was optimal on the training set). As a result, with
high probability, our hypothesis will score close to optimally on the test set.

More specifically, "small" in this context means that H has low
Rademacher complexity. This is usually ensured by the set being finite
(and having a moderate log size) or having a moderate number of parameters.
Rademacher complexity is a generaliza

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Meetup : Sydney Meetup - March - Bring a Newbie!
by taryneast — 2015-03-06T23:51:31.136Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - March - Bring a Newbie!

WHEN:
25 March 2015 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
565 George Street, Sydney, Australia 2000

It's time again to think about bringing along some new people. If you haven't been in a while, this is the month to come along and be present.

If there's somebody you've been meaning to ask along to LessWrong, this is the month to do it.

If you're a newbie and have been meaning to come along... this is your day!

Regular location - City of Sydney RSL
The restaurant on Level 2

Regular time (starting about 6:30)

We'll talk about what rationality means, what are the benefits of being more rational in your life, and discuss any questions you may have about rationality and the LessWrong community.

Hope to see you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - March - Bring a Newbie!
Meetup : Atlanta HPMOR Wrap Party
by Adele_L — 2015-03-06T22:52:31.148Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta HPMOR Wrap Party

WHEN:
14 March 2015 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Norgate Manor 2388 Lawrenceville Hwy. Unit L. Decatur, GA 30033

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is coming to an end! Join us as we celebrate!

Feel free to wear costumes - in fact it is encouraged!

We will have snacks, games, and discussion. Bring any food or entertainment you would like.

If you have any questions, please contact the organizer, Adele or post a comment here.

All are welcome to attend! We'd love to see you there! Feel free to drop in later or leave early at your convenience.

From 285 - get off at Exit 38 for Lawrenceviile Hwy. Head east towards the city down Lawrenceville Hwy.
The location is right after the light at Harcourt Drive at Norgate Manor on the right.

There will be cats present at the location. Please park in spots marked 'Visitor' - there are plenty at the front of the complex.

Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta HPMOR Wrap Party
Precisely Bound Demons and their Behavior
by  — 2015-03-06T20:01:32.234Z

EY posted this on reddit, I'd like to know what you'd do with it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/2y56qg/precisely_bound_demons_and_their_behavior/

I can't promise this will turn into a sufficiently good environment for storytelling or that I'll write in it, but you never know unless you try, and worldbuilding can be fun regardless... One in X people (X ~ 10,000?) has the ability to summon demons, once per Y days, and bind them to arbitrary commands at will. Demons are malevolent and will interpret any instruction in such ways as to cause the most damage. Evil summoners can sometimes reach an accommodation of sorts by giving the demons orders which benefit themselves and hurt others more, in which case the demon will often go along with it, most of the time.

Most good people with the ability to summon demons were advised never to do so, unless it became necessary to defeat an evil demon-summoner creating horror on a mass scale.

This world's Industrial Revolution began when it was realized that mathematically precise and complete commands to demons apparently could not be misinterpreted. For example (this could perhaps be picked apart): A demon told to accelerate a vehicle along an exactly given vector for a specified time, applying the same added acceleration at any given time to all particles in the vehicle, and causing no other impact on the material universe, will do only that... if the language of the contract can be mathematically specified in an absolutely unambiguous way. (What exactly is the 'vehicle'? Maybe you'd better have the demon apply acceleration to a sphere to which the engine car is attached.)

Demon-summoners promptly began to use their powers in the most economically rewarding way, such as by summoning demons who would just accelerate particular train engine cars; and this occurred on a mass scale throughout society.

This is a point where I wouldn't mind help worldbuilding: given this basic setup, what industrially useful demonic bindings can be precisely specified? Suppose the world is such that electricity doesn't exist, but fire does, and steam. Demon summoners will end up being rare enough, whatever frequency is 'rare enough', that the society doesn't come apart as the result of whatever powers you invent.

Bindings can also tell demons to act based on the result of a calculation, if that calculation is precisely specified. There is no...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2015-03-06T16:20:48.483Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on February 27th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

European Community Weekend 2015: 12 June 2015 12:00PM
Israel: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Pi Day Wrap Party: 14 March 2015 08:30PM
[Netherlands] Effective Altruism Netherlands: Present the charity you'd like to give to: 01 March 2015 02:00PM
[Netherlands] Effective Altruism Netherlands: Effective Altruism for the masses: 15 March 2015 02:00PM
[Netherlands] Effective Altruism Netherlands: Small concrete actions you could take: 29 March 2015 01:00PM
Prague - setting up: 23 March 2015 07:30PM
Singapore Meetup Group: 01 March 2015 02:00PM
Umbc meetup : 24 March 2015 04:56PM

The remaining meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Austin, TX - Caffe Medici: 28 February 2026 01:30PM
Moscow meetup: phenomenological analysis, methods of creativity, lightning talks: 01 March 2015 02:00PM
Seattle Sequences group: Mysterious Answers 3: 02 March 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Rationality Dojo - Optimising Skill Training: 01 March 2015 04:00PM
[Sydney] HPMOR Wrap Party! - Sydney Edition: 15 March 2015 06:00PM
Washington, D.C.: What If Scenarios: 01 March 2015 03:00PM
West LA: The Substitution Principle: 04 March 2015 07:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have ...
Continually-adjusted discounted preferences
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2015-03-06T16:03:15.703Z

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

This is one of the more minor suggestions, just a small tweak to help solve a specific issue.

Discounting time

The issue is the strange behaviour that agents with discount rates have in respect to time.

Quickly, what probability would you put on time travel being possible?

I hope, as good Bayesians, you didn't answer 0% (those who did should look here). Let's assume, for argument sake, that you answered 0.1%.

Now assume that you have a discount rate of 10% per year (many putative agent designs use discount rates for convergence or to ensure short time-horizons, where they can have discount rates of 90% per second or even more extreme). By the end of 70 years, the utility will be discounted to roughly 0.1%. Thus, from then on (plus or minus a few years), the highest expected value action for you is to search for ways of travelling back in time, and do all you stuff then.

This is perfectly time-consistent: given these premisses, you'd want the "you in a century" to search frantically for a time-machine, as the actual expected utility increase they could achieve is tiny.

If you were incautions enough to have discount rates that go back into the past as well as the future, then you'd already be searching frantically for a time-machine, for the tiniest change of going back to the big bang and having an impact there...

Continual corrigibility

We want the agents we design to apply the discount rate looking to the future only, not towards the past. To do so, we can apply corrigibility (see also here). This allows us to change an agent's utility function, reward it (in utility) for any cost involve with the change.

The logical thing to do is to corrige the agent's utility function to something that doesn't have such an extreme value in the past. At the moment of applying corrigibility, cut off the agent's utility at the present moment, and replace the past values with something much smaller. You could just set it to zero (though as a mathematician my first instincts was to make it slope symmetrically down towards the past as it does towards the future - making the present the most important time ever!).

This correction could be applied regularly, maybe even continuously, removing the incentive to search desperately for ways to try and affect the past.

Note that this is not a perfect cure - an AI could create suba...
Group Rationality Diary, March 1-21
by gjm — 2015-03-06T15:29:01.325Z

This is the public group rationality diary for March 1-21, 2015. It seems to be traditional to put a jokily defensive remark about downvoting here, but let's try omitting it and see what happens. Usually these are for 2-week periods, but as I write this it's already the 6th so I've extended it one week; but I recommend that the next be for 2 weeks again, March 22 to April 4. Here's the usual explanation:

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Previous diary: February 15-28

Rationality diaries archive
Meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup: social and board games
by DanArmak — 2015-03-06T10:34:01.202Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup: social and board games

WHEN:
10 March 2015 07:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon Street, Tel Aviv

We're having a meetup next week! There will be games that make you think, and people will also talking about physics, friendly AI, and how to effectively save the world.

As usual ;)

Please bring any games you'd like to share.

Where: Google, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon Street, Tel Aviv. Meet at the 29th floor (not the Google Campus floor). We'll then move to a room.

Contact: If you can't find us, call Anatoly, who is graciously hosting us, at 054-245-1060; or Joshua Fox at 054-569-1165.

Facebook: Join the group. Please RSVP at the FB event if you have Facebook, to help us get a sense of what to expect.

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Israel Meetup: social and board games
Andrew Ng dismisses UFAI concerns
by OphilaDros — 2015-03-06T05:26:04.340Z

http://fusion.net/story/54583/the-case-against-killer-robots-from-a-guy-actually-building-ai/

“I don’t work on preventing AI from turning evil for the same reason that I don’t work on combating overpopulation on the planet Mars,” he said. “Hundreds of years from now when hopefully we’ve colonized Mars, overpopulation might be a serious problem and we’ll have to deal with it. It’ll be a pressing issue. There’s tons of pollution and people are dying and so you might say, ‘How can you not care about all these people dying of pollution on Mars?’ Well, it’s just not productive to work on that right now.”

Current AI systems, Ng contends, are basic relative to human intelligence, even if there are things they can do that exceed the capabilities of any human. “Maybe hundreds of years from now, maybe thousands of years from now—I don’t know—maybe there will be some AI that turn evil,” he said, “but that’s just so far away that I don’t know how to productively work on that.”

The bigger worry, he noted, was the effect that increasingly smart machines might have on the job market, displacing workers in all kinds of fields much faster than even industrialization displaced agricultural workers or automation displaced factory workers.

(An earlier version of this article was titled 'Andrew Ng disses UFAI concerns" which is the phrasing many of the commenters are responding to).
False Thermodynamic Miracles
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2015-03-05T17:16:54.000Z

Cross posted at Less Wrong

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

Ok, here is the problem:

You have to create an AI that believes (or acts as if it believed) that event X is almost certain, while you believe that X is almost impossible. Furthermore, you have to be right. To make things more interesting, the AI is much smarter than you, knows everything that you do (and more), and has to react sensibly when event X doesn't happen.
Answers will be graded on mathematics, style, colours of ink, and compatibility with the laws of physics. Also, penmanship. How could you achieve this?

Acts and beliefs

The main trick is the parenthetical "(or acts as if it believed)". If the AI actually has true beliefs, then there is no problem with it being smart, being knowledgeable, or updating on the fact that X didn't happen. So the problem reduces to:

How can an AI, that believes that X is almost impossible, behave as if X were almost certain?
This will be constructed by developing on my idea for "utility indifference" (that old concept needs a better name, btw; corrigibility is a much better candidate for being labelled "utility indifference").

Noisy events and thermodynamic miracles

Imagine that a signal is travelling down a wire inside a noisy gas (or some other source of randomness). Almost certainly the signal will get through, but very occasionally, by the spontaneous action of the molecules in the gas, the signal will get overwhelmed, erased and overwritten with another signal, randomly. This could be seen as a type of thermodynamic miracle: an incredibly unlikely event caused by spontaneous and coincidental coordination between lots of different molecules. We assume here that the AI cannot cause a thermodynamic miracle, nor make it more likely (this may require some specific definitions of what "counts" as a miracle).

The idea is to make the AI indifferent to any world in which there is no thermodynamic miracle. So give it a utility u such that u(w)=constant, for any world w without a thermodynamic miracle at the point of interest. The value of that constant doesn't matter; the result is that the AI's actions have no impact on utility in any world where the miracle didn't happen. Thus, as long as there is a tiny chance that the miracle happened, the AI will behave as if that was a certainty: for only in those worlds do its actions have any impact.

You can probably see

...