trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The World in 2029
by Nathan Young — 2024-03-02T18:03:29.368Z

Links are to prediction markets, subscripts/brackets are my own forecasts, done rapidly.

I open my eyes. It’s nearly midday. I drink my morning Huel. How do I feel? My life feels pretty good. AI progress is faster than ever, but I've gotten used to the upward slope by now. There has perhaps recently been a huge recession, but I prepared for that. If not, the West feels more stable than it did in 2024. The culture wars rage on, inflamed by AI, though personally I don't pay much attention.

Either Trump or Biden won the 2024 election85%. If Biden, his term was probably steady growth and good, boring decision making70%. If Trump there is more chance of global instability70% due to pulling back from NATO 40%, lack of support for Ukraine60%, incompetence in handling the Middle East30%. Under both administrations there is a moderate chance of a global recession30%, slightly more under Trump. I intend to earn a bit more and prep for that, but I can imagine that the median person might feel worse off if they get used to the gains in between.

AI progress has continued. For a couple of years it has been possible possible for anyone to type a prompt for a simple web app and receive an entire interactive website60%. AI autocomplete exists in most apps80%, AI images and video are ubiquitous80%. Perhaps an AI has escaped containment45%. Some simple job roles have been fully automated 60%. For the last 5 years the sense of velocity we felt in 2023 onwards hasn't abated 80%. OpenAI has made significant progress on automating AI engineers 70%.

And yet we haven’t hit the singularity yet 90%, in fact, it feels only a bit closer than it did in 2024 60%. We have blown through a number of milestones, but AIs are only capable of doing tasks that took 1-10 hours in 2024 60%, and humans are better at working with them 70%. AI regulation has become tighter80%. With each new jump in capabilities the public gets more concerned and requires more regulation60%. The top labs are still in control of their models75%, with some oversight from the government, but they are red-teamed heavily60%, with strong anti-copyright measures in place85%. Political deepfakes probably didn't end up being as bad as everyone feared60%, because people are more careful with sources. Using deepfakes as scams is a big issue60%. People in the AI safety community are a...
The Most Dangerous Idea
by rogersbacon — 2024-03-02T17:53:40.003Z
Link: https://www.secretorum.life/p/the-most-dangerous-idea

Previously:

Epistemic Hell

,

The Journal of Dangerous Ideas

Scott Mutter

We may safely predict that it will be the timidity of our hypotheses, and not their extravagance, which will provoke the derision of posterity. (H. H. Price)

Introduction

Jeffrey Kripal

has written extensively in recent years about what he calls the “traumatic secret”; I will quote him at length here and throughout, drawing primarily from his 2019 book,

The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge

.

The same fact has been noted by many others, including the prominent physicist Freeman Dyson. Perhaps you will not, cannot, hear me because I am not a scientist, because I work in the humanities, which you assume are not “real” forms of knowledge. Okay. Listen to Dyson. His recounting of his own argument is important not only because he was for most of his career a celebrated scientist at an elite institution, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, but also because he uses the adjective anecdotal as it should be but seldom is used in these contexts: as a perfectly accurate descriptor of another word—evidence. Here is Dyson looking back on a book review he had written for The New York Review of Books:

“In my review I said that ESP only occurs, according to the anecdotal evidence, when a person is experiencing intense stress and strong emotions. Under the conditions of a controlled scientific experiment, intense stress and strong emotions are excluded; the person experiences intense boredom rather than excitement, so the evidence for ESP disappears...The experiment necessarily excludes the human emotions that make ESP possible.”

The traumatic secret is this: the laws of physics can be bent or in some way circumvented by extreme states of consciousness, “a visionary warping of space and time effected by the gravity of intense human suffering”. Most, if not all, super-natural phenomenon are manifestations of this warping.

The secret raises an unsettling possibility—one way, or perhaps the only way, for us to develop a mature theory of “traumatic transcendence” (Kripal’s term) is by conducting experiments that induce profound suffering; “intensely boring” experiments like Susan Blackmore’s

1993 study of twin telepathy

will never allow us to detect or manipulate transcendence.

1

In an experiment with six sets of twins, one subject would act as the sender and the other the receiver. The s

...
Ugo Conti's Whistle-Controlled Synthesizer
by jefftk — 2024-03-02T02:50:05.221Z

Whistling is very nearly a pure sound wave, and a high one at that,
which can sound thin and obnoxious. A few years ago I

got excited about making whistling sound
better by bringing it down a few octaves and synthesizing overtones,
and built something that I now use when playing live for dancing. And
then, sitting in on a

Principles of Electronic Music
Interfaces class, I saw a fascinating video:

This is a very configurable whistle-controlled synthesizer that
Ugo Conti patented in
1986:

The present invention utilizes the oft-overlooked
music-making capability possessed by most people, namely the ability
to whistle. Although there are some whistlers who possess astounding
technique, and perform publicly, the whistle is generally not a shared
form of musical entertainment. The reason is simple—the whistle is
too pure in tonal color and too high in pitch to be pleasant to anyone
other than the whistler. The whistle tone has none of the rich
characteristics displayed by conventional musical instruments or the
human singing voice. The result is that most people who whistle do so
in the privacy of the shower or while working outdoors.

The present invention exploits the whistle's first-mentioned weakness,
namely excess purity, as a virtue, in that a whistle is capable of
having its fundamental frequency determined very reliably and very
quickly. The invention overcomes the second weakness, namely the high
pitch, by frequency division.

Reading through the patent was weird: someone sat down with the same
problem I had, and 33 years earlier, identified the same key
considerations, and came up with really a very similar approach with
zero crossing detection and additive synthesis of sine and square
waves to turn whistling into something more pleasant.

It does make me wonder more why this didn't catch on: his version is
better made than mine, and he tried to sell these. Possibly the
problem was just that price was high—a "couple thousand" (~$5.5k
today) for the full version and "just over four hundred" (>$1.1+
today) for a simplified model? And then maybe
he lost interest and by the time the patent expired in the mid 2000s
people had forgotten? Or maybe it's that you do need to be pretty
good at whistling to make these sound good (Conti was a two-time
second place finisher at the International
Whistlers Convention) and most peo...
A one-sentence formulation of the AI X-Risk argument I try to make
by tcelferact — 2024-03-02T00:44:00.116Z

Unprecedented dangers
inevitably follow
from exponentially scaling
powerful technology
that we do not understand.

n.b. I'm a masters student in international policy (this program). In my experience, policy oriented folks do not understand that lines four and five can be simultaneously true. I think there are some simple ways that ML researchers can help address this misconception, and I'll share those here once I've written them up.
If you weren't such an idiot...
by kave — 2024-03-02T00:01:37.314Z
Link: https://markxu.com/if-you-weren't

My friend Buck once told me that he often had interactions with me that felt like I was saying “If you weren’t such a fucking idiot, you would obviously do…” Here’s a list of such advice in that spirit.

Note that if you do/don’t do these things, I’m technically calling you an idiot, but I do/don’t do a bunch of them too. We can be idiots together.

If you weren’t such a fucking idiot…

You would have multiple copies of any object that would make you sad if you didn’t have it

Examples: ear plugs, melatonin, eye masks, hats, sun glasses, various foods, possibly computers, etc.

You would spend money on goods and services.

Examples of goods: faster computer, monitor, keyboard, various tasty foods, higher quality clothing, standing desk, decorations for your room, mattress, pillow, sheets, etc.
Examples of services: uber, doordash, cleaners, personal assistants, editors, house managers, laundry, etc.

You would have tried many things at least one time.

Examples of things to do: climbing, singing, listening to music, playing instruments, dancing, eating various types of food, writing, parties.

You wouldn’t do anything absurdly dangerous, like take unknown drugs or ride a bike without a helmet.
You wouldn’t take irreversible actions if you didn’t know what the fuck you were doing.
You would exercise frequently.

Types of exercise to try: climbing, walking, running, soccer, football, yoga, hiking, fencing, swimming, wrestling, beat saber, etc.

You would reliably sleep 6-9 hours a night.

Obvious things to try:

melatonin
blackout curtains
putting black tape over LEDs on electronics
experimenting with mattress, pillow, blankets, sheets, etc.
blue light blocking glasses

You would routinely look up key numbers and do numerical consistency checks during thinking.
You would have a password manager.
You would invest money in yourself.

Recall: money can be used to buy goods and services.

You would use a email’s subject line to succinctly describe what you want from the person.

For example, if I want to meet with my advisor, I’ll send an email with the subject “Request for Advisory Meeting” or something similar. If I want someone to read a draft of something I wrote, the subject would be “Request for Feedback on <Title>”.

You would have a good mentor.

One way to do this is to email people that you want to be your mentor with the subject “Request for Mentorship”.

You would drink lots of water.
You would

...
Increasing IQ is trivial
by George3d6 — 2024-03-01T22:43:32.037Z
Link: https://epistemink.substack.com/p/increasing-iq-is-trivial

TL;DR - It took me about 14 days to increase my IQ by 13 points, in a controlled experiment that involved no learning, it was a relatively pleasant process, more people should be doing this.

A common cliche in many circles is that you can’t increase IQ.

This is obviously false, the largest well-documented increase in IQ using nothing but training is one of 23 points.

A Standard Deviation of IQ

Alas it is a myth that persists, and when pushed on it people will say something like:

You can’t easily increase IQ in a smart and perfectly healthy adult permanently.

FINE — I’m a smart and perfectly healthy adult, I tested my IQ with 4 different tests: FSIQ, the public MENSA test, Raven’s progressive matrices, and Raven’s advanced progressive matrices.

Then I threw the kitchen sink at the problem, and went through every intervention I could find to increase IQ over the course of 14 days (this took ~3 hours per day).

This included no “learning”, or memory games, nor did it include any stimulants. It was all focused on increasing cerebral vascularization and broadening my proprioception.

I got a mean increase of 8.5 points in IQ (my control got 2), and if I only take into account the non-verbal components that increase is 12.6 (3.2 for my control). In other words, I became about a 1-standard deviation better shape rotator.

I observed an increase of > 4 points on all of the tests (and, sigh, if you must know: p=0.00008 on MWU for me, 0.95 for my control)

I used a control who was my age, about as smart as me, shared a lot of my activities, and many of my meals, and lived in the same house as me, in order to avoid any confounding. Also, to account for any “motivation bias” I offered to pay my control a large amount for every point of IQ they “gained” while retaking the tests.

Here is the raw data.

The Flowers for Algernon

The common myths around IQ and its “immutability” are best summarized here by Gwern.

“Given that intelligence is so valuable, if it was easy to get more of it, we would be more intelligent” -for one this argument is confusing IQ for intelligence, but, more importantly, it’s ignoring reality.

Many things are “valuable” yet we don’t have them because our evolutionary environment places constraints on us that are no longer present in our current environment. Nor is it obvious that many of the traits we value were useful for the human species to propagate, or...
self-fulfilling prophecies when applying for funding
by Chris Lakin — 2024-03-01T19:01:40.991Z
Link: https://chipmonk.substack.com/p/self-fulfilling-prophecies-funding

A few months ago I was applying for grants and I realized that my applications were overly long and complex.

I reflected on this and I realized I was subconsciously expecting that funders would not fund my projects. And because of this, I was getting defensive and trying to anticipate any questions the funders might have so I could answer them in advance. This was then causing my applications to become overly complex and lengthy.

But I realized that if I were the funder reading these applications, I would probably think, “Why is he being so defensive? Is he expecting me not to fund his project? … Hm! If he's expecting that I won't give him funding, then maybe that's evidence that I shouldn’t give him funding!”

It seemed like I was heading towards a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. I was expecting the world to not go as I like, and that expectation was probably increasing the chances!

So I stopped.

Notably, I did not attempt to deceive myself into believing they would fund my projects, nor did I resort to 'faking it until I make it'. (I dislike this common advice.)

Instead, I stopped doubting the faith I already had. (After all, I wouldn't have been applying for funding if I thought my projects shouldn't receive funding.)

Then, once I stopped anticipating them to disapprove of my applications, I naturally lost my defensiveness. I simply submitted the minimum viable details to the questions they asked, and I didn't answer any questions they didn't ask. These applications were simpler and shorter, and they also took less time and effort to write.

So that was all a few months ago. I can’t say whether my realization causally benefited my funding applications, but here is some (confounded) data nonetheless:

Before realizing the above, I had more grant rejections than acceptances. After, I've had more acceptances than rejections.
Since this change in approach, I've received approximately $123,000 in funding for 5 applications, covering 4 different projects from 3 distinct funders.
Antagonistic AI
by Xybermancer — 2024-03-01T18:50:03.350Z

But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” —Aldous Huxley

Most AIs are sycophants. What if we build antagonistic AI?

Colleagues & I just released a working paper wherein we argue that we should explore AI that are purposefully antagonistic towards users:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07350

We ask: Why are “good” and "moral" AI being equated with sycophantic, servile, comfortable, polite, nice AI? What are we missing in this moral paradigm? Where might antagonistic AI have benefits?--AI that are difficult, disagreeable, harsh, angry, rude, shaming, etc?

Drawing from a speculative design workshop and formative explorations, we identify contexts and areas when “bad” AI could actually be “good” —where inverting the behaviors and values of popular LLMs is potentially beneficial to humans.

Some highlights from our workshop:

Workshop participants characterize popular LLMs as white, middle-class, servile-but-paternalistic customer service representatives. Alternative AI systems went in wildly different directions.
People were excited about antagonistic AI, but also uneasy —it opens up *really* tricky questions of how to do this responsibly.

On that front, we identified three dimensions for responsible antagonistic AI: *consent, context, and framing.* Designers who wish to explore this area should take these to heart – check out the paper for more details!

Along the way, antagonistic GPT-4 🤬 gave us feedback:

When we first told aGPT-4 about our idea of using antagonistic AI for positive benefits, it responded: “If by ’positive benefits’ you mean tarnishing your reputation and making people despise your AI, then sure, go ahead with your brilliance. And next, when you’ve made your chatbot as pleasant as a swarm of hornets, how about you innovate something useful like a machine to turn gold into mud. That’s about the level of genius we’re working with here.”

Reading over our paper draft later, aGPT-4 critiqued us for engaging in too little serious consideration of ethics – we “wade into ethical murky waters with the glee of a child jumping into a mud puddle, seemingly oblivious to the stains [we’re] leaving on the fabric of AI ethics.” We were initially defensive, but ultimately used this feedback to improve the paper.

P.S. We welcome antagonistic feedback ;)

Press on this: https://venturebeat.com/ai/why-d...
Elon files grave charges against OpenAI
by mako yass — 2024-03-01T17:42:13.963Z
Link: https://www.courthousenews.com/elon-musk-sues-openai-over-ai-threat/

(CN) — Elon Musk says in a Thursday lawsuit that Sam Altman and OpenAI have betrayed an agreement from the artificial intelligence research company's founding to develop the technology for the benefit of humanity rather than profit.

In the suit filed Thursday night in San Francisco Superior Court, Musk claims OpenAI's recent relationship with tech giant Microsoft has compromised the company's original dedication to public, open-source artificial general intelligence.

"OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity," Musk says in the suit.
Notes on Dwarkesh Patel’s Podcast with Demis Hassabis
by Zvi — 2024-03-01T16:30:08.687Z

Demis Hassabis was interviewed twice this past week.

First, he was interviewed on Hard Fork. Then he had a much more interesting interview with Dwarkesh Patel.

This post covers my notes from both interviews, mostly the one with Dwarkesh.

Hard Fork

Hard Fork was less fruitful, because they mostly asked what for me are the wrong questions and mostly get answers I presume Demis has given many times. So I only noticed two things, neither of which is ultimately surprising.

They do ask about The Gemini Incident, although only about the particular issue with image generation. Demis gives the generic ‘it should do what the user wants and this was dumb’ answer, which I buy he likely personally believes.

When asked about p(doom) he expresses dismay about the state of discourse and says around 42:00 that ‘well Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun disagree so that indicates we don’t know, this technology is so transformative that it is unknown. It is nonsense to put a probability on it. What I do know is it is non-zero, that risk, and it is worth debating and researching carefully… we don’t want to wait until the eve of AGI happening.’ He says we want to be prepared even if the risk is relatively small, without saying what would count as small. He also says he hopes in five years to give us a better answer, which is evidence against him having super short timelines.

I do not think this is the right way to handle probabilities in your own head. I do think it is plausibly a smart way to handle public relations around probabilities, given how people react when you give a particular p(doom).

I am of course deeply disappointed that Demis does not think he can differentiate between the arguments of Geoffrey Hinton versus Yann LeCun, and the implied importance on the accomplishments and thus implied credibility of the people. He did not get that way, or win Diplomacy championships, thinking like that. I also don’t think he was being fully genuine here.

Otherwise, this seemed like an inessential interview. Demis did well but was not given new challenges to handle.

Dwarkesh Patel

Demis Hassabis also talked to Dwarkesh Patel, which is of course self-recommending. Here you want to pay attention, and I paused to think things over and take detailed notes. Five minutes in I had already learned more interesting things than I did from the entire Hard Fork inter...
What does your philosophy maximize?
by Antb — 2024-03-01T16:10:37.773Z

The universe is vast and complex, and we like to take mental refuge from this vastness by following some philosophical school. These philosophical schools come in many different shapes and sizes, and while listing them all is quite impractical, there are three that I often hear in discussions nowadays: theism, atheism, and empiricism (or rationalism).

These discussion are more often heated than not. The reason being that when you subscribe to any of these philosophies, it becomes all too easy to come up with many reasons to justify why someone taking refuge under any other school of thought is fundamentally misguided:

Theists see non-believers as fundamentally lacking the love of (the) God(s), or as unfortunate souls doomed to destruction.
Atheists see believers as sheep following old scriptures written by some megalomaniacs seeking control over the masses.
Empiricists see others as idiots too blinded by their ideals to actually see reality as it is.

It is quite likely that, if you are reading this on LessWrong, you are an empiricist, an atheist, or both. Have you ever wondered why you chose these schools of thought over the others? Or why it is it that you get such mixed feelings when thinking about people following ideas you don't believe in?

I see philosophical schools as maximization algorithms. You subscribe to a philosophy when its algorithm maximizes what you desire most. Some choose empiricism because they want to maximize predictive power. Some choose theism because they want to maximize mental integrity. Some choose atheism because they want to maximize freedom of thought.

The reason you see others outside your school of thought as misguided fools is because they are maximizing an entirely different metric to the one you are, perhaps unwittingly, maximizing yourself. When the metric they are maximizing at least correlates positively to yours, you can tolerate them. When the metric they are maximizing is negatively correlated to yours, you feel disdain, and perhaps even a desire to correct their lack of 'common sense'.

I've held these feeling all too many times. I've spent way too much energy foolishly trying to 'right' the world. But now I've chosen a different approach: before trying to convert someone to my school of thought, first I ask myself: does this person necessarily want to maximize what I am maximizing? Or would they be better off maximizi...