I. Introduction and a prima facie case
It seems to me that most (perhaps all) effective altruists believe that:
A brief overview of recent OpenAI departures (Ilya Sutskever, Jan Leike, Daniel Kokotajlo, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Pavel Izmailov, William Saunders, Ryan Lowe Cullen O'Keefe[1]). Will add other relevant media pieces below as I come across them.
Some quotes perhaps worth highlighting...
Introduction
When trying to persuade people that misaligned AGI is an X-risk, it’s important to actually explain how such an AGI could plausibly take control. There are generally two types of scenario laid out, depending on how powerful you think an early AGI would be. ...
For reference, here is a seemingly nice summary of Fearon's "Rationalist explanations for war" by David Patel.
Swapcard tips:
You can use Firefox/Safari/Chrome etc. on your phone, go to swapcard.com and use that instead of downloading the Swapcard app from your app store. As far as I know, the only thing the app has that the mobile site does not, is the QR code that you need when signing in when you first get to the venue and pick up your badge
The other fields, like 'How can I help others' and 'How can others help me' appear when you view someone's profile, but will not be used when searching using Swapcard search. This is another reason to use the Swapcard Attendee Google sheet that is linked-to in Swapcard to search
People might not want their data uploaded to a commercial large language model, but if you can run an open-source LLM locally, you can upload the Attendee Google sheet and use it to help you find useful contacts
Summary: This post argues that brain preservation via fluid preservation could potentially be a cost-effective method to save lives, meriting more consideration as an EA cause. I review the current technology, estimate its cost-effectiveness under various assumptions, and...
The difference is that if you are biologically dead, there is nothing you can do to prevent a malevolant actor to upload your mind. If you are terminally ill and are pessimistic about the future, you can at least choose cremation.
I am not saying that there should be no funding for brain preservation, but personally I am not very enthusiastic since there is the danger that we will not solve the alignment problem.
I am a lawyer. I am not licensed in California, or Delaware, or any of the states that likely govern OpenAI's employment contracts. So take what I am about to say with a grain of salt, as commentary rather than legal advice. But I am begging any California-licensed attorneys reading this to look into it in more detail. California may have idiosyncratic laws that completely destroy my analysis, which is based solely on general principles of contract law and not any research or analysis of state-specific statutes or cases. I also have not seen the actual contracts and am relying on media reports. But.
I think the OpenAI anti-whistleblower agreement is completely unenforceable, with two caveats. Common law contract principles generally don't permit surprises, and don't allow new terms unless some mutual promise is made in return for those new terms. A valid contract requires a "meeting...
(Apologies for errors or sloppiness in this post, it was written quickly and emotionally.)
Marisa committed suicide earlier this month. She suffered for years from a cruel mental illness, but that will not be legacy–her legacy will be the enormous amount of suffering she...
I'm writing a quick piece on the scale, in case you (or anyone else) is interested in giving feedback before I post it (probably next week).
I am similarly unenthused about the weird geneticism.
Insofar as somewhat more altruism in the economy is the aim, sure, why not! I'm not opposed to that, and you may think that e.g. giving pledges or founders pledge are already steps in that direction. But that seems different from what most people think of when you say socialism, which they associate with ownership of means of production, or very heavy state interventionism and planned economy! It feels a tiny bit bailey and motte ish.
To give a bit of a hooray for the survey numbers - at the German ... (read more)