This is the full text of a post from " The Obsolete Newsletter," a Substack that I write about the intersection of capitalism, geopolitics, and artificial intelligence. I’m a freelance journalist and the author of a forthcoming book called Obsolete: Power, Profit, and the Race for Machine Superintelligence.
In this presentation, delivered at QRI Sweden's 2024 Meetup, Andrés Gómez Emilsson from the Qualia Research Institute makes a powerful case for reimagining the future of consciousness as one where the most extreme forms of suffering are not only understood but eradicated, and one that also makes room for ecstatic, transformative, and deeply harmonious experiences.
Wednesday, November 20
The Center for Open Science (COS) is committed to increasing the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research. Supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the Scaling Machine Assessments of Research Trustworthiness (SMART) competition exemplifies this mission by exploring innovative methods to predict the replicability of scientific findings using algorithms.
A new report for Congress recommends that the US start a "Manhattan Project" to build Artificial General Intelligence. To do so would be a suicide race.
Crosspost of this on my blog. 1 My basic view. . 'Cause everybody cries Everybody hurts sometimes. Sometimes everything is wrong. —Rem “Everybody hurts”. You didn’t think the era of absurdly long posts was over, did you?. Prior to the 2024 election, there were a series of swing states that pundits forecasted could have gone either way.
Crosspost of this on my blog. 1 My basic view. . 'Cause everybody cries Everybody hurts sometimes. Sometimes everything is wrong. —Rem “Everybody hurts”. You didn’t think the era of absurdly long posts was over, did you?. Prior to the 2024 election, there were a series of swing states that pundits forecasted could have gone either way.
Fears of ‘model collapse’ are overstated — at least for now...
Steve Bellovin is retiring. Here’s his retirement talk, reflecting on his career and what the cybersecurity field needs next.
Pain in creatures of significantly debated consciousness: much more than you wanted to know
In the second phase of our Research & Data As Tools Study, Faunalytics and Good Growth collaborate to better understand how advocates in China & Southeast Asia use these tools in their work. The post Research And Data As Tools In Advocates’ Decision-Making: A Focus On China & Southeast Asia appeared first on Faunalytics.
Researchers reviewed the scientific literature on fur farming and found significant animal welfare, zoonotic disease, and environmental risks. The post Fur Farming: Too Costly To Continue? appeared first on Faunalytics.
The Rethink Priorities Worldview Investigation Team is working on a model of consciousness in artificial systems. This article describes some complications to thinking of current LLM AI systems as coherent persons, despite the appearances to the contrary... . Introduction. .
EU fish corporate ask 🐟
It's happening
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European fish corporate ask. Hello readers, welcome to the November Animal Ask newsletter. Remember we told you in our last newsletter that we were about to embark on an EU-wide fish welfare research project to help stakeholders develop a coordinated...
EA Forum Digest #216
Hello!. The long awaited Donation Election has now started, vote here! The pot will be divided between the top 3 candidates when voting closes on Dec 3rd, you can change your vote as many times as you want until then (also consider donating to increase the size of the pot). This post gives a quick overview of all the candidates.
But there are other good reasons to shake up the DOE
On the emergence of history's reins. One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die. ― Charles Darwin. We are a way for the universe to know itself. — Carl Sagan. If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else. — Yogi Berra. .
Helping Children Grow Up Healthier with Vitamin AVitamin A is critical to children’s healthy growth and development. This essential micronutrient not only protects and strengthens vision, but it helps build strong immune systems. For more than 50 years, Helen Keller Intl has been at the forefront of vitamin A supplementation for children around the world. […].
In celebration of GIS Day 2024, themed “Mapping Minds, Shaping the World: 25 Years of GIS Excellence,” we are proud to spotlight the groundbreaking work of Dr. Abdoul Azize Millogo, an esteemed figure in the application of geographic information systems (GIS) to combat vector-borne diseases in Burkina Faso. Dr. Millogo’s role as the GIS Coordinator […].
A place to explain your preferences, discuss them, and maybe change your mind. Some comments on this thread are cross-posted from a text box which appears when you reach the end of the voting process, but everyone is welcome to post here whenever. You can read about all the candidates here. Discuss...
Join us in the Bay Area on March 1-2 (shortly after EAG Bay Area!) for two days of innovation, collaboration, and inspiration in the developing field of AI and animal welfare. 🎟️ Get earlybird tickets by Dec 1. 🎓 Apply to speak by Dec 15.
No really, I'd love to know what's happening here.
Last quarter, we empowered individuals and organizations to embrace plant-based living, reducing animal suffering through impactful outreach. From student engagement to corporate partnerships, every initiative brought us closer to a more compassionate world for animals. In this newsletter, we share the progress we’ve made together, thanks to your unwavering support and the dedication of our […].
An influential congressional commission is calling for a militarized race to build superintelligent AI based on threadbare evidence
Cash Incentives Boost Insurance Enrollment but Fail to Secure Long-Term Retention in Thailand
A study on Thailand’s social insurance program found that cash incentives significantly boosted enrollment among informal workers, but retention was low, as many valued the immediate cash benefit over long-term insurance.
elewis@poverty…
Tue, 11/19/2024 - 17:31...
Climate Vault's Greenstone on the Economics of Carbon: ESG Currents
Professor Michael Greenstone discusses his research on pricing the social cost of carbon and Climate Vault's efforts to create a more robust market for carbon credits.
elewis@poverty…
Tue, 11/19/2024 - 17:27...
Soft Skills: The missing piece in employability
To harness potential of its youth, India must reimagine employability, particularly in context of AI, and invest in teaching methods that leverage technology. elewis@poverty…
Tue, 11/19/2024 - 17:23...
What Happens When an AI Assistant Helps the Tutor, Instead of the Student
An AI-powered tutoring assistant increased human tutors’ capacity to help students through math problems and improved students’ performance in math, according to a Stanford University study.
elewis@poverty…
Tue, 11/19/2024 - 17:08...
A new study published in Nature Human Behaviour suggests that a tool similar to a stock market could help scientists identify research findings that are likely to hold up to scrutiny. The study, conducted by a group of social scientists from around the world, tested the ability of a "decision market" to predict which results from previously published social science experiments would be...
J-PAL North America announces new evaluation incubator collaborators from state and local governments
Selected LEVER collaborators will work with the organization to develop an evaluation of their respective programs that alleviate poverty.
elewis@poverty…
Tue, 11/19/2024 - 16:49...
Executive Summary. Welcome to ALLFED’s 2024 Highlights, our annual update on what Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters has been up to this year. From producing fifteen scientific papers on global catastrophes to forming the first blueprint for an Extreme Pandemic Resilience Plan for Vital Industry, to being featured in over 90 media articles—it’s been a busy, productive year of impact.
Center on Long-Term Risk (CLR) is accepting applications to the next iteration of our introductory fellowship. We are now planning to run two related programs: the CLR Foundations Course and the CLR S-Risk Seminars. The CLR Foundations Course will introduce people to CLR’s research on s-risk reduction. Apply by Wednesday November 27th, 23:59 Pacific Time.
A U.S. congressional commission on Tuesday proposed a Manhattan Project-style initiative to fund the development of AI systems that will be as smart or smarter than humans, amid intensifying competition with China over advanced technologies.
AI for Social Good
We need rigorous impact evaluations of AI in the social sector to ensure that it promotes social welfare.
elewis@poverty…
Tue, 11/19/2024 - 16:23...
I think AI agents (trained end-to-end) might intrinsically prefer power-seeking, in addition to whatever instrumental drives they gain. The logical structure of the argument. Premises. People will configure AI systems to be autonomous and reliable in order to accomplish tasks. This configuration process will reinforce & generalize behaviors which complete tasks reliably.
In health and medicine, we have many government agencies, and private philanthropies, devoted to many specific medical conditions, and also to studying and reforming medicine in general, at a meta level.
Are you lonely? Do you have a close partner or friends, or a wider social network? Do you have people you can connect with, and depend...
We highlight five key moves the new administration could make to improve the nation's biosecurity
Measles, mumps, and polio are supposed to be diseases of the past. In the early to mid-20th century, scientists developed vaccines that effectively eliminated the risk of anyone getting sick or dying from illnesses that had killed millions over millennia of human history. Vaccines, alongside sanitized water and antibiotics, have marked the epoch of modern […]...
Dear Foresight friend, support Foresight Institute's mission to accelerate crucial technologies in 2025. With a $45k matching grant, your contribution towards advancing bio, nano, neuro and AI progress gets doubled.
A nine-episode set of interviews that doubles as a crash course in the debates, issues, and ideas driving the modern metascience movement
Plus, Chinese researchers used Llama to create a military tool for the PLA, a Google AI system discovered a zero-day cybersecurity vulnerability, and Complex Systems
Tuesday, November 19
Cow’s milk is a bodily fluid susceptible to carrying harmful pathogens. Could emphasizing such attributes turn people off dairy products and reduce consumption?. The post Does Disgust Influence Dairy Consumption? appeared first on Faunalytics.
I swear I'm not being hyperbolic: no atheist has ever successfully answered these questions
For each handmade pair of glasses sold, the eyewear brand will donate £33 towards Sightsavers' eye health work.
Interesting analysis: Although much attention is given to sophisticated, zero-click spyware developed by companies like Israel’s NSO Group, the Italian spyware marketplace has been able to operate relatively under the radar by specializing in cheaper tools.
What do you do with Target Malaria, and what do you enjoy about your work? As an insectary assistant at the Target Malaria Insectary at the Uganda Virus Research Institute, I am captivated by the fascinating transformation of Anopheles mosquitoes. The aquatic stages, with their wriggling movements in the water, are particularly intriguing to me. […].
Summary: It's been a while since I last put serious thought into where to donate. Well I'm putting thought into it this year and I'm changing my mind on some things. I now put more priority on existential risk (especially AI risk), and less on animal welfare and global priorities research.
TLDR: We want to describe a concrete and plausible story for how AI models could become schemers. We aim to base this story on what seems like a plausible continuation of the current paradigm. Future AI models will be asked to solve hard tasks.
On November 15, a group of researchers from the CLTC AI Security Initiative submitted a working paper to the Paris Peace Forum in response to its Call for…. The post CLTC AI Security Initiative Publishes Working Paper on Intolerable Risk Thresholds for AI appeared first on CLTC.
Summary: Last updated 2024-11-20. It's been a while since I last put serious thought into where to donate. Well I'm putting thought into it this year and I'm changing my mind on some things. I now put more priority on existential risk (especially AI risk), and less on animal welfare and global priorities research.
Last month, the Seva Foundation and The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness released a groundbreaking report revealing a striking truth: Children with vision loss learn at half the rate of those with good or corrected vision. Put another way – every year, 6.3 million school years are lost due to uncorrected vision, amounting ….
TL;DR: rough estimates are better than no estimates. Refusals to quantify often hide that one is implicitly (and unjustifiably) counting some interests for zero. Introduction. Inspired by Bentham’s Bulldog, I recently donated $1000 to the Shrimp Welfare Project.
Marketing Advisor
admin_inox
Tue, 11/19/2024 - 01:30
vacancy_id
SYS-1232
location
Kampala, Uganda
Contract type
Fixed Term
Duration
12 Months
Frontend apply URL
https://jobs.gainhealth.org/vacancies/1232/apply/
Closing date
Mon, 12/02/2024 - 12:00
Department
Programmes
about_the_role
<p>The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is seeking a Marketing Advisor to lead...
Why might someone who wants to improve the world focus their efforts on AI safety? And what reasons do we have to think AI could be particularly unsafe? The field of artificial intelligence has made rapid advancements in recent years—so much so that ‘AI’ has become a catchall buzzword for... Read more...
Monday, November 18
(thanks to Alex Mallen, Cody Rushing, Zach Stein-Perlman, Hoagy Cunningham, Vlad Mikulik, and Fabien Roger for comments). Sometimes I hear people argue against AI control as follows: if your control measures rely on getting good judgments from "trusted" AI models, you're doomed because AI models aren't adversarially robust.
About us. We use volunteers to treat mental illnesses and otherwise help people become happier and more productive. We mainly use CBT and ACT. Here's an overview of our results: Data on General Population. Average from across all the client groups we serve. Excludes dropouts.On average, people are 2 points out of 10 happier after their first six sessions.
about trade-offs
The following statement regarding the Farm Bill may be attributed to Leah Garcés, CEO and President of Mercy For Animals: “We applaud the U.S. Senate for releasing Farm Bill text that incorporates Mercy For Animals’ priorities to support farmers in transitioning their factory farms to climate-friendly operations and require the federal government to prepare and […].
The following statement regarding the Farm Bill may be attributed to Leah Garcés, CEO and President of Mercy For Animals: “We applaud the U.S. Senate for releasing Farm Bill text that incorporates Mercy For Animals’ priorities to support farmers in transitioning their factory farms to climate-friendly operations and require the federal government to prepare and […].
The Donation Election has begun!. You can vote here, find out more about the voting system here, and donate to the Donation Election fund here. This post introduces our candidates. We’re splitting by cause area for easy reading, but you’ll be voting on them all together.
And how the UN’s birth rate forecasts keep getting it wrong...
They hated him because he spoke the truth
Researchers explore how undercover videos from animal advocacy groups impact people’s emotions and donations. The post The Role Of Emotional Reactions To Undercover Videos appeared first on Faunalytics.
Zero-day vulnerabilities are more commonly used, according to the Five Eyes: Key Findings. In 2023, malicious cyber actors exploited more zero-day vulnerabilities to compromise enterprise networks compared to 2022, allowing them to conduct cyber operations against higher-priority targets.
This time last year seemed to herald a landmark period in establishing AI governance regimes around the world. After ChatGPT and other AI tools burst onto the scene, U.S. policymakers issued new executive orders, hosted hearings and high-profile learning sessions, and developed new frameworks and standards to support the safe and secure development of AI.
AI safety under Trump, the importance of antimicrobial resistance, and more. View this email in your browser
Hello! Our favourite links this month include:
A case for the importance and neglectedness of combating anti-microbial resistance. What we know so far about the incoming Trump Administration’s views on AI safety.
The longtermist funding ecosystem needs certain functions to exist at a reasonable scale. I argue LTFF should continue to be funded because we're currently one of the only organizations comprehensively serving these functions. Specifically, we: Fund early-stage technical AI safety researchers working outside major labs. Help talented people transition into existential risk work.
If aliens built AI, would it also use stochastic gradient descent?
Mission and Vision
gloireri
Mon, 11/18/2024 - 14:32
Mission and VisIon. Date
18.11.2024
Image Thumb (540x337px)...
Greetings from a world where…...
United to Beat Malaria, in partnership with RBM Partnership to End Malaria, just launched the Next Chapter of Progress StoryMap that showcases over 50 Africa-driven partnerships driving sustainable progress towards malaria elimination. A story map is a visual representation using maps to organize and outline the structure of a narrative or project. The purpose of […].
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance did not sound like guys likely to support foreign aid spending. Vance would rail against Kamala Harris, who he alleged “taxed money from the American taxpayer, sent it off to China and to foreign regimes all over the world.” (It’s not clear what […]...
On the emergence of history’s reins...
Learn how our disability-inclusive projects are helping to create a better world for everyone by supporting people like Sadah, Eunice and Shihab.
Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a new framework for thinking through your ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions. This unconventional column is based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. Here is a Vox reader’s question, […]...
A note from Rachel, Kaya Guides’ founder: This post is to announce that Kaya Guides has brought on Huw Evans as a new co-founder and our CTO to bring our work to scale. I’ve been running Kaya Guides mostly as a solo founder for the last two years.
Summary: Last updated 2024-11-20.
It’s been a while since I last put serious thought into where to donate. Well I’m putting thought into it this year and I’m changing my mind on some things. I now put more priority on existential risk (especially AI risk), and less on animal welfare and global priorities research.
The pandemic has resulted in over twenty million deaths. In this article, we review the key insights from global data on COVID-19.
Our small team made COVID-19 data clear, reliable, and accessible to a global audience. This is how it happened.
Since Giving What We Can was formally founded in 2009, with just 23 founding members, the community has grown significantly – and we’re approaching 10,000 10% Pledgers (hopefully in the next couple of months)! The community as it stands today has now donated over $250 million and is predicted to donate over $1 billion across the lifetimes of our members.
Political Economy Decision Toolkit: Anticipating Policy Bottlenecks to Food System Transformation
gloireri
Mon, 11/18/2024 - 07:43
Political Economy Decision Toolkit: Anticipating Policy Bottlenecks to Food System Transformation. Food system transformation requires long-term commitment, but we live in a world of short-term political cycles and unforeseen crises that can deter momentum and...
A new report by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) argues the UK government should invest in green infrastructure now or watch productivity lag behind China, the United States and other countries already running away with the benefits.
Sunday, November 17
On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee had a hearing on UAP (aka UFOs). Most of what was said is already public knowledge, but it allowed witnesses to testify under oath, get information into the congressional record, and publicize the issue. The highlights: High-level Whistleblowers. Two key witnesses were Dr. Tim.
this week in security — november 17 edition
Snowflake hackers' indictment unsealed, Amazon confirms MOVEit data breach, China hacked T-Mobile, and more. ~this week in security~. a cybersecurity newsletter by @zackwhittaker
volume 7, issue 42
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THIS WEEK, TL;DR. U.S. unseals charges against hacker of Snowflake's...
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