AI pause debates, 80,000 Hours updated career guide, GWWC's new community strategy, TED talks, many people writing about their jobs and much more
(I’ve been writing this in bits and pieces for a while, and Peacewager was the impetus I needed to finally stitch it together and post it. Peacewager sounds like a really fun game and an example of the thing I’m talking about, but I do not want this whole genre to get called Peacewager Games when I think I have a better title for the genre.).
Peter Godfrey-Smith on integration, incubation, and education
At EAGs I often find myself having roughly the same 30 minute conversation with university students who are interested in policy careers and want to test their fit. This post will go over two cheap tests, each possible to do over a weekend, that you can do to test your fit for policy work.
From the looks of it, next week might be rough for people who care about Effective Altruism. As CEA acting CEO Ben West pointed out on the forum: “Sam Bankman-Fried's trial is scheduled to start October 3, 2023, and Michael Lewis’s book about FTX comes out the same day. My hope and expectation is that neither will be focused on EA ….
FWI's September 2023 Updates
Breaking Down FWI’s Corrective Actions, and More
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Hey there,
We hope you’ve had a great month! In this newsletter, we spotlight our welfare interventions for farmed Indian major carp.
In a recent post on the secrets of happiness, I mentioned the importance of marrying a suitable partner (https://fakenous.substack.com/p/the-secrets-of-happiness-and-the). Some readers wondered whether marriage is really important or good. Let’s talk about that.
The following statement regarding the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill may be attributed to Leah Garcés, CEO and president of Mercy For Animals. “The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 lacks protection for those who need it most: farmed animals and everyone trapped in the cruel clutches of industrial animal agriculture. It is imperative that […].
Introduction. In March 2023, we launched the Open Philanthropy AI Worldviews Contest. The goal of the contest was to surface novel considerations that could affect our views on the timeline to transformative AI and the level of catastrophic risk that transformative AI systems could pose. We received 135 submissions. Today we are excited to share the winners of the contest.
This is an overview of the classic 1 999 paper by Rajesh Rao and David Ballard that introduced predictive coding. I'm going to focus on explaining the mathematical setup instead of just staying at a conceptual level.
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1) The reddit rumour mill on Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research:Apparently, they have laid off half of the 45 people working there. If you go on the BU website, the team pages are all offline.
TLDR: CEA’s University Groups Team worked on a wide range of projects this summer . We wrapped up a round of UGAP and OSP (our programs supporting university group organizers with digital resources, mentorship, training, and for UGAP a stipend) and launched a new one. Both rounds had over 100 people participating across both programs.
Lightcone Infrastructure (the organization that grew from and houses the LessWrong team) has just finished renovating a 7-building physical campus that we hope to use to make the future of humanity go better than it would otherwise. We're hereby announcing that it is generally available for bookings.
It’s been another busy year at Open Philanthropy; after nearly doubling the size of our team in 2022, we’ve added over 30 new team members so far in 2023. Now we’re launching a number of open applications for roles in all of our Global Catastrophic Risks (GCR) cause area teams (AI Governance and Policy, Technical AI Safety, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness, GCR Cause Prioritization, and GCR...
Discuss...
From Nature: Cephalopods such as octopuses and squid could soon receive the same legal protection as mice and monkeys do when they are used in research. On 7 September, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked for feedback on proposed guidelines that, for the first time in the United States, would require research projects involving cephalopods to be approved by an ethics board before...
Consider two claims: “broccoli is good for you”. “broccoli decreases cholesterol”. Even though the former might be considered a lossy summary of the latter, the two feel very different; they pull very different levers in my brain. “Broccoli decreases cholesterol” pulls levers like: Is the claim even true? Does broccoli really decrease cholesterol?
TDLR: Assuming that Long Termist causes are by far the most important, 80,000 hours might still be better off devoting more of their space to near-termist causes, to grow the EA community, increase the number working in long term causes and improve EA optics. Background. 80,000 hours is a front page to EA, presenting the movement/idea/question to the world.
A caged female breeding pig at a farm in Spain. | Jo-Anne McArthur/Lauren Veerslaat/We Animals Media
The EU could backslide on its cage-free farming initiative and more. Billions of animals hang in the balance. Europe was on the cusp of an animal welfare revolution.
Confidence level: I’m a computational physicist working on nanoscale simulations, so I have some understanding of most of the things discussed here, but I am not specifically an expert on the topics covered, so I can’t promise perfect accuracy.
Discuss...
In February 2023, researchers from a number of top industry AI labs (OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic) and universities (Cambridge, NYU) co-organized a two-day workshop on the problem of AI alignment, attended by 80 of the world’s leading machine learning researchers. We’re now making recordings and transcripts of the talks available online.
The following statement regarding the passing of Sen. Dianne Feinstein may be attributed to Alex Cragun, director of government affairs at Mercy For Animals. “Mercy For Animals mourns the passing of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose commitment to public service and dedication to animal welfare are a testament to her belief in compassion and justice for […].
More and more Hispanic and Latinx people are opting for plant-based foods. For many, this is a way to reconnect with their Indigenous heritage and take control of their health. I grew up in South Texas near the Mexican border, and being of Mexican American heritage with Indigenous roots, I had access to a lot […].
We are very excited to share that Rachel Glennerster and Andrew Dilnot have joined our Board of Trustees.
We are very excited to share that Rachel Glennerster and Andrew Dilnot have joined our Board of Trustees.
High energy prices, a skilled labor shortage, and bureaucratic hurdles stand in the way of economic growth. If holdouts can be convinced, the response may resemble American supply-side progressivism.
I've recently asked how people have become more hard-working. I compiled the answers across the EA Forum and LessWrong (and some private messages) in a list for myself to make it easier for me to experiment with the suggestions. I thought I'd share the list here in case it's useful for anyone else. I also list the things that people said didn't work and a couple of other things.
Various groups seek to improve the allocations of funders by completing research. Often the estimates for the impact of such work stop at estimates for the amount of money it influences. In this post, we outline a detailed methodology for estimating the impact of research of this nature, and share some deterministic spreadsheets and online Monte Carlo tools for doing so.
American energy production can be transformed, if the parties can find a deal
What do you do with Target Malaria, and what do you enjoy about your work? I’m a Ph.D. student with Target Malaria Uganda at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI). My work involves using mathematical models and simulations to test the effectiveness of novel malaria vector control tools before implementation. I’m fascinated by different aspects […].
Hello there! I thought the best way to introduce myself as the newly appointed Director of Impactful Government Careers was to write this...
Project Officer, Food Fortification
admin_inox
Fri, 09/29/2023 - 13:00
vacancy_id
SYS-1071
location
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Contract type
Fixed Term
Duration
Other
Frontend apply URL
https://jobs.gainhealth.org/vacancies/1071/apply/
Closing date
Fri, 10/13/2023 - 12:00
Department
Programmes
about_the_role
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is seeking a Project...
This summary was first published on the Global Priorities Institute website, the original paper can be found here. Effective altruists seek to do as much good as possible given limited resources. Often by donating to important causes like global health and poverty, farmed animal welfare, and reducing existential risks. Can we help more by donating now or later?
#biology #biohazard #pandemic #government #usa #virus
My main source was an article by Kelsey Piper for Vox Future Perfect titled "The dangers of virus hunting".
A lot of people in the community, including me, are working independently (or have a lot of autonomy, even if they are employed). A lot of people, including me, often feel like they are underperforming or at least wonder if they are. But how do I actually know when I'm not underperforming? I'd like to make some criteria for under which circumstances I'll consider my work satisfactory.
The post Building career capital: some new advice on three paths appeared first on 80,000 Hours.
Thanks to Monte MacDiarmid (for discussions, feedback, and experiment infrastructure) and to the Shard Theory team for their prior work and exploratory infrastructure. Thanks to Joseph Bloom, John Wentworth, Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel, Johannes Treuitlein, Marius Hobbhahn, Jeremy Gillen, Bilal Chughtai, Evan Hubinger, Rocket Drew, Tassilo Neubauer, Jan Betley, and Juliette Culver for...
Opinie in De Standaard (29-09-2023) Lekker spierweefsel kweken zonder dier, zou dat niet fantastisch zijn? Want dat dier in het vleesproductieproces zorgt voor behoorlijk wat problemen. De longen zorgen voor infecties van besmettelijke ziektes zoals vogelgriep en varkensgriep, de ingewanden … Lees verder →...
There seems to have been a spate of opinion pieces recently about the benefits of eating seafood for people and planet. It’s seen as a...
My new paper - *Tipping Point: On the Edge of Superintelligence* - highlights broad reforms for the UK to succeed and spearhead international AI safety efforts.
note: I've copy pasted the whole article but am uncertain how well it worked, especially the images. Introduction. Effective altruism prides itself on truthseeking. That pride is justified in the sense that EA is better at truthseeking than most members of its reference category, and unjustified in that it is far from meeting its own standards.
A peacewager is a partially cooperative, partially competitive multiplayer game that provides an anarchic dojo for development in the art of negotiation, or cooperative bargaining. Applied cooperative bargaining isn't currently taught, despite being an infrastructural literacy for peace, trade, democracy or any other form of pluralism. We suffer for that.
Here's what's vegan at IHOP!. The post IHOP Adds Vegan Sausage and Burgers to Menus Nationwide appeared first on Mercy For Animals.
Thanks to Monte MacDiarmid (for discussions, feedback, and experiment infrastructure) and to the Shard Theory team for their prior work and exploratory infrastructure. Thanks to Joseph Bloom, John Wentworth, Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel, Johannes Treuitlein, Marius Hobbhahn, Jeremy Gillen, Bilal Chughtai, Evan Hubinger, Rocket Drew, Tassilo Neubauer, Jan Betley, and Juliette Culver for...
This post started out as a supporting point for another post about games. It developed into a bit of a practical philosophy post. Why do boardgames generally end by declaring just one absolute winner? There are many reasons, most bad, I'd argue. One reason, probably a major factor in their spread, is that it seems to make it easier to teach the game.
This post is a copy of the introduction of this paper on lie detection in LLMs. The Twitter Thread is here. Authors: Lorenzo Pacchiardi, Alex J. Chan, Sören Mindermann, Ilan Moscovitz, Alexa Y. Pan, Yarin Gal, Owain Evans, Jan Brauner. Our lie dectector in meme form. Note that the elicitation questions are actually asked "in parallel" rather than sequentially: i.e.
This post is a copy of the introduction of this paper on lie detection in LLMs. The Twitter Thread is here. Authors: Lorenzo Pacchiardi, Alex J. Chan, Sören Mindermann, Ilan Moscovitz, Alexa Y. Pan, Yarin Gal, Owain Evans, Jan Brauner. Our lie dectector in meme form. Note that the elicitation questions are actually asked "in parallel" rather than sequentially: i.e.
Joe Carlsmith is a writer, researcher, and philosopher. He works as a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy, focusing on existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence. He also writes independently about various topics in philosophy and futurism and has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford. Much of his work is about trying to help us orient wisely towards...
September 2023 North America Newsletter
J-PAL North America's September newsletter features our 10-year anniversary: highlights from our two-day convening, a new impact webpage and blog series, and our inaugural Evidence Champions. kchristie@pove…
Thu, 09/28/2023 - 17:14...
The Tarbell Fellowship is accepting applications until October 15th. Apply here. Key details. What: One-year programme for early-career journalists interested in covering artificial intelligence. When: January → December 2024 (with some flexibility). Benefits: Fellows receive a stipend of up to $50,000, secure a 9-month placement at a major newsroom, participate in a study group covering...
This week, The Ongoing Transformation podcast from Issues in Science and Technology showcased the Center for Open Science (COS), featuring an insightful conversation with Executive Director and Co-Founder Brian Nosek about the progress of the open science movement.
Introduction Effective altruism prides itself on truthseeking. That pride is justified in the sense that EA is better at truthseeking than most members of its reference category, and unjustified in that it is far from meeting its own standards.
What do you value most fundamentally? Today, we're going to tell you why we believe you should answer this question, and then we’re going...
It's common for people who approach helping animals from a quantitative direction to need some concept of " moral weights" so they can prioritize. If you can avert one year of suffering for a chicken or ten for shrimp which should you choose?
I started working at AI Impacts slightly less than a year ago. Before then, I was not following developments in either AI or AI safety. I do not consider myself a rationalist and did not engage with LessWrong before starting this job. While I have mostly been working on historical case studies,
Almost any powerful AI, with almost any goal, will doom humanity. Hence alignment is often seen as a constraint on AI power: we must direct the AI’s optimisation power in a very narrow direction. If the AI is weak, then imperfect methods of alignment might be sufficient. But as the AI’s power rises, the alignment methods must be better and better.
Rethink Priorities has released the findings of three studies of U.S.
public opinion on artificial intelligence (AI) policy and risk.
In the six months since FLI published its open letter calling for a pause on giant AI experiments, we have seen overwhelming expert and public concern about the out-of-control AI arms race - but no slowdown. In this video, we call for U.S. lawmakers to step in, and explore the policy solutions necessary to steer this powerful technology to benefit humanity.
This video introduces a series focused on the outer alignment problem. In future videos, we'll explore how this problem affects machine learning systems today and how it could lead to catastrophic outcomes for humanity. The video is an adaptation of @Eliezer Yudkowsky's post The Hidden Complexity of Wishes.
The post The HomeWork: September 28, 2023 appeared first on California YIMBY.
I want to share a deeply personal and painful journey I've had with the EA movement. It’s not an easy story to tell, but I believe there's value in presenting this side of the coin. I really want to protect my anonymity, so I'd ask you to please be respectful of my wish and to not reach out to me. Not so long ago, I became wholeheartedly committed to the EA cause.
My division of knowledge into seven domains. The post What Do We Need to Know? A Seven-Part Division of Knowledge appeared first on James Aitchison.
From the Works in Progress archives.
The fields of compassionate conservation and multispecies studies offer fresh perspectives on important animal issues. The post Opening A Dialogue To Improve Animal Studies appeared first on Faunalytics.
The post Indiana contemplating own strategic medical stockpile following national shortages appeared first on Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense.
September: Next Events & Brand New Programs! We cooked many things for you during the summer, and have a lot of announcements! Bear with us! View this email in your browser
September: Next Events & Brand New Programs!. Hey <<First Name>>,
Welcome to our September update! To bring you closer to the community, you can:
Let's say you're vegan and you go to a vegan restaurant. The food is
quite bad, and you'd normally leave a bad review, but now you're
worried:
what
if your bad review leads people to go to non-vegan restaurants
instead? Should you refrain from leaving a review? Or leave a
false review, for the animals? .
Cataracts are the world’s leading cause of blindness. On World Sight Day, learn what Sightsavers is doing to protect the sight of children with cataracts in Zambia.
When Stanislav Petrov's missile alert system pinged, the world was not watching. Russia was not watching. Perhaps a number of superiors in the military were staying in the loop about Stanislav's outpost, waiting for updates. It wasn't theatre. In contrast, LessWrong's historical Petrov Day celebrations have been pretty flashy affairs.
In examining the low performance of Large Language Models(LLMs)on the Moral Scenarios task, part of the widely-used MMLU benchmark by Hendrycks et al., we found surprising results. When presented with moral scenarios individually, the accuracy is 37% better than with the original duel-scenario questions.
I recently discussed with my AISC co-organiser Remmelt, some possible project ideas I would be excited about seeing at the upcoming AISC, and I thought these would be valuable to share more widely. Thanks to Remmelt for helfull suggestions and comments... . What is AI Safety Camp?. AISC in its current form is primarily a structure to help people find collaborators.
After years of not having an intuitive interpretation of the unital condition on CP maps, I recently learned a beautiful one: unitality means the dynamics never decreases the state’s mixedness, in the sense of the majorization partial order.
EA Forum Digest #156: Petrov Day
AMAs, animal welfare research, AI pause debate posts, and more! Hello!. We celebrated Petrov Day this week. You’re invited to ask questions in two related AMA threads — post your questions as comments by Friday, September 29: AMA: Andy Weber (U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense from 2009-2014).
Let's say you're vegan and you go to a vegan restaurant. The food is quite bad, and you'd normally leave a bad review, but now you're worried: what if your bad review leads people to go to non-vegan restaurants instead? Should you refrain from leaving a review? Or leave a false review, for the animals?.
Several newly hatched chicks are crammed together in metal drawers inside an incubator at a hatchery in Poland. | Andrew Skowron/We Animals Media
Add in the extreme suffering of tens of billions of farmed animals, and suddenly the world looks like a much darker place.
September 27, 2023 — By one estimate, California must build 3.5 million housing units by 2025 to end the state’s housing shortage. This shortage has resulted in rising rents and prices, closed access to homeownership for many families, and forced many Californians to leave the state altogether. A significant body of research suggests that the shortage is the result […].
And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring.
Learn about six innovative startups building a more sustainable food system and how they are doing it.
TORONTO, September 27, 2023 – A report published today by Deloitte Canada’s AI Institute in collaboration with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and Canada’s three National AI Institutes: Amii, Mila, and the Vector Institute outlines how the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy has created significant social and economic benefits for Canada, with our AI sector.... Read More.
As some of you know, I’m working on growing the US market for Chinese tofus. I believe it could be a way to significantly reduce animal suffering, while shifting American dining culture. We just launched our book - Broken Cuisine - which introduces five of these tofus to Western home cooks.
Which forms of misalignment might result in particularly bad outcomes? And to what extent can we prevent them even if we fail at intent alignment? We define spite as a terminal preference for frustrating others’ preferences, at least under some conditions.
Overly restrictive zoning is a major factor contributing to the housing shortage and affordability crisis. In a new paper, Jack Y Favilukis and Jaehee Song present a new theory to explain why some municipalities have more restrictive zoning than others: the metro area’s level of fragmentation. The authors find empirical evidence that metros that are […].
With the end of the California legislative session on September 14, several major housing bills were approved by the Legislature and sent to Governor Newsom’s desk. While attention has been focused on California, a number of other states have passed major housing reforms in 2023. A recent policy brief from the Mercatus Center at George […].
This video is about AI Alignment. At the moment, humanity has no idea how to make AIs follow complex goals that track human values. This video introduces a series focused on what is sometimes called "the outer alignment problem". In future videos, we'll explore how this problem affects machine learning systems today and how it could lead to catastrophic outcomes for humanity.
In this blueprint, we explain why a tiered approach makes sense in the EU AI Act and how to build a risk-based tiered regulatory regime for GPAI – the technicalities involved, which requirements should be imposed on their corresponding tiers, and how to enforce them. The post Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown appeared first on The Future Society.
We assume consistency from producers but it isn't really there
The many meanings contained within a hentai gif
Our latest Faunalytics study examines lesser known mechanics of animal agriculture industries, with the hope of highlighting leverage points that are thus far underused by advocates. The post Domination And Exploitation: Understanding Industry Costs For Chicken, Egg, And Fish Products In The United States, Brazil, And China appeared first on Faunalytics.
The EA Global Conference arrives at your doorstep, plus our selection of high-impact job roles and fellowships | EACN Job Blast #23 🚀
Check out these high-impact roles, we're here to help you map out your next career move!
Crosspost of this on my blog. I really like the Bulwark. Their articles are consistently funny, well-written, and sensible. But recently, Mary Townsend wrote a critique of effective altruism titled “Effective Altruism Is a Short Circuit,” that seems deeply confused.
This is a story in Prospect Magazine featuring the work of several EAs (full disclosure: including myself) working on existential and catastrophic risks framed around the occasion of Petrov Day. Discuss...
The post Biodefense commission discusses COVID-19 response, future pandemic strategies at IMS appeared first on Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense.
The post Biodefense Meeting at IMS appeared first on Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense.
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