Curtis, also known on the internet as AI_WAIFU, is the head of Alignment at EleutherAI. In this episode we discuss the massive orders of H100s from different actors, why he thinks AGI is 4-5 years away, why he thinks we're 90% "toast", his comment on Eliezer Yudkwosky's Death with Dignity, and what kind of Alignment projects is currently going on at EleutherAI, especially a project with Markov chains and the Alignment test project that he is currently leading.
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s3XctQOgew
Transcript: https://theinsideview.ai/curtis
Death with Dignity: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9Q8bRmwCgXRYAgcJ/miri-announces-new-death-with-dignity-strategy
Alignment Minetest: https://www.eleuther.ai/projects/alignment-minetest
Alignment Minetest update: https://blog.eleuther.ai/minetester-intro/
OUTLINE
(00:00) Highlights / Intro
(00:50) The Fuck That Noise Comment On Death With Dignity
(10:28) Th Probability of Doom Is 90%
(12:44) Best Counterarguments For His High P(doom)
(14:41) Compute And Model Size Required For A Dangerous Model
(17:59) Details For Curtis' Model Of Compute Required
(21:23) Why This Estimate Of Compute Required Might Be Wrong, Ajeya Cotra's Transformative AI report
(29:00) Curtis' Median For AGI Is Around 2028, Used To Be 2027
(30:50) How Curtis Approaches Life With Short Timelines And High P(Doom)
(35:27) Takeoff Speeds—The Software view vs. The Hardware View
(39:57) Nvidia's 400k H100 rolling down the assembly line, AIs soon to be unleashed on their own source code
(41:04) Could We Get A Fast Takeoff By Fuly Automating AI Research With More Compute
(46:00) The Entire World (Tech Companies, Governments, Militaries) Is Noticing New AI Capabilities That They Don't Have
(47:57) Open-source vs. Close source policies. Mundane vs. Apocalyptic considerations.
(53:25) Curtis' background, from teaching himself deep learning to EleutherAI
(55:51) Alignment Project At EleutherAI: Markov Chain and Language Models
(01:02:15) Research Philosophy at EleutherAI: Pursuing Useful Projects, Multingual, Discord, Logistics
(01:07:38) Alignment MineTest: Links To Alignmnet, Embedded Agency, Wireheading
(01:15:30) Next steps for Alignment Mine Test: focusing on model-based RL
(01:17:07) Training On Human Data & Using an Updated Gym Environment With Human APIs
(01:19:20) Model Used, Not Observing Symmetry
(01:21:58) Another goal of Alignment Mine Test: Study Corrigibility
(01:28:26) People ordering H100s Are Aware Of Other People Making These Orders, Race Dynamics, Last Message
