The Nonlinear Library LW - AI #60: Oh the Humanity by Zvi
Apr 18, 2024
01:35:37
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AI #60: Oh the Humanity, published by Zvi on April 18, 2024 on LessWrong.
Many things this week did not go as planned.
Humane AI premiered its AI pin. Reviewers noticed it was, at best, not ready.
Devin turns out to have not been entirely forthright with its demos.
OpenAI fired two employees who had been on its superalignment team, Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov for allegedly leaking information, and also more troubliningly lost Daniel Kokotajlo, who expects AGI very soon, does not expect it to by default go well, and says he quit 'due to losing confidence that [OpenAI] would behave responsibly around the time of AGI.' That's not good.
Nor is the Gab system prompt, although that is not a surprise. And several more.
On the plus side, my 80,000 Hours podcast finally saw the light of day, and Ezra Klein had an excellent (although troubling) podcast with Dario Amodei. And we got the usual mix of incremental useful improvements and other nice touches.
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Table of Contents.
Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Ask all your stupid questions.
Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility. That won't stop social media.
Oh the Humanity. It will, however, stop the Humane AI pin, at least for now.
GPT-4 Real This Time. The new version continues to look slightly better.
Fun With Image Generation. There is remarkably little porn of it.
Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Audio plus face equals talking head.
Devin in the Details. To what extent was the Devin demo a fake?
Another Supposed System Prompt. The gift of Gab. Not what we wanted.
They Took Our Jobs. A model of firm employment as a function of productivity.
Introducing. The quest to make context no longer be that which is scarce.
In Other AI News. Respecting and disrespecting the rules of the game.
Quiet Speculations. Spending some time wondering whether you should.
The Quest for Sane Regulations. Senators get serious, Christiano is appointed.
The Week in Audio. I spend 3.5 of my 80,000 hours, and several more.
Rhetorical Innovation. Words that do not on reflection bring comfort.
Don't Be That Guy. Also known as the only law of morality.
Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult. Subproblems anyone?
Please Speak Directly Into the Microphone. Thanks, everyone.
People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone. They are no longer at OpenAI.
Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone. Mundane visions.
The Lighter Side. The art of fixing it.
Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
The best use of LLMs continues to be 'ask stupid questions.'
Ashwin Sharma: reading zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance changed the way I looked at the inner workings of my mind. It was like unlocking a secret level of a video game. what are you reading today?
Tom Crean: Tried to read Zen… as a teenager and felt disoriented by it. I kept wondering who "Phaedrus" was. But I liked the general atmosphere of freedom. The philosophy went over my head.
Now I'm reading Akenfield by Ronald Blythe. A portrait of a Suffolk Village in the 1960s.
Ashwin Sharma: use GPT to help analyse the sections you're stuck on. Seriously, try it again and i promise you it'll be worth it.
Joe Weisenthal: I've found this to be a great ChatGPT use case. Understanding terms in context while I'm reading.
When I was a kid, my dad told me when reading to immediately stop and grab a dictionary every time I got to a word I didn't understand.
Not really feasible. But AI solves this well.
It's still a bit cumbersome, because with kindle or physical, no quick way to copy/paste a section into an AI or just ask the book what it means. But even with those hurdles, I've found the tools to be a great reading augment.
Patrick McKenzie: It's surprisingly reliable to just point phone camera at screen and then ask questions about t...
Many things this week did not go as planned.
Humane AI premiered its AI pin. Reviewers noticed it was, at best, not ready.
Devin turns out to have not been entirely forthright with its demos.
OpenAI fired two employees who had been on its superalignment team, Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov for allegedly leaking information, and also more troubliningly lost Daniel Kokotajlo, who expects AGI very soon, does not expect it to by default go well, and says he quit 'due to losing confidence that [OpenAI] would behave responsibly around the time of AGI.' That's not good.
Nor is the Gab system prompt, although that is not a surprise. And several more.
On the plus side, my 80,000 Hours podcast finally saw the light of day, and Ezra Klein had an excellent (although troubling) podcast with Dario Amodei. And we got the usual mix of incremental useful improvements and other nice touches.
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Table of Contents.
Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Ask all your stupid questions.
Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility. That won't stop social media.
Oh the Humanity. It will, however, stop the Humane AI pin, at least for now.
GPT-4 Real This Time. The new version continues to look slightly better.
Fun With Image Generation. There is remarkably little porn of it.
Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Audio plus face equals talking head.
Devin in the Details. To what extent was the Devin demo a fake?
Another Supposed System Prompt. The gift of Gab. Not what we wanted.
They Took Our Jobs. A model of firm employment as a function of productivity.
Introducing. The quest to make context no longer be that which is scarce.
In Other AI News. Respecting and disrespecting the rules of the game.
Quiet Speculations. Spending some time wondering whether you should.
The Quest for Sane Regulations. Senators get serious, Christiano is appointed.
The Week in Audio. I spend 3.5 of my 80,000 hours, and several more.
Rhetorical Innovation. Words that do not on reflection bring comfort.
Don't Be That Guy. Also known as the only law of morality.
Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult. Subproblems anyone?
Please Speak Directly Into the Microphone. Thanks, everyone.
People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone. They are no longer at OpenAI.
Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone. Mundane visions.
The Lighter Side. The art of fixing it.
Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
The best use of LLMs continues to be 'ask stupid questions.'
Ashwin Sharma: reading zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance changed the way I looked at the inner workings of my mind. It was like unlocking a secret level of a video game. what are you reading today?
Tom Crean: Tried to read Zen… as a teenager and felt disoriented by it. I kept wondering who "Phaedrus" was. But I liked the general atmosphere of freedom. The philosophy went over my head.
Now I'm reading Akenfield by Ronald Blythe. A portrait of a Suffolk Village in the 1960s.
Ashwin Sharma: use GPT to help analyse the sections you're stuck on. Seriously, try it again and i promise you it'll be worth it.
Joe Weisenthal: I've found this to be a great ChatGPT use case. Understanding terms in context while I'm reading.
When I was a kid, my dad told me when reading to immediately stop and grab a dictionary every time I got to a word I didn't understand.
Not really feasible. But AI solves this well.
It's still a bit cumbersome, because with kindle or physical, no quick way to copy/paste a section into an AI or just ask the book what it means. But even with those hurdles, I've found the tools to be a great reading augment.
Patrick McKenzie: It's surprisingly reliable to just point phone camera at screen and then ask questions about t...