If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Abstract:

Value alignment is a property of an intelligent agent indicating that it can only pursue goals that are beneficial to humans. Successful value alignment should ensure that an artificial general intelligence cannot intentionally or unintentionally perform behaviors that adversely affect humans. This is problematic in practice since it is difficult to exhaustively enumerated by human programmers. In order for successful value alignment, we argue that values should be learned. In this paper, we hypothesize that an artificial intelligence that can read and understand stories can learn the values tacitly held by the culture from which the stories originate. We describe preliminary work on using stories to generate a value-aligned reward signal for reinforcement learning agents that prevents psychotic-appearing behavior. 

-- Using Stories to Teach Human Values to Artificial Agents 

Comment by the lead researcher Riedl (cited on Slashdot):

"The AI ... runs many thousands of virtual simulations in which it tries out different things and gets rewarded every time it does an action similar to something in the story," said Riedl, associate professor and director of the Entertainment Intelligence Lab. "Over time, the AI learns to prefer doing certain things and avoiding doing certain other things. We find that Quixote can learn how to perform a task the same way humans tend to do it. This is significant because if an AI were given the goal of simply returning home with a drug, it might steal the drug because that takes the fewest actions and uses the fewest resources. The point being that the standard metrics for success (eg, efficiency) are not socially best." 

Quixote has not learned the lesson of "do not steal," Riedl says, but "simply prefers to not steal after reading and emulating the stories it was provided."

The next installment of the Polling Thread.

This is your chance to ask your multiple choice question you always wanted to throw in. Get qualified numeric feedback to your comments. Post fun polls.

These are the rules:

1. Each poll goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.
2. You must at least vote all polls that were posted earlier than you own. This ensures participation in all polls and also limits the total number of polls. You may of course vote without posting a poll.
3. Your poll should include a 'don't know' option (to avoid conflict with 2). I don't know whether we need to add a troll catch option here but we will see.

If you don't know how to make a poll in a comment look at the Poll Markup Help.

This is a somewhat regular thread. If it is successful I may post again. Or you may. In that case do the following :

• Use "Polling Thread" in the title.
• Copy the rules.
• Add the tag "poll".
• Link to this Thread or a previous Thread.
• Create a top-level comment saying 'Discussion of this thread goes here; all other top-level comments should be polls or similar'
• Add a second top-level comment with an initial poll to start participation.

Looking thru the Repository Repository I can't find a nice category for a lot of real life or self help advice that has been posted here over time. Sure some belongs to the Boring Advice Repository but the following you surely wouldn't expect there:

This thread is intended to provide a space for 'crazy' ideas. Ideas that spontaneously come to mind (and feel great), ideas you long wanted to tell but never found the place and time for and also for ideas you think should be obvious and simple - but nobody ever mentions them. 

Rules for this thread:

1. Each crazy idea goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.
2. Voting should be based primarily on how original the idea is.
3. Meta discussion of the thread should go to the top level comment intended for that purpose. 

If you create such a thread do the following :

• Use "Crazy Ideas Thread" in the title.
• Copy the rules.
• Add the tag "crazy_idea".
• Create a top-level comment saying 'Discussion of this thread goes here; all other top-level comments should be ideas or similar'
• Add a second top-level comment with an initial crazy idea to start participation.

After some hiatus another installment of the Polling Thread.

This is your chance to ask your multiple choice question you always wanted to throw in. Get qualified numeric feedback to your comments. Post fun polls.

Additionally this is your chance to learn to write polls. This installment is devoted to try out polls for the cautious and curious.

These are the rules:

1. Each poll goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.
2. You must at least vote all polls that were posted earlier than you own. This ensures participation in all polls and also limits the total number of polls. You may of course vote without posting a poll.
3. Your poll should include a 'don't know' option (to avoid conflict with 2). I don't know whether we need to add a troll catch option here but we will see.

If you don't know how to make a poll in a comment look at the Poll Markup Help.

This is a somewhat regular thread. If it is successful I may post again. Or you may. In that case do the following :

• Use "Polling Thread" in the title.
• Copy the rules.
• Add the tag "poll".
• Link to this Thread or a previous Thread.
• Create a top-level comment saying 'Discussion of this thread goes here; all other top-level comments should be polls or similar'
• Add a second top-level comment with an initial poll to start participation.

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg 2015 Q4

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg 2015 Q4

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg

Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Hamburg