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What can we learn from Microsoft's Tay, its inflammatory tweets, and its shutdown?
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/fault-microsofts-teen-ai-turned-jerk/
Could this be a lesson for future AIs? The AI control problem?
After Go, what games should be next for DeepMind?
So chess and Go are both games of perfect information. How important is it for the next game that DeepMind is trained on to be a game of perfect information?
How would the AI perform on generalized versions of both chess and Go? What about games like poker and Magic the Gathering?
How realistic do you think it's possible to train DeepMind on games of perfect information (full-map-reveal) against top-ranked players on games like Starcraft, AOE2, Civ, Sins of a Solar Empire, Command and Conquer, and Total War, for example? (in all possible map settings, including ones people don't frequently play at - e.g. start at "high resource" levels). How important is it for the AI to have a diverse set/library of user-created replays to test itself against, for example?
I'm also thinking... Shitty AI has always held back both RTS and TBS games.. Is it possible that we're only a few years away from non-shitty AI in all RTS and TBS games? Or is the AI in many of these games too hard-coded in to actually matter? (e.g. I know some people who develop AI for AOE2, and there are issues with AI behavior in the game being hard-coded in - e.g. villagers deleting the building they're building if you simply attack them).
What is the future of nootropic drugs? Why can't there be ones more effective than ones that have existed for 15+ years?
So Scott Alexander's post at http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/01/2016-nootropics-survey-results/ shows that the most "effective" "nootropics" have still been the ones that have existed for a long time. What do these results really mean, though? Is it possible that people are just worse at noticing the subtler effects of the other drugs, or are just much worse at disciplining themselves enough to correctly use the racetams or noopept (as in, with choline)?
How much potential is there in innovation in nootropics? What is holding this innovation back, if anything? It feels like there hasn't been any real progress over the last 15 years (other than massively increased awareness), but could targeted drug discovery (along with people willing to be super-liberal with their experimentation) finally lead to some real breakthroughs?
Are conferences an inefficient/terrible discussion forum (in addition to academic papers)?
I'm asking this as a follow-up to http://lesswrong.com/lw/d5y/why_academic_papers_are_a_terrible_discussion/, which was written a few years ago, and which I find very interesting.
Many of the arguments advanced in http://lesswrong.com/lw/d5y/why_academic_papers_are_a_terrible_discussion/ (especially inaccessibility) could just as well apply to conferences, too.
I'd also wonder - would you consider conferences to also be a terrible discussion forum? What do you think would be some good alternatives?
The audience for conferences is limited, and people seem to remember only a tiny tiny fraction of everything they've encountered in a conference. The ideas in conferences don't seem to do much for building up platforms of public discussions around the new subjects that are often announced in conferences (rather than, say, on online platforms).
I suppose one could advance the argument that ideas often get brought up/discussed at conferences that wouldn't be conveniently discussed in any other medium (for now..). But is this mostly because people are too comfortable with what they're been brought up with?
Psychological validity of the "Seven deadly sins"?
So I was reading the list of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins and I was impressed with the list (seeing how many of these sins are what ultimately bring down many major historical figures). I also recognize how many of these sins were responsible for some of my major setbacks in life, and am thinking of creative ways to reduce their effects (by putting value on things that don't involve any of those sins).
I'm curious: to what extent do the "seven deadly sins" cover the most common reasons why people engage in self-defeating behavior? Are there any major omissions in the list of "seven deadly sins"? If you were to make a list of "X deadly sins", which sins would you include?
As examples: should excessive guilt be counted as a sin? Should stupidity be counted as a sin? What about being excessively "autistic"?
Which of the "Seven deadly sins" do you think are most applicable to LessWrong posters? To what extent are they responsible for akrasia?
How do you approach the problem of social discovery?
As in, how do you find ways to meet the right people you talk to? Presumably, they would have personality fit with you, and be high on both intelligence and openness. Furthermore, they would be in the point of their life where they are willing to spend time with you (although sometimes you can learn a lot from people simply by friending them on Facebook and just observing their feeds from time to time).
Historically, I've made myself extremely stalkable on the Internet. In retrospect, I believe that this "decision" is on the order of one of the very best decisions I've ever made in my life, and has made me better at social discovery than most people I know, despite my dual social anxiety and Asperger's. In fact, if a more extroverted non-Aspie could do the same thing, I think they could do WONDERS with developing an online profile.
I've also realized more that social discovery is often more rewarding when done with teenagers. You can do so much to impact teenagers, and they often tend to be a lot more open to your ideas/musings (just as long as you're responsible).
But I've wondered - how else have you done it? Especially in real life? What are some other questions you ask with respect to social discovery? I tend to avoid real life for social discovery simply because it's extremely hit-and-miss, but I've discovered (from Richard Florida's books) that the Internet often strengthens real-life interaction because it makes it so much easier to discover other people in real life (and then it's in real life when you can really get to know people).
What are some cool things a LWer can do at Yale, Brown, and UChicago?
So I'm applying for grad schools right now, and am visiting Yale, Brown, and UChicago this month (I already got accepted into UChicago, and also got invited to expenses-paid visits to both Yale and Brown). I'm visiting Yale in just 2 days.
So what are some cool things a LWer can do at those places? And which professors do research that a LWer could potentially find very interesting? Which universities would a LWer find himself/herself most at home at?
Also, is there anything else I need to know about those places?
I'm still waiting for decisions from Columbia and MIT (and got rejected by Caltech).
[LINK] How a Computer Game is Reinventing the Science of Expertise
For decades, a different game, chess, has held the exalted position of “the drosophila of cognitive science”—the model organism that scientists could poke and prod to learn what makes experts better than the rest of us. StarCraft 2, however, might be emerging as the rhesus macaque: its added complexity may confound researchers initially, but the answers could ultimately be more telling.
“I can’t think of a cognitive process that’s not involved in StarCraft,” says Mark Blair, a cognitive scientist at Simon Fraser University. “It’s working memory. It’s decision making. It involves very precise motor skills. Everything is important and everything needs to work together.”
Blair, the Simon Fraser University scientist running the SkillCraft project, asked gamers at all ability levels to submit their replay files. He and his colleagues collected more than 4500 files, of which at least 3500 turned out to usable. “What we’ve got is a satellite view of expertise that no one was able to get before,” he says. “We have hundreds of players at the basic levels, then hundreds more at level slightly better, and so on, in 8 different categories of players.” By comparing the techniques and attributes of low-level players with other gamers up the chain of ability, they can start to discern how skills develop—and perhaps, over the long run, identify the most efficient training regimen.
Both Blair and Lewis see parallels between the game and emergency management systems. In a high-stress crisis situation, the people in charge of coordinating a response may find themselves facing competing demands. Alarms might be alerting them to a fire burning in one part of town, a riot breaking out a few streets over, and the contamination of drinking water elsewhere. The mental task of keeping cool and distributing attention among equally urgent activities might closely resemble the core challenge of Starcraft 2. “For emergencies, you don’t get to train eight hours a day. You get two emergencies in your life but you better be good because lives are at stake,” Blair says. “Training in something like Starcraft could be really useful.”
[POLL] LessWrong group on YourMorals.org
Here's the news article on this: http://www.yourmorals.org/blog/2011/11/how-to-use-groups-at-yourmorals-org/
And here's the group that the LW community just created: http://www.yourmorals.org/setgraphgroup.php?grp=623d5410f705f6a1f92c83565a3cfffc
I think it will be very interesting to see what we can all get on this.
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