JoshuaFox

The Singularity Wars

(This is a introduction, for those not immersed in the Singularity world, into the history of and relationships between SU, SIAI [SI, MIRI], SS, LW, CSER, FHI, and CFAR. It also has some opinions, which are strictly my own.) The good news is that there were no Singularity Wars. The Bay Area had a Singularity University and a Singularity Institute, each going in a very different direction. You'd expect to see something like the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front, burning each other's grain supplies as the Romans moved in. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence was founded first, in 2000, by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Singularity University was founded in 2008. Ray Kurzweil, the driving force behind SU, was also active in SIAI, serving on its board in varying capacities in the years up to 2010. SIAI's multi-part name was clunky, and their domain, singinst.org, unmemorable. I kept accidentally visiting siai.org for months, but it belonged to the Self Insurance Association of Illinois. (The cool new domain name singularity.org, recently acquired after a rather uninspired site appeared there for several years, arrived shortly before it was no longer relevant.) All the better to confuse you with, SIAI has been going for the last few years by the shortened name Singularity Institute, abbreviated SI. The annual Singularity Summit was launched by SI, together with Kurzweil, in 2006. SS was SI's premier PR mechanism, mustering geek heroes to give their tacit endorsement for SI's seriousness, if not its views, by agreeing to appear on-stage. The Singularity Summit was always off-topic for SI: more SU-like than SI-like. Speakers spoke about whatever technologically-advanced ideas interested them. Occasional SI representatives spoke about the Intelligence Explosion, but they too would often stray into other areas like rationality and the scientific process. Yet SS remained firmly in SI's hands. It became clear over the years that SU and S

82Feb 14, 2013

JoshuaFox

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What is the best argument that LLMs are shoggoths?

Where can I find a post or article arguing that the internal cognitive model of contemporary LLMs is quite alien, strange, non-human, even though they are trained on human text and produce human-like answers, which are rendered "friendly" by RLHF? To be clear, I am not asking about the following,...

Mar 17, 202426

Why aren't Yudkowsky & Bostrom getting more attention now?

Now that the idea of AI Existential Risk has gained more acceptability, I am surprised that the thought leaders are not more often mentioned and contacted by AI executives and researchers in the cutting edge (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.), recognized academic figures (Bengio, Hinton, Hofstadter, etc.), journalists, or political leaders who...

Jan 8, 202414

What's up with ChatGPT and the Turing Test?

ChatGPT looks like it would pass the Turing Test, the gold standard of benchmarks measuring whether an AI has reached human-level intelligence. Yet Googling around, it doesn't seem that anyone has put on a full Turing Test. Please comment with your thoughts on whether or how such a test can...

Jan 4, 202313

What is the most effective way to donate to AGI XRisk mitigation?

There are now many organizations in field of Existential Risk from Artificial General Intelligence. I wonder which can make the most effective use of small donations. My priority is on mathematical or engineering research aimed at XRisk from superhuman AGI. My donations go to MIRI, and for now it looks...

May 30, 202144

Ben Goertzel's "Kinds of Minds"

I'd like to recommend Ben Goertzel's book from 2006 Hidden Pattern, and particularly Chapter 2 "Kinds of Minds". (The book is also available at the author's site, but that may trigger SSL certificate warnings.) We've come to understand that a future AGI may have non-anthropomorphic implementation and behavior, but this...

Apr 11, 202112

Stuart Russell at the SlateStarCodex Online Meetup

Professor Stuart Russell will speak briefly on his book "Human Compatible", and then will take questions. The event begins Dec. 6, 2020 at 20:30 Israel Standard Time, 10:30 Pacific Standard time, 18:30 UTC. Please register here and we will send you an invitation. Stuart Russell is a Professor of Computer...

Nov 14, 202011

Tips on organizing online meetups

I have been co-organizing the SlateStarCodex online meetup series with ~40-140 participants in each meetup. We've experimented to get it to work smoothly and have some tips. This advice is for meetups which have a talk and QA and post-talk socializing. I will appreciate similar tips from meetup organizers. For...

Nov 12, 202027

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JoshuaFox

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JoshuaFox

The Singularity Wars

Business Networking through LessWrong

What is the most effective way to donate to AGI XRisk mitigation?

Gems from the Wiki: Acausal Trade

JoshuaFox

What is the best argument that LLMs are shoggoths?

Why aren't Yudkowsky & Bostrom getting more attention now?

What's up with ChatGPT and the Turing Test?

What is the most effective way to donate to AGI XRisk mitigation?

Ben Goertzel's "Kinds of Minds"

Stuart Russell at the SlateStarCodex Online Meetup

Tips on organizing online meetups

The Singularity Wars

Business Networking through LessWrong

What is the most effective way to donate to AGI XRisk mitigation?

Gems from the Wiki: Acausal Trade

What is the best argument that LLMs are shoggoths?

Why aren't Yudkowsky & Bostrom getting more attention now?

What's up with ChatGPT and the Turing Test?

What is the most effective way to donate to AGI XRisk mitigation?

Ben Goertzel's "Kinds of Minds"

Stuart Russell at the SlateStarCodex Online Meetup

Tips on organizing online meetups