Rob Bensinger

Biases: An Introduction

Imagine reaching into an urn that contains seventy white balls and thirty red ones, and plucking out ten mystery balls. Perhaps three of the ten balls will be red, and you’ll correctly guess how many red balls total were in the urn. Or perhaps you’ll happen to grab four red balls, or some other number. Then you’ll probably get the total number wrong. This random error is the cost of incomplete knowledge, and as errors go, it’s not so bad. Your estimates won’t be incorrect on average, and the more you learn, the smaller your error will tend to be. On the other hand, suppose that the white balls are heavier, and sink to the bottom of the urn. Then your sample may be unrepresentative in a consistent direction. That kind of error is called “statistical bias.” When your method of learning about the world is biased, learning more may not help. Acquiring more data can even consistently worsen a biased prediction. If you’re used to holding knowledge and inquiry in high esteem, this is a scary prospect. If we want to be sure that learning more will help us, rather than making us worse off than we were before, we need to discover and correct for biases in our data. The idea of cognitive bias in psychology works in an analogous way. A cognitive bias is a systematic error in how we think, as opposed to a random error or one that’s merely caused by our ignorance. Whereas statistical bias skews a sample so that it less closely resembles a larger population, cognitive biases skew our thinking so that it less accurately tracks the truth (or less reliably serves our other goals). Maybe you have an optimism bias, and you find out that the red balls can be used to treat a rare tropical disease besetting your brother, and you end up overestimating how many red balls the urn contains because you wish the balls were mostly red. Like statistical biases, cognitive biases can distort our view of reality, they can’t always be fixed by just gathering more data, and their effects can a

335Mar 11, 2015

Rob Bensinger

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Communications @ MIRI. Unless otherwise indicated, my posts and comments here reflect my own views, and not necessarily my employer's. (Though we agree about an awful lot.)

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A Reply to MacAskill on "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies"

EDIT: Oliver Habryka suggests below that I've misunderstood what Will's view is. Apologies if so, and if Will replies — or if I find him clarifying his view anywhere — I'll add a link to his view here. EDIT 2: Will replies below. I found Will MacAskill's X review of...

Sep 27, 202555

The Problem

This is a new introduction to AI as an extinction threat, previously posted to the MIRI website in February alongside a summary. It was written independently of Eliezer and Nate's forthcoming book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, and isn't a sneak peak of the book. Since the book is...

Aug 5, 2025324

MIRI Newsletter #123

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies * As we announced last month, Eliezer and Nate have a book coming out this September: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. This is MIRI’s major attempt to warn the policy world and the general public about AI. Preorders are live now, and are...

Jul 3, 202554

MIRI’s 2024 End-of-Year Update

MIRI is a nonprofit research organization with a mission of addressing the most serious hazards posed by smarter-than-human artificial intelligence. In our general strategy update and communications strategy update earlier this year, we announced a new strategy that we’re executing on at MIRI, and several new teams we’re spinning up...

Dec 3, 202499

Response to Aschenbrenner's "Situational Awareness"

(Cross-posted from Twitter.) My take on Leopold Aschenbrenner's new report: I think Leopold gets it right on a bunch of important counts. Three that I especially care about: 1. Full AGI and ASI soon. (I think his arguments for this have a lot of holes, but he gets the basic...

Jun 6, 2024197

When is a mind me?

xlr8harder writes: > In general I don’t think an uploaded mind is you, but rather a copy. But one thought experiment makes me question this. A Ship of Theseus concept where individual neurons are replaced one at a time with a nanotechnological functional equivalent. > > Are you still you?...

Apr 17, 2024148

AI Views Snapshots

(Cross-posted from Twitter, and therefore optimized somewhat for simplicity.) Recent discussions of AI x-risk in places like Twitter tend to focus on "are you in the Rightthink Tribe, or the Wrongthink Tribe?". Are you a doomer? An accelerationist? An EA? A techno-optimist? I'm pretty sure these discussions would go way...

Dec 13, 2023143

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Rob Bensinger

Rob Bensinger

Rob Bensinger

Biases: An Introduction

Discussion with Eliezer Yudkowsky on AGI interventions

The Problem

A challenge for AGI organizations, and a challenge for readers

Rob Bensinger

A Reply to MacAskill on "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies"

The Problem

MIRI Newsletter #123

MIRI’s 2024 End-of-Year Update

Response to Aschenbrenner's "Situational Awareness"

When is a mind me?

AI Views Snapshots

Biases: An Introduction

Discussion with Eliezer Yudkowsky on AGI interventions

The Problem

A challenge for AGI organizations, and a challenge for readers

A Reply to MacAskill on "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies"

The Problem

MIRI Newsletter #123

MIRI’s 2024 End-of-Year Update

Response to Aschenbrenner's "Situational Awareness"

When is a mind me?

AI Views Snapshots