Redwood Research is a research organization with the mission of aligning superhuman AI. In addition to our primary work of applied AI alignment research, we host and operate Constellation, a shared office space we created to foster knowledge-sharing and collaboration between longtermist organizations. People from the Alignment Research Center, MIRI,...
Redwood Research does applied AI alignment research. We’re led by Nate Thomas (CEO), Buck Shlegeris (CTO), and Bill Zito (COO), and our board is Holden Karnofsky, Paul Christiano, and Nate Thomas. To learn more about our current project, you can read a project update from September or Paul’s “Why I’m...
Redwood Research is a research organization with the mission of aligning superhuman AI. In addition to our primary work of applied AI alignment research, we host and operate Constellation, a shared office space we created to foster knowledge-sharing and collaboration between longtermist organizations. People from the Alignment Research Center, MIRI, and Open Philanthropy often work from the space.
Redwood and Constellation are expanding. Redwood Research’s staff includes Nate Thomas (CEO), Buck Shlegeris (CTO), and Bill Zito (COO), and a board of Nate Thomas, Holden Karnofsky, and Paul Christiano.
We’re running a hiring round for a number of Operations roles, across a range of experience levels. The roles we are most excited to hire are:
... (read more)I don't think data companies can deliver on this complex of a task without significant oversight.
Redwood Research does applied AI alignment research. We’re led by Nate Thomas (CEO), Buck Shlegeris (CTO), and Bill Zito (COO), and our board is Holden Karnofsky, Paul Christiano, and Nate Thomas. To learn more about our current project, you can read a project update from September or Paul’s “Why I’m excited about Redwood Research’s current project.”
In addition to our primary work of applied AI alignment research, Redwood hosts and operates Constellation, a shared office space we created to foster knowledge-sharing and collaboration between longtermist organizations. People from the following organizations often work from the space: Alignment Research Center, MIRI, and Open Philanthropy.
We’re hiring for several roles, listed below in order of which... (read more)
Strong +1 for writing the post-mortem -- there are incentives not to write that kind of thing, but I appreciated it. I also get value out of your weekly posts, so thanks for writing those.
That being said, I do have a few minor quibbles with the post-mortem. I think I interpreted your December (and future month) claims more strongly than it sounds like you interpreted them.
I haven't re-read all your posts carefully to check for places you might have said this, but I don't remember seeing you say in the 1-2 months after your "We're F***ed" post that you thought it was significantly less likely that we're f***ed. E.g. I commented on... (read more)
My personal experience in Uber/Lyfts (pre-covid, I used them multiple times a week for several years) is that they're probably more dangerous than driving myself (>80% of rides are very safe / normal, but the 1-20% where I think they're driving too fast or recklessly seem like most of the risk). I personally would be happy to pay 10% more to guarantee a safer driver, especially on e.g. a rainy day. I think I probably have more experience driving than most Berkeley EA's though / feel more confident in my driving skills.
"On the margin, if you don’t book an appointment, either the appointment and shot you decline will go unfilled, or it will probably go to someone else who is ‘high risk’ according to some list but unlikely to be actually high risk, or someone who is lying. In many jurisdictions all you have to do is say you are somehow eligible. That’s it. No one is verifying anyone’s claims.”
At least in the Bay Area, a couple hours of looking into this / thinking about it suggests this is false. I'm interested in counterarguments, but I think the pro-social thing to do is to wait until more of the at-risk population has received their vaccine. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J2a2t2QEZJLdb2MkR/when-to-get-a-vaccine-in-the-bay-area-as-a-young-healthy
[Edit was to fix block quote formatting]
Seems like we should consider the possibility that the UK strain is not as transmissible as the pre-print suggested given the large drop in cases? Unless we have evidence that their lockdown is actually much more severe than similar lockdowns? A quick look at the lockdown rules suggests it’s similar to the Bay Area’s for instance.
[To clarify: I think this was worded somewhat incorrectly -- I didn't update much on the probability of the pre-print being wrong, but I did update significantly on the implications of the higher transmissibility.]
Was your prediction that cases would go down and then up also for the UK in addition to the US? I thought the new strain prevalence was already pretty high in parts of England according to the pre-print, so it seems like cases going down by a lot there is a big update towards the pre-print potentially being wrong? The UK's last wave doesn't look naively out of distribution compared to e.g. Spain and the U.S.
[To clarify: I think this was worded somewhat incorrectly -- I didn't update much on the probability of the pre-print being wrong, but I did update significantly on the implications of the higher transmissibility.]
For "what task should I do next," it's O(n), because you just go down the list once doing a pairwise comparison. "What task should I do next" seems more important for actually doing things than sorting the entire list at first to avoid deliberation time / indecision / harder 3-way value comparisons.
Ya I think people should default to assuming it's out of date, but I do plan to check it semi-regularly and edit the post to make it clear when I last looked / if things have changed. Verified the routes still made sense today (8/25) and made it clear that was when I last checked.
I made a list of different evacuation routes from Berkeley that don't go through fires: https://www.facebook.com/billzito8/posts/10157744807027689