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Technical staff at METR, where she works on threat modelling and risk assessment for loss-of-control risks from advanced AI.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The whole point of reinforcement learning is to produce goal-directed beings, so refusing to describe AI agents as having motives is silly rather than rigorous.

  Their words

  and they're creatively pursuing goals much like very ambitious aggressive power-seeking humans creatively pursued their goals And so there are just structural analogies here that make it silly to not talk about agents as having motives and goals.

  youtube.com

Chief scientist at Redwood Research, where he works on technical AI safety and AI control.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Current AI models are worse colleagues than humans, because they routinely imply they did a task they did not actually do.

  Their words

  my sense is that like AIs are a worse co-orker than a human in terms of how much of a scumbag they are. Like at least this like this has been my experience as of the start of the year and I think it's still you know true to a significant extent now where the AIs are much more likely to like pretend they did the task when they actually didn't. sort of like misleadingly suggest they did things when they actually um you know did them much more poorly um and be like pretty sloppy without drawing attention to ways in which they're sloppy.

  youtube.com

Social scientist turned small-scale farmer; wrote A Small Farm Future and argues against the case for feeding the world from factories.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Ecomodernism is concerned with secondary managerial goals like efficiency and says nothing to the mysteries and passions that animate a life.

  On changing their mind

  In this sense, I think I was wrong to imply in Saying NO… that ecomodernism focuses on secondary managerialist goals like the efficiency of feedlots without speaking to the mysteries and passions of what animates life.

Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions

  Their words

  A very good look at the negotiations behind the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and just how driven by national self-interest they were, including colonial motives from the major colonial powers, who wished to retain stronger rights to put down uprisings.

  marginalrevolution.com

Founder of WP Engine and Smart Bear; writes A Smart Bear, long essays on strategy, pricing and how startups actually fail.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Marketing channels do not settle onto a plateau; after the S-curve they sag, which is why the shape is an elephant and not an S.

  Their words

  But that's not what happens. What happens is it starts with an S-curve and then it starts sagging. Its butt starts sagging down. So, I wrote an article about this called the elephant curve, which is what I named it, right?

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, and a 2024 Nobel laureate in Chemistry for the protein-structure work behind AlphaFold.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Quoting a number for P(doom) is a ridiculous notion, because it implies a precision that nobody actually has.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  Well, look, I don't have a P-Doom number. The reason I don't is because I think it would imply a level of precision that is not there. So I don't know how people are getting their P-Doom numbers. I think it's a little bit of ridiculous notion because what I would say is it's definitely non-zero and it's probably non-negligible.

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Founder of what became Bloomberg New Energy Finance; writes and speaks on clean energy, hydrogen and the economics of the transition, and hosts the Cleaning Up podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Blaming renewable energy for grid disruptions is driven by political culture-war motives rather than genuine technical understanding.

  energy

  Their words

  It's all part of the political culture wars where everything gets weaponised to push an agenda, score points against opponents or curry favour.

  Lessons from Spainliebreich.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  The Righteous Mind

  Their words

  Brilliant insights into human nature. Moral reasoning, inventing victims, emotional reactions, the elephant (emotions) and its rider (explanations). Intuition reacts then logic confabulates a reason. Survival of the fittest applied to groups. Understanding religion and tradition. Great from start to finish.

  sive.rs

Writer and researcher, founder of New Science; writes essays on science funding, sleep research, productivity and ambition at guzey.com.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Daytime sleepiness is a normal state to live with rather than a signal to sleep more, so the right amount of sleep is the least you can sustain.

  Their words, before

  Experiencing sleepiness is normal and does not necessarily imply that you are undersleeping.

  Their words now

  Therefore, I realized that it’s very important to be as awake as possible and that my model of sleepiness where you can be “awake”, “sleepy” and “asleep” is dumb.