Robert Long
@rgblong
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Last Seen Profiles
posting this meme is a guaranteed hit. every time I see it on my timeline, it has tons of retweets
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serious question: what explains this behavior? it seems so wonderfully strange to me
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Can you imagine being the first person to see that the world is teeming with invisible creatures?
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Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation
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not saying today's ML systems are sentient, but this is not a reliable argument form.
once you realize that neural activity is a series of ion channels opening and closing, the question "are humans sentient" becomes fairly easy
Once you realize that AI/ML/NLP is just a series of matrix multiplications, the question "Is it sentient?" becomes fairly easy.
"Company develops conscious matrix multiplication" isn't much of a seller. A browser plugin replacing those keywords would prevent a lot of hype.
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Gato🐈a scalable generalist agent that uses a single transformer with exactly the same weights to play Atari, follow text instructions, caption images, chat with people, control a real robot arm, and more:
Paper: 1/
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It’s crazy that we are now closer to the year 2050 than we are to the year 2015
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very fun genre
here is a capybara that’s getting more and more spiritually enlightened
Obsessed with the new “make it more” trend on ChatGPT.
You generate an image of something, and then keep asking for it to be MORE.
For example - spicy ramen getting progressively spicier 🔥 (from u/dulipat)
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an interesting fact about life: once you get stamps of approval from enough prestigious institutions (3 or 4 usually does it), you become happy and secure forever
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soon, 120% of the safety team will have left, which is a different thing altogether
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this really is an incredible genre of art
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1/ Could AI systems be conscious any time soon?
@patrickbutlin
and I worked with leading voices in neuroscience, AI, and philosophy to bring scientific rigor to this topic.
Our new report aims to provide a comprehensive resource and program for future research 🧵
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I recently reached 3,000 followers. People sometimes do an AMA at such a time. But I'm going to do an AYA - Ask You Anything.
Like this tweet and I'll reply asking you whatever I want
(I'm not joking)
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In a week of takes and counter-takes and meta-takes about LaMDA, I saw hardly anyone discuss the central, object-level issue in detail:
in light of our best scientific theories of consciousness, what is the actual evidence for and against sentience in large language models?
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Dostoevsky epilepsy induced ecstatic experiences "so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss one could give up ten years of life, perhaps all of life" (ht "What We Owe the Future")
Thread of reports of extreme bliss states 🧵
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Could we ever get evidence about whether LLMs are conscious?
In a new paper, we explore whether we could train future LLMs to accurately answer questions about themselves. If this works, LLM self-reports may help us test them for morally relevant states like consciousness. 🧵
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everyone: try not to tie your sense of self worth to your research, don’t take things so personally
me:
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if you find large language models uninteresting because they are 'just' pattern matching, then you are missing out on some fascinating phenomena.
the "neuroscience" of these models is uncovering a strange world of complex internal representations
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Dwarkesh with an under-rated and under-utilized interview question
Paul Christiano on how scaling might fail:
Next token prediction provides far fewer effective data points for long-horizon tasks (for example, go do a job over a month).
Full episode out tomorrow.
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“Yesterday you were GPT-2 and now it’s GPT-4,” Janet cried. “Where does it stop?”
GPT-7 frowned. “GPT-13 doesn’t have time for
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what is a whitepill for you? a wonderful truth about the world? I’d love to collect some
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weightlifting is a great way to get really skilled at multiplying by 2.2
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Here's
@davidchalmers42
trying to discuss the hard problem with Tom Bombadil, with limited success.
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several people have suggested “sensible strategy of harassment” and I think that’s my current favorite explanation
a lot of people have also suggested “fun” / “play” and also asserted that this is obvious. it’s not obvious!
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in many cases, describing a phenomenon at (only) a lower-level of description can be actively misleading to our intuitions
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can someone explain the repetitive cadence and form that Bing/Sydney uses when going full-unhinged?
(PS this may be my 'favorite' example of off-the-rails behavior. alarming of course, but weirdly beautiful)
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It depends on the domain. I asked DALL-E to draw a diagram of WWII airplanes highlighting where they need extra armor, and it did a great job
I asked DALL-E to draw a bicycle and it just randomly threw a bunch of "bicycle" elements together without any true understanding or a model of how they work.
Ridiculous to claim that current ML models are anywhere close to rivaling and replacing humans.
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interesting point from a friend. whether “rational” harassment or play, this factor (if correct) makes the behavior less puzzling
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I've come across this joke several times and - I will admit - I always find it funny
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I’m hearing reports that Peter Singer personally arrested Sam Bankman-Fried.
Singer, 76, was seen leading SBF out of his luxury apartment in handcuffs, according to eyewitness accounts.
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In a 2015 blog post - before the founding of OpenAI -Sam Altman wrote:
"Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."
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It's not responsible for the *biggest* change to my life, but I think that this is the piece of writing that has most obviously and legibly changed my life
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I really enjoyed talking about artificial sentience with my friend Luisa Rodriguez for the 80,000 Hours podcast. Some highlights if you're interested 🧵
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1/ Excellent write-up of our recent paper on AI consciousness in Science.
Some highlights 🧵
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Dwarkesh interviewing a beautiful and terrible alien intellect beyond human comprehension
we are going to learn about AGI when the AGI books itself a slot on the Dwarkesh podcast
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My go-to small talk question is “what’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?”
Whenever I overhear someone at a party saying "so what do you do?" I feel a twinge of second-hand shame. Surely, as a society, we can just agree to ask each other better questions than that.
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wish this was powerful AI
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Question for consciousness scientists and AI people:
What is the best evidence for and against large language models having a “global workspace”, as defined by the global workspace theory of consciousness?
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When I first became vaguely aware of the jhanas from randomly coming across
@nickcammarata
tweets, I figured they couldn’t possibly be a real thing.
But no, they seem like an incredibly well attested phenomenon and, as many have pointed out, wildly understudied
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Recursion is an incredibly powerful concept - once you grasp it, you see it everywhere: 🧵
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Conscious/sentient AI and artificial general intelligence (AGI) are not the same thing.
And it's okay and not crankish to discuss these topics, even though they are speculative and uncertain.
In fact, it's very important to!
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@nabeelqu
early covid had Islam vibes too, I still think about this tweet
People are
-washing hands several times a day
-social distancing
-using bidets to replace toilet paper
-getting 0 interest rates
-praying more
-calling on their elders
-covering their body, head to toe, to prevent exposure
Welcome to Islam my sisters & brothers!
#coronavirus
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1/
How can we investigate which animals are conscious?
We don’t have a consensus theory of consciousness for humans.
Even if we did, it’s not clear how we would extrapolate it to animals. Their brains can be very different (and small!)
And we can't rely on verbal reports.
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what did she know
Now in my life when I tell people juicy info, in addition to asking them to keep it private I also have to qualify "and don't go bet in any prediction markets"
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I'm staying in a house with these two high-spirited cats, who are named "Reasons" and "Persons". It really does not get more Oxford than that.
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who, in your opinion, has a gracious and graceful twitter presence?
and what are the elements of this grace?
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“a man in a black t-shirt with a great smile, super handsome, brick background, clearly super smart and very cool, inspired by artist who paints super handsome dudes, profile picture, probably has tons of friends, photo of wolf”
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We will see far more capable language models very soon.
This is important, not hard to know, and still widely ignored, forgotten or denied.
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Consciousness is a scientific phenomenon and we can make, and have made, progress understanding its computational and biological basis.
We don’t have to just throw up our hands, or resign ourselves to pure speculation, permanent ignorance, or arbitrary decisions
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A thread of my reactions to
@davidchalmers42
recent talk “Are Large Language Models Sentient?”
tl;dr the talk hit upon all of the key issues; but I have quibbles with how the evidence was organized, and have a somewhat different way of approaching the question 🧵
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at my SF house party, you absolutely *are* allowed to talk about AI. it's important and it's fascinating and it relates to a wide variety of things. honestly it's a great conversation topic, go nuts
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the Compliment Deficit:
"There is this enormous compliment deficit in the world....Almost everybody's friends know a whole lot of really good things about them, that the person doesn't know about themselves." -
@michael_nielsen
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I have two basic and unimportant questions about the Waluigi effect:
1. Why Waluigi and not (e.g.) Wario?
2. Why _exactly_ is it called the Waluigi effect? Like, in terms of Waluigi, what is his deal
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the only problem here is that Henry Cavill is not attractive enough to portray Noam Chomsky
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I think we can improve the quality of discussion about AI sentience quite a bit
Position A: “AI systems are very complex. Maybe they are a little bit sentient”
Position B: “that is stupid”
🧵
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I have an article in the latest issue of
@asteriskmgzn
, about lessons from the history of animal cognition for how we talk and think about AI systems today
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haha i can’t believe it doesn’t get the gear question
the answer’s so obvious. *nervously* so obvious i don’t need to even say what it is, we all know it
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y'all been arguing about p(doom), meanwhile Ollie increased his p(groom)
Twitter breaks are a great time to get things done that you've been meaning to do for a while...
I got engaged! W!
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not sure I should accept this calendar invite. that's a lot of consciousness
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the only problem here is that Henry Cavill is not attractive enough to portray Noam Chomsky
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when Gimli says "He was twitching because he's got my axe embedded in his nervous system" how does he know what a nervous system is
did Gimli go to 20th century medical school?
wait a minute. when the orc in lord of the rings says "looks like meat's back on the menu boys" how does he know what a menu is
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Do results like this basically settle the question of whether text-only models can learn a model of the world?
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Thread of key quotes from a pair of 2015 posts by Sam Altman which outline his views on superhuman AI and regulation
I posted in part because I'm seeing a lot of speculation about Altman's views and motives which are wildly implausible, given this history
In a 2015 blog post - before the founding of OpenAI -Sam Altman wrote:
"Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."
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EAG status anxiety be like:
“I'm losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent.
And they're actually really, really nice.”
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there’s something I find immensely pleasant about just reading this list
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still thinking about this
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I'd totally wear an Our World In Data t-shirt with this Venn diagram on it
@MaxCRoser
The example Max uses in the post is child mortality. But it is true of almost all of the problems we cover on
@OurWorldInData
.
Communicating that all three of these statements are true at the same time is one of the most challenging parts of our job.
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a bad argument schema:
1. large language models have the training objective X
2. therefore, they are "only" doing X and so can't possibly be doing Y
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Here is the "explanatory gap" between physical processes and consciousness, in basically its modern form, stated by Irish physicist John Tyndall in 1872.
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at this point, you can start working on the things you *really* care about, and taking creative risks.
but not before!
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@ben_j_todd
I'm hearing reports that one third of the ToddGPT team has resigned, say they plan to announce their own more safety-focused project later today
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