LessWrong 2.0 Reader

For the two sets of mess3 parameters I checked the stationary distribution was uniform.

Nice post. Gets at something real.

My feeling is that a lot of contrarians get "pulled into" a more contrarian view. I have noticed myself in discussions propose a (specific, technical point correcting a detail of a particular model). Then, when I talk to people about it I feel like they are trying to pull me towards the simpler position (all those idiots are wrong, its completely different from that). This happens with things like "ah, so you mean...", which is very direct. But also through a much more subtle process, where I talk to many people, and most of them go away thinking "Ok, specific technical correction on a topic I don't care about that much." and most of them never talk or think about it again. But the people who get the exaggerated idea are more likely to remember. 

If you are referring to this:

If we institute a pause, we should expect to see (counterfactually) reduced R&D investment in improving hardware capabilities, reduced investment in scaling hardware production, reduced hardware production, reduced investment in research, reduced investment in supporting infrastructure, and fewer people entering the field.

This seems an extreme claim to me (if these effects are argued to be meaningful), especially "fewer people entering the field"! Just how long do you think you would need a pause to make fewer people enter the field? I would expect that not only would the pause have to have lasted say 5+ years but there would have to be a worldwide expectation that it would go on for longer to actually put people off. 

Because of flow on effects and existing commitments, reduced hardware R&D investment wouldn't start for a few years either. Its not clear that it will meaningfully happen at all if we want to deploy existing LLM everywhere also. For example in robotics I expect there will be substantial demand for hardware even without AI advances as our current capabilities havn't been deployed there  yet.

As I have said here, and probably in other places, I am quite a bit more in favor of directly going for a hardware pause specifically for the most advanced hardware. I think it is achievable, impactful, and with clearer positive consequences (and not unintended negative ones) than targeting training runs of an architecture that already seems to be showing diminishing returns.

If you must go for after FLOPS for training, then build in large factors of safety for architectures/systems that are substantially different from what is currently done. I am not worried about unlimited FLOPS on GPT-X but could be for >100* less on something that clearly looks like it has very different scaling laws.

Thanks for the comment! We always use the pre-ReLU feature activation, which is equal to the post-ReLU activation (given that the feature is activate), and is purely linear function of z. Edited the post for clarity. 

You are very welcome, and I think you'll fit right in. It's quite a coincidence that you're interested in documentary productions, as a documentary producer is visiting us for the first hour.

There's a symbolic "AI Box" to contain AI discussion. I'd like to talk about RUF and the transportation infrastructure of Dath Ilan with you, but I usually end up in the box no matter what I do. :)

Eliezer decided to apply the label "rational" to emotions resulting from true beliefs. I think this is an understandable way to apply that word. I don't think you and Eliezer disagree with anything substantive except the application of that label. 

That said, your point about keeping the label "rational" for things strictly related to the fundamental laws regulating beliefs is good. I agree it might be a better way to use the word.

My reading of Eliezer's choice is this: you use the word "rational" for the laws themselves. But you also use the word "rational" for beliefs and actions that are correct according to the laws (e.g., "It's rational to believe x!). In the same way, you can also use the word "rational" for emotion directly caused by rational beliefs, whatever those emotions might be. 

About the instrumental rationality part: if you are strict about only applying the word "rational" to the laws of thinking, then you shouldn't use it to describe emotions even when you are talking about instrumental rationality, although I agree it seems to be closer to the original meaning, as there isn't the additional causal step. It's closer in the way that "rational belief" is closer to the original meaning. But note that this is true insofar as you can control your emotions, and you treat them at the same level of actions. Otherwise, it would be as saying "state of the world x that helps me achieve my goals is rational", which I haven't heard anywhere.

In my opinion, a class action filed by all employees allegedly prejudiced (I say allegedly here, reserving the right to change 'prejudiced' in the event that new information arises) by the NDAs and gag orders would be very effective.

Were they to seek termination of these agreements on the basis of public interest in an arbitral tribunal, rather than a court or internal bargaining [LW · GW], the ex-employees are far more likely to get compensation. The litigation costs of legal practitioners there also tend to be far less.

Again, this assumes that the agreements they signed didn't also waive the right to class action arbitration. If OpenAI does have agreements this cumbersome, I am worried about the ethics of everything else they are pursuing.

For further context, see:

• Trump's NDA termination;
• A Practical Guide to Challenging Gag Orders Under the Stored Communications Act (alston.com); and
• 1909_Class Actions_Arbitration Agreements and Class Action Waivers _Federal, CA_.pdf (sheppardmullin.com).

When considering that my thinking was that I'd expect the last day to be slightly after, but the announcement can be slightly before since that doesn't need to be quite on the last day but can and often would be a little before - e.g. be on the first day of his last week.

Do you happen to have a copy of it that you can share?

The first two reasons that come to my mind are (1) other instruments have much more career incentive to do so (in that there are many more jobs for classical violinists or violin ensembles than for classical guitarists), and (2) it’s possible to have a much more successful career as a guitarist knowing only chord positions and not having a more detailed understanding of the fretboard, than it is with other instruments where a knowledge of how to play complicated melodies is required.