Gerald M. Monroe

Apr 4, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Gerald M. Monroe |Victor Ashioya |M. Y. Zuo |Nora Belrose

Summary: the moderators appear to be soft banning users with 'rate-limits' without feedback.  A careful review of each banned user reveals it's common to be banned despite earnestly attempting to contribute to the site.  Some of the most intelligent banned users have mainstream instead of EA views on AI.   Note how the punishment lengths are all the same, I think it was a mass ban-wave of 3 week bans:Gears to ascension was here but is no longer, guess she convinced them it was a mistake.

Mar 13, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Gerald M. Monroe |Nathan Helm-Burger |Akram Akhtar Choudhary

State monopoly:The Song Dynasty (960-1279) established a state monopoly over saltpeter production, a critical ingredient in gunpowder. The government appointed officials to oversee the collection and refinement of saltpeter. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the government further tightened its control over saltpeter production, with the "Saltpeter Censorate" responsible for managing the state monopoly. Limiting knowledge:Chinese officials kept the recipe for gunpowder a closely guarded secret.

Mar 5, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Gerald M. Monroe |Daniel Kokotajlo |Donald Hobson

There’s a basic high-level story which worries a lot of people. The story goes like this: as AIs become more capable, the default outcome of AI training is the development of a system which, unbeknownst to us, is using its advanced capabilities to scheme against us. The conclusion of this process likely leads to AI takeover, and thence our death.  We are not currently dead. So, any argument for our death by route of AI must offer us a causal story.

Feb 28, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Neel Nanda |Matt Goldenberg |Ben Pace |Gerald M. Monroe

(Also announcing: annual review prediction markets & full-height table of contents. If you're looking for this year's review results, you can find them here)The top 50 posts of each of LessWrong’s annual reviews have a new home: The LeastWrong. What will I see when I click that link? You will find the posts organized into six “books”: Rationality, Optimization, World, Practical, AI Strategy, and Technical AI Safety. Each square on the grid is a post that made the top 50 of the review in some year.

Feb 26, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Paul Colognese |Gerald M. Monroe

Thanks to Johannes Treutlein for discussions and feedback. An AI may be able to hide cognition that leads to negative outcomes from certain oversight processes (such as deceptive alignment/scheming). Without being able to detect this hidden cognition, an overseer may not be able to prevent the associated negative outcomes or include this information as part of the training signal.