Note: This post was crossposted from Planned Obsolescence by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.

This blogpost was written in a personal capacity and statements here do not necessarily reflect the views of any of my employer.

OpenAI says o1-preview can't meaningfully help novices make chemical and biological weapons. Their test results don’t clearly establish this.

Before launching o1-preview last month, OpenAI conducted various tests to see if its new model could help make Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) weapons. They report that o1-preview (unlike GPT-4o and older models) was significantly more useful than Google for helping trained experts plan out a CBRN attack. This caused the company to raise its CBRN risk level to “medium” when GPT-4o (released only a month earlier) had been at “low.”[1]

Of course, this doesn't tell us if o1-preview [...]

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Outline:

(04:14) ProtocolQA

(04:58) Does o1-preview clearly fail this test?

(06:08) Gryphon Biorisk Tacit Knowledge and Troubleshooting

(08:57) Cloning Scenarios

(13:41) What should we make of all this?

The original text contained 36 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 8 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

November 21st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/maQFRh6mZpYoegZdj/openai-s-cbrn-tests-seem-unclear

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TL;DR

In late summer 2023, I realized my mental health was the biggest barrier to achieving my goals. Over the next six months, I made it a priority, working with a therapist on CBT, adjusting medication timing, and developing healthier habits (like meditating and wellness routines). This resulted in a noticeable improvement in my clarity, productivity, and overall well-being, which positively impacted my work and leadership.

This post is part of an effort to post more :)

Background and Context

• Late summer 2023: During a performance review, I realized my mental health was my biggest barrier to growth.
  • I had been diagnosed with depression years earlier and medication helped significantly, but I was still having breakthrough symptoms.
  • It was preventing me from achieving ambitious goals and handling important work decisions (like what my team should prioritize in the following quarter)
  • I made improving mental health a top [...]

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Outline:

(00:03) TL;DR

(00:40) Background and Context

(01:38) Nuance and Disclaimer

(02:21) Some ways progress has affected my work

(03:33) What Made a Difference (in my rough guess at level of influence)

(03:44) Therapy (with the right therapist)

(05:22) Changing the time of taking medication

(05:56) Meditation and Habit Tracking

(07:13) 80k podcasts on mental health

(07:33) Physical Routines

(07:37) Exercise

(08:09) Sleep:

(08:40) Final Thoughts

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First published:

November 21st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9j35Qj5hAMs9hgAnd/how-i-improved-my-wellbeing

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

5th Dec, Online. (5pm to 9pm GMT): Come along to hear from our charities and about our latest programs and updates.

​It's been a big year for Ambitious Impact (AIM) formerly Charity Entrepreneurship.

We

• Rebranded (driven by expansion into new programs)
• launched 12 new charities and 4 effective giving organizations
• Trained ~25 researchers through our research training program
• Supported 14 foundations through AIM Grantmaking
• Launched 2 new funding circles
• ... and designed our newest program, Founding to Give, set to run in January. 

​Alongside all of that, our 40+ charities have been delivering programs that meaningfully save and improve the lives of millions of humans and a billion animals, with many evaluated to be 10-60x as cost-effective as the benchmarks in their fields.

We’d like to celebrate and showcase our organizations and connect people like you to impactful opportunities in our community [...]

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First published:

November 20th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MGX83XwsmsymombDp/invitation-to-online-aim-showcase

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis. All applications must be submitted by 30th November, 2024.

Chief Operations Officer

The COO will lead and optimize the operational infrastructure that supports our growth. The COO will be leading the scale up of our hospital based programs from 3 hospitals (46 people) to 15 hospitals (over 200 people) across Rajasthan within one year and lead expansion to multiple other states. This person will work closely with the Founder & CEO to shape strategy, ensure compliance, manage organisational operations, and lead a large, HR-intensive team to deliver life saving interventions to vulnerable babies through India's complex public health system.

In addition to delivering and strengthening Ansh's overall organizational operations and strategy, the COO will gradually oversee more domains, such as HR, compliance, finance, accounting, funder reporting, and program operational improvement, while also playing a key role in shaping our [...]

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First published:

November 20th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/P25CovFkLiaBmF4fY/ansh-is-hiring-a-coo-and-meal-specialist

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post.

This is the full text of a post from "The Obsolete Newsletter," a Substack that I write about the intersection of capitalism, geopolitics, and artificial intelligence. I’m a freelance journalist and the author of a forthcoming book called Obsolete: Power, Profit, and the Race for Machine Superintelligence. Consider subscribing to stay up to date with my work.

An influential congressional commission is calling for a militarized race to build superintelligent AI based on threadbare evidence

The US-China AI rivalry is entering a dangerous new phase.

Earlier today, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) released its annual report, with the following as its top recommendation:

Congress establish and fund a Manhattan Project-like program dedicated to racing to and acquiring an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) capability. AGI is generally defined as systems that are as good as or better than human capabilities across [...]

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Outline:

(00:30) An influential congressional commission is calling for a militarized race to build superintelligent AI based on threadbare evidence

(03:11) What China has said about AI

(06:17) Revealing technical errors

(08:32) Conclusion

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:

November 20th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/r7ThqWrwmLqrk4s5p/china-hawks-are-manufacturing-an-ai-arms-race

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Crosspost of this on my blog.

1 My basic view

'Cause everybody cries
Everybody hurts sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong

—Rem “Everybody hurts”

You didn’t think the era of absurdly long posts was over, did you?

Prior to the 2024 election, there were a series of swing states that pundits forecasted could have gone either way. All of them ended up going to Trump by a fairly wide margin, as predicted by some people (e.g. Glenn, Keith Rabois). None of the states that were solidly blue went to Trump, but all the states that pundits and prediction markets weren’t sure about went red.

I have a similar bet regarding consciousness.

I suspect that all of the species that are currently of significantly debated consciousness—call them swing state species—are conscious. This would include crabs, lobsters, fish, and most insects, but it wouldn’t include oysters or AI. There's fairly [...]

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Outline:

(00:09) 1 My basic view

(06:01) 2 Intensely? What about neuron count?

(17:34) 3 Fish

(28:46) 4 Shrimp shrimpy shrimpy shrimp (and other crustaceans)

(40:52) 5 Insects

(01:01:52) 6 Concluding remarks

The original text contained 6 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

November 20th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qyykh94QythBLKnLc/why-i-think-all-the-species-of-significantly-debate

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The Rethink Priorities Worldview Investigation Team is working on a model of consciousness in artificial systems. This article describes some complications to thinking of current LLM AI systems as coherent persons, despite the appearances to the contrary.

Introduction

The standard way that most people interact with cutting-edge AI systems is through chatbot interfaces like the ones pictured above. These interfaces are designed to look like the traditional messaging platforms that people use to talk with friends and family. The familiarity of this framework and its apparent analogy to interpersonal conversations encourages us to understand these systems in roughly the way we understand human conversation partners. However, this conception of AI systems is inaccurate. Moreover, appreciating its inaccuracies can help us think more carefully about whether AIs are persons, and what might be suitable indicators for AI consciousness and moral patienthood. We should take care to ensure [...]

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Outline:

(00:29) Introduction

(02:44) Background

(05:20) Complications

(05:24) 1. The user is not interacting with a single dedicated system.

(09:18) 2. An LLM model doesn’t clearly distinguish the text it produces from the text the user feeds it.

(14:04) 3. An LLM's output need not reflect its commitments or represent its own perspective.

(27:04) 4. An LLM's output gives us fairly narrow insight into internal activity.

(37:46) Conclusion

The original text contained 54 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 5 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

November 20th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FfKBhK933o2fFK6Sd/llms-are-weirder-than-you-think

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is a link post.

On the emergence of history's reins

One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

― Charles Darwin

We are a way for the universe to know itself.

— Carl Sagan

If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.

— Yogi Berra

Imagine you were trying to explain how the world worked 10 billion years ago. Back then, the best explanation would be in terms of physics: galaxies forming and supernovas producing heavy metals. Ten million years ago, though, you’d talk about evolution: plants, mammals, and early hominids. Ten thousand years ago, when agriculture was being established, you might talk about culture and the spread of ideas.

Each of these forces — physics, evolution, and culture — gave rise to the next, producing [...]

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Outline:

(00:07) On the emergence of historys reins

(04:15) The forces shaping history

(05:56) The blind forces

(07:48) The anthropocene

(12:49) The ascent of choice

(14:45) Is a Choice Transition inevitable?

(16:10) What the Choice Transition is not

(16:40) It doesn’t mean omnipotence

(17:18) It needn’t mean a single chooser

(18:12) It needn’t mean the end of new forces

(19:04) AI and the Choice Transition

(19:44) 1) Better foresight capabilities and understanding enable steering

(20:21) 2) Better coordination capabilities could allow for more coherent steering

(22:20) 3) Agentic AI systems could be (among) the entities steering

(23:20) 4) Advances in AI could lead to centralization of power

(25:03) 5) AI might empower forces that squeeze out deliberate steering

(27:22) 6) Automation of research means it might all happen quickly

(28:35) The space of possible Choice Transitions

(30:27) Acknowledgements

(31:05) Appendix: comparison to existing frames

(31:11) Comparison to normal AI x-risk frames

(33:30) Related concepts

(33:34) Bostroms notion of a Singleton

(33:54) Yudkowskys notion of a Pivotal Act

(34:09) Finnveden, Riedel, and Shulman's notion of lock-in

(34:33) Ords notion of the Long Reflection

(34:54) Drexler's notion of Paretotopia

(35:10) Carlsmiths notion of yang

(35:38) Buterin's notion of d/acc

(35:59) Alexander's notion of Moloch

The original text contained 22 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 4 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

November 18th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SrjrytewFfvZ8pCm4/the-choice-transition

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A place to explain your preferences, discuss them, and maybe change your mind.

Some comments on this thread are cross-posted from a text box which appears when you reach the end of the voting process, but everyone is welcome to post here whenever.

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First published:

November 18th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/q6C23rxvyHX2ZxNNS/donation-election-discussion-thread

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Join us in the Bay Area on March 1-2 (shortly after EAG Bay Area!) for two days of innovation, collaboration, and inspiration in the developing field of AI and animal welfare.

🎟️ Get earlybird tickets by Dec 1

🎓Apply to speak by Dec 15

Topics will include the future of animal agriculture, interspecies communication, sentience research, increasing animal consideration in frontier AI models, and more.

This year will be more multidisciplinary than in previous years and include a wide range of stakeholders from animal welfare scientists to AI researchers to animal advocates. Sessions will cover practical applications of AI and other advanced technologies for animals and focus on furthering this emerging field through an opportunities fair, networking sessions, and workshops to develop stakeholder maps and repositories of interventions that will serve as useful resources for anyone looking to do work in this field.

We [...]

The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI.

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First published:

November 20th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iTGrxsxz2jjPDgYsb/ai-for-animals-2025-conference-get-early-bird-tickets-now-2

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