EA Forum Podcast (All audio)

This is a link post.

Summary

This post gives my personal take on “AI for epistemics” and how important it might be to work on.

Some background context:

• AI capabilities are advancing rapidly and I think it's important to think ahead and prepare for the possible development of AI that could automate almost all economically relevant tasks that humans can do.[1]

• That kind of AI would have a huge impact on key epistemic processes in our society. (I.e.: It would have a huge impact on how new facts get found, how new research gets done, how new forecasts get made, and how all kinds of information spread through society.)
• I think it's very important for our society to have excellent epistemic processes. (I.e.: For important decisions in our society to be made by people or AI systems who have informed and unbiased beliefs that take into account as much [...]

---

Outline:

(00:07) Summary

(04:38) Structure of the post

(05:35) Previous work

(07:31) Why work on AI for epistemics?

(07:36) Summary

(09:40) Importance

(12:17) Path-dependence

(14:47) To be more concrete

(15:39) Good norms and practices for AI-as-knowledge-producers

(17:14) Good norms and practices for AI-as-communicators

(19:32) Differentially high epistemic capabilities

(27:15) Heuristics for good interventions

(28:03) Direct vs. indirect strategies

(29:27) Indirect value generation

(33:33) On long-lasting differential capability improvements

(36:13) Painting a picture of the future

(41:06) Concrete projects for differentially advancing epistemic capabilities

(43:50) Evals/benchmarks for forecasting (or other ambitious epistemic assistance)

(44:30) Automate forecasting question-generation and -resolution

(46:02) Logistics of past-casting

(50:24) Start efforts inside of AI companies for AI forecasting or other ambitious epistemic assistance

(51:37) Scalable oversight / weak-to-strong-generalization / ELK

(53:56) Experiments on what type of arguments and AI interactions tend to lead humans toward truth vs. mislead them

(56:14) Concluding thoughts

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

---

First published:

August 24th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jPKoNFRowKJwGgGyy/what-s-important-in-ai-for-epistemics

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I'm a big fan of small, underrated acts that can have outsized positive impact (both in terms EA and in life more generally). I'd like to share one such practice I've incorporated into my life this year that brings me joy and I think some others here would enjoy: redirecting money owed to me towards Givewell recommended charities.

Whenever someone owes me money or is trying to solicit my time, instead of asking for direct payment, I request they instead contribute that amount to a GiveWell-recommended charity. This comes up in several contexts:

1. Friends repaying me miscellaneous expenses
2. Buyers purchasing items from me (ie selling something used online)
3. Being solicited for my participation in programs or sales pitches

I appreciate this just sounds like "Isn't this just offsetting your own charitable giving?" But I believe this approach creates additional value beyond the off-set donation:

1. Exposure Effect: By [...]

---

First published:

August 22nd, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rCvaLdjefLoxtfcrv/small-simple-way-to-promote-effective-giving-while-making

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Hello EA community! My lab recently launched the Structural Democratic Reforms project, which is using crowdsourcing, expert evaluation, and messaging testing to identify the best democratic reforms to safeguard and strengthen American democracy. We're in the crowdsourcing phase, and we'd love to get folks from the EA community to submit their ideas for democratic reforms!

Here's why I'm especially keen on getting ideas from those in the EA community: Right now, our submitters are disproportionately academic political scientists. By tapping into the EA community, we'll hopefully have a more diverse set of ideas from a more diverse group of thinkers. And because EA folks typically push for the most effective solutions--often with creative or unconventional ideas that others might miss--I thought it would be especially interesting and important crowdsource from this group.

Submissions can be made here and can take under 5 minutes. The deadline for [...]

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

---

First published:

August 21st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LYvwqsqkGzGbgLCwX/crowdsourcing-the-best-ideas-for-structural-democratic

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Executive summary

We believe contributions to the 2024 US election are worthy of serious consideration. In particular, we believe this election is much more tractable and important than conventional wisdom within the EA community suggests. Many of our team members were previously working in AI safety/governance and have temporarily switched to focusing primarily on the election. We think more EAs should consider doing the same.

This election is much more tractable than most expect:

• US presidential elections are often decided by slim margins in a few swing states (537 votes in 2000, 77,744 in 2016, and 42,918 in 2020). 
  • The best polling data we have as of August 2024 is that 2024's margins will be in a similar range, with Harris very slightly favored to lose. 
• Given how small margins of victory have been, many organizations have arguably been responsible for flipping past presidential elections (and [...]

---

Outline:

(00:06) Executive summary

(03:25) Introduction

(04:38) Influencing the US election is tractable

(04:43) US presidential elections are often close

(06:45) Having an impact on the election is relatively straightforward

(07:58) There is still low-hanging fruit

(11:15) Electoral politics has poor incentives and talent retention

(13:16) The 2024 election is much more important than other elections

(13:22) A second Trump term would likely be far more damaging for liberal democracy than the last

(18:03) This is an especially critical period for AI

(18:50) Trump is unusually bad at governing

(19:59) How you can help

(20:19) Urgency and irreversibility

(21:23) Donate

(23:46) Get involved

(25:06) Appendix

(25:09) The opportunity cost of a Trump presidency

(26:44) The candidates on some EA cause areas

(27:03) Artificial Intelligence

(29:44) Pandemic response and biosecurity

(31:39) Global health

(33:04) Climate change

(34:54) Nuclear Risk

(36:40) Farm animal welfare

(38:21) US-China and international relations

(43:01) An incredibly rough model of the cost to flip the election

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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

---

First published:

August 21st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QJfy2gBdZbw5cDXdh/the-case-for-contributing-to-the-2024-us-election-with-your

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The views expressed here are my own, not those of my employers.

Summary

• The Life You Can Save (TLYCS) suggests people earning 40 to 80 k$/year donate just 1 % of their net income, which I think is too low.
• Would it even be good if some people in extreme poverty wanted to sign the 🔸10% Pledge, and donated to the most cost-effective animal welfare interventions?

Recommendations from The Life You Can Save

TLYCS has a calculator to suggest the amount of annual donations based on the country of residence and annual pre-tax income. For people living in the United States earning:

• Less than 40 k$/year, they “recommend giving whatever you feel you can afford without undue hardship”.
• 40 to 80 k$/year, they “recommend” annual donations equal to 1 % of the annual pre-tax income.

TLYCS also emphasises the idea of striving towards one's personal best in terms of [...]

---

Outline:

(00:14) Summary

(00:39) Recommendations from The Life You Can Save

(03:36) Donations of people in extreme poverty

(05:51) Acknowledgements

---

First published:

August 21st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uaWF9ix9gdPkyApth/the-life-you-can-save-suggests-people-earning-40-to-80-kusd

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I asked readers of my blog with experience in AI alignment (and especially AI grantmaking) to fill out a survey about how they valued different goods. I got 61 responses. I disqualified 11 for various reasons, mostly failing the comprehension check question at the beginning, and kept 50.

Because I didn't have a good way to represent the value of "a" dollar for people who might have very different amounts of money managed, I instead asked people to value things in terms of a base unit - a program like MATS graduating one extra technical alignment researcher (at the center, not the margin). So for example, someone might say that "creating" a new AI journalist was worth "creating" two new technical alignment researchers, or vice versa.

One of the goods that I asked people to value was $1 million going to a smart, value-aligned grantmaker. This provided a sort [...]

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

---

First published:

August 21st, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E7pkeDruknpSa7j3i/results-of-an-informal-survey-on-ai-grantmaking

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

This is a link post.

---

First published:

August 16th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jmEwHNaqz5zLaCrvd/charitable-giving-is-a-life-hack

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

I think that the concept of "alignment research" (and the distinction between that and "capabilities research") is currently a fairly confused one. In this post I’ll describe some of the problems with how people typically think about these terms, and offer replacement definitions.

“Alignment” and “capabilities” are primarily properties of AIs not of AI research

The first thing to highlight is that the distinction between alignment and capabilities is primarily doing useful work when we think of them as properties of AIs. This distinction is still under-appreciated by the wider machine learning community. ML researchers have historically thought about performance of models almost entirely with respect to the tasks they were specifically trained on. However, the rise of LLMs has vindicated the alignment community's focus on general capabilities, and now it's much more common to assume that performance on many tasks (including out-of-distribution tasks) will improve roughly in parallel. [...]

---

Outline:

(00:20) “Alignment” and “capabilities” are primarily properties of AIs not of AI research

(05:04) What types of research are valuable for preventing misalignment?

(05:29) Valuable property 1: worst-case focus

(07:21) Valuable property 2: scientific approach

(11:48) A better definition of alignment research

---

First published:

August 19th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ajcQELstaSGYxdoRj/defining-alignment-research

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Probably Good recently launched a new article series, Career Journeys: Interviews with people working to make a difference.

In this series, we interview people from a range of fields and career paths to bring a more personal perspective to career planning. Each conversation explores how people got to where they are today, what their day-to-day work entails, and what advice they’d give to others pursuing a similar path.

As several “write about your job” posts have noted, jobs are still mysterious both in terms of how people get them and what they actually look like to do. These interviews provide some insight into how varied—and often surprising—lived career experiences can be. We hope they can be a catalyst for our readers to consider new paths and apply any advice they find relevant for their path.

Check out our first few interviews, now live on the site:

• Astronaut [...]

---

First published:

August 20th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qjcjdYbEh6HBGi9Py/a-new-interview-series-with-people-doing-impactful-work

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

As AIM's Director of Recruitment, I'm running an AMA to answer any questions you may have about applying for our programs, as well as any questions that may be of interest from my other experience (such as co-founding Maternal Health Initiative).

Ambitious Impact (formerly Charity Entrepreneurship) currently has applications open until September 15th for two of our programs.

• Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Programme
• AIM Founding to Give

You can read more about both programs in this earlier EA Forum post. Please consider applying!

Why a personal AMA?

Answers to questions can often be subjective. I do not want to claim to speak for every member of AIM's team. As such, I want to make clear that I will be answering in a personal capacity. I think this has a couple of notable benefits:

• My answers can be a little more candid since I don't have to worry [...]

---

Outline:

(00:43) Why a personal AMA?

(01:27) A little about me

(02:31) Things you could ask me

(03:10) How the AMA works

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

August 19th, 2024

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ypcgspAmDnqZ37ufg/ama-with-aim-s-director-of-recruitment-and-mhi-co-founder

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.