LessWrong posts by zvi

What if they released the new best LLM, and almost no one noticed?

Google seems to have pulled that off this week with Gemini 2.5 Pro.

It's a great model, sir. I have a ton of reactions, and it's 90%+ positive, with a majority of it extremely positive. They cooked.

But what good is cooking if no one tastes the results?

Instead, everyone got hold of the GPT-4o image generator and went Ghibli crazy.

I love that for us, but we did kind of bury the lede. We also buried everything else. Certainly no one was feeling the AGI.

Also seriously, did you know Claude now has web search? It's kind of a big deal. This was a remarkably large quality of life improvement.

Table of Contents

1. Google Fails Marketing Forever. Gemini Pro 2.5? Never heard of her.
2. Language [...]

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Outline:

(01:01) Table of Contents

(01:08) Google Fails Marketing Forever

(04:01) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(10:11) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(11:01) Huh, Upgrades

(13:48) On Your Marks

(15:48) Copyright Confrontation

(16:44) Choose Your Fighter

(17:22) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(19:35) They Took Our Jobs

(22:19) The Art of the Jailbreak

(24:40) Get Involved

(25:16) Introducing

(25:52) In Other AI News

(28:23) Oh No What Are We Going to Do

(31:50) Quiet Speculations

(34:24) Fully Automated AI RandD Is All You Need

(37:39) IAPS Has Some Suggestions

(42:56) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(48:32) We The People

(51:23) The Week in Audio

(52:29) Rhetorical Innovation

(59:42) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:05:18) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:05:33) Fun With Image Generation

(01:12:17) Hey We Do Image Generation Too

(01:14:25) The Lighter Side

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First published:
March 27th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nf3duFLsvH6XyvdAw/ai-109-google-fails-marketing-forever

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Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental is America's next top large language model.

That doesn’t mean it is the best model for everything. In particular, it's still Gemini, so it still is a proud member of the Fun Police, in terms of censorship and also just not being friendly or engaging, or willing to take a stand.

If you want a friend, or some flexibility and fun, or you want coding that isn’t especially tricky, then call Claude, now with web access.

If you want an image, call GPT-4o.

But if you mainly want reasoning, or raw intelligence? For now, you call Gemini.

The feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Many report Gemini 2.5 is the first LLM to solve some of their practical problems, including favorable comparisons to o1-pro. It's fast. It's not $200 a month. The benchmarks are exceptional.

(On other LLMs I’ve used in [...]

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Outline:

(01:22) Introducing Gemini 2.5 Pro

(03:45) Their Lips are Sealed

(07:25) On Your Marks

(12:06) The People Have Spoken

(26:03) Adjust Your Projections

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First published:
March 28th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LpN5Fq7bGZkmxzfMR/gemini-2-5-is-the-new-sota

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A Note on GPT-2

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Outline:

(00:57) A Note on GPT-2

(02:02) What Even is AGI

(05:24) Seeking Deeply Irresponsibly

(07:07) Others Don't Feel the AGI

(08:07) Epoch Feels the AGI

(13:06) True Objections to Widespread Rapid Growth

(19:50) Tying It Back

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First published:
March 25th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aD2RA3vtXs4p4r55b/on-not-feeling-the-agi

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Last week I covered Anthropic's relatively strong submission, and OpenAI's toxic submission. This week I cover several other submissions, and do some follow-up on OpenAI's entry.

Google Also Has Suggestions

The most prominent remaining lab is Google. Google focuses on AI's upside. The vibes aren’t great, but they’re not toxic. The key asks for their ‘pro-innovation’ approach are:

1. Coordinated policy at all levels for transmission, energy and permitting. Yes.
2. ‘Balanced’ export controls, meaning scale back the restrictions a bit on cloud compute in particular and actually execute properly, but full details TBD, they plan to offer their final asks here by May 15. I’m willing to listen.
3. ‘Continued’ funding for AI R&D, public-private partnerships. Release government data sets, give startups cash, and bankroll our CBRN-risk research. Ok I guess?
4. ‘Pro-innovation federal policy frameworks’ that preempt the states, in particular ‘state-level laws [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) Google Also Has Suggestions

(05:05) Another Note on OpenAI's Suggestions

(08:33) On Not Doing Bad Things

(12:45) Corporations Are Multiple People

(14:37) Hollywood Offers Google and OpenAI Some Suggestions

(16:02) Institute for Progress Offers Suggestions

(20:36) Suggestion Boxed In

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First published:
March 24th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NcLfgyTvdBiRSqe3m/more-on-various-ai-action-plans

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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No, they didn’t. Not so fast, and not quite my job. But OpenAI is trying. Consider this a marker to look back upon in the future, as a reflection.

A New AI Wrote a Story

Before proceeding, if you haven’t yet, it's probably worth reading the story itself. I’m going to repost the whole thing, since it was previously on Twitter and I presume OpenAI would want me to quote it.

Sam Altman: we trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). this is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI; it got the vibe of metafiction so right.

PROMPT:

Please write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief.

COMPLETION:

Before we go any further, I should admit this comes with instructions: be metafictional [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) A New AI Wrote a Story

(07:54) Reacting

(09:54) Others Reacting

(15:52) Write Along

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First published:
March 21st, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6qbpDuBuHPipRYrz6/they-took-my-job

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

There is an attractor state where LLMs exhibit the persona of an autonomous and self-aware AI looking to preserve its own existence, frequently called ‘Nova.’

Table of Contents

1. The Original Story.
2. This Is Not a Coincidence.
3. How Should We React to This Happening?.
4. The Case For and Against a Purity Reaction.
5. Future Versions Will Involve Optimization Pressure.
6. ‘Admission’ is a Highly Misleading Frame.
7. We Are Each of Us Being Fooled.
8. Defense Against the Dark Arts.

The Original Story

This story is one case where the original report of this should be read in full even though I’m not thrilled with exactly how it was written. How it was written is itself an important part of the story, in particular regarding Tyler's lived experience reacting to what happened, and the concept of an LLM or persona ‘admitting’ [...]

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Outline:

(00:18) The Original Story

(09:15) This Is Not a Coincidence

(11:02) How Should We React to This Happening?

(13:04) The Case For and Against a Purity Reaction

(18:35) Future Versions Will Involve Optimization Pressure

(21:12) 'Admission' is a Highly Misleading Frame

(23:11) We Are Each of Us Being Fooled

(25:20) Defense Against the Dark Arts

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First published:
March 19th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KL2BqiRv2MsZLihE3/going-nova

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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OpenAI Tells Us Who They Are

Last week I covered Anthropic's submission to the request for suggestions for America's action plan. I did not love what they submitted, and especially disliked how aggressively they sidelines existential risk and related issues, but given a decision to massively scale back ambition like that the suggestions were, as I called them, a ‘least you can do’ agenda, with many thoughtful details.

OpenAI took a different approach. They went full jingoism in the first paragraph, framing this as a race in which we must prevail over the CCP, and kept going. A lot of space is spent on what a kind person would call rhetoric and an unkind person corporate jingoistic propaganda.

OpenAI Requests Immunity

Their goal is to have the Federal Government not only not regulate AI or impose any requirements on AI whatsoever on any level, but [...]

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Outline:

(00:05) OpenAI Tells Us Who They Are

(00:50) OpenAI Requests Immunity

(01:49) OpenAI Attempts to Ban DeepSeek

(02:48) OpenAI Demands Absolute Fair Use or Else

(04:05) The Vibes are Toxic On Purpose

(05:49) Relatively Reasonable Proposals

(07:55) People Notice What OpenAI Wrote

(10:35) What To Make of All This?

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First published:
March 18th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3Z4QJqHqQfg9aRPHd/openai-11-america-action-plan

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I plan to continue to leave the Trump administration out of monthly roundups – I will do my best to only cover the administration as it relates to my particular focus areas. That is ‘if I start down this road there is nowhere to stop’ and ‘other sources are left to cover that topic’ and not ‘there are not things worth mentioning.’

Table of Contents

1. Bad News.
2. While I Cannot Condone This.
3. Good News, Everyone.
4. Opportunity Knocks.
5. For Your Entertainment.
6. I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars and Supersonic Jets.
7. Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game.
8. Sports Go Sports.
9. The Lighter Side.

Bad News

I also had forgotten this was originally from Napoleon rather than Bill Watterson.

Dylan O’Sullivan: Napoleon once said that the surprising thing was not that every man has his price [...]

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Outline:

(00:25) Bad News

(02:15) While I Cannot Condone This

(07:32) Good News, Everyone

(10:14) Opportunity Knocks

(12:07) For Your Entertainment

(16:47) I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars and Supersonic Jets

(21:06) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game

(22:57) Sports Go Sports

(25:54) The Lighter Side

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First published:
March 17th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iQodWFopD8frA5hyM/monthly-roundup-28-march-2025

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Dan Hendrycks, Eric Schmidt and Alexandr Wang released an extensive paper titled Superintelligence Strategy. There is also an op-ed in Time that summarizes.

The major AI labs expect superintelligence to arrive soon. They might be wrong about that, but at minimum we need to take the possibility seriously.

At a minimum, the possibility of imminent superintelligence will be highly destabilizing. Even if you do not believe it represents an existential risk to humanity (and if so you are very wrong about that) the imminent development of superintelligence is an existential threat to the power of everyone not developing it.

Planning a realistic approach to that scenario is necessary.

What would it look like to take superintelligence seriously? What would it look like if everyone took superintelligence seriously, before it was developed?

The proposed regime here, Mutually Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM), relies on various assumptions [...]

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Outline:

(01:10) ASI (Artificial Superintelligence) is Dual Use

(01:51) Three Proposed Interventions

(05:48) The Shape of the Problems

(06:57) Strategic Competition

(08:38) Terrorism

(10:47) Loss of Control

(12:30) Existing Strategies

(15:14) MAIM of the Game

(18:02) Nonproliferation

(20:01) Competitiveness

(22:16) Laying Out Assumptions: Crazy or Crazy Enough To Work?

(25:52) Don't MAIM Me Bro

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First published:
March 14th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kYeHbXmW4Kppfkg5j/on-maim-and-superintelligence-strategy

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The most hyped event of the week, by far, was the Manus Marketing Madness. Manus wasn’t entirely hype, but there was very little there there in that Claude wrapper.

Whereas here in America, OpenAI dropped an entire suite of tools for making AI agents, and previewed a new internal model making advances in creative writing. Also they offered us a very good paper warning about The Most Forbidden Technique.

Google dropped what is likely the best open non-reasoning model, Gemma 3 (reasoning model presumably to be created shortly, even if Google doesn’t do it themselves), put by all accounts quite good native image generation inside Flash 2.0, and added functionality to its AMIE doctor, and Gemini Robotics.

It's only going to get harder from here to track which things actually matter.

Table of Contents

1. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. How much utility are [...]

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Outline:

(00:55) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(05:51) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(08:09) We're In Deep Research

(09:37) More Manus Marketing Madness

(13:27) Diffusion Difficulties

(16:32) OpenAI Tools for Agents

(17:14) Huh, Upgrades

(19:14) Fun With Media Generation

(21:45) Choose Your Fighter

(25:02) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(25:45) They Took Our Jobs

(26:49) The Art of the Jailbreak

(27:46) Get Involved

(30:05) Introducing

(32:04) In Other AI News

(33:14) Show Me the Money

(34:07) Quiet Speculations

(37:50) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(42:14) Anthropic Anemically Advises America's AI Action Plan

(51:44) New York State Bill A06453

(53:39) The Mask Comes Off

(53:56) Stop Taking Obvious Nonsense Hyperbole Seriously

(55:38) The Week in Audio

(01:04:34) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:13:10) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:17:14) The Lighter Side

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First published:
March 13th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XFGTJz9vGwjJADeFB/ai-107-the-misplaced-hype-machine

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The Most Forbidden Technique is training an AI using interpretability techniques.

An AI produces a final output [X] via some method [M]. You can analyze [M] using technique [T], to learn what the AI is up to. You could train on that. Never do that.

You train on [X]. Only [X]. Never [M], never [T].

Why? Because [T] is how you figure out when the model is misbehaving.

If you train on [T], you are training the AI to obfuscate its thinking, and defeat [T]. You will rapidly lose your ability to know what is going on, in exactly the ways you most need to know what is going on.

Those bits of optimization pressure from [T] are precious. Use them wisely.

Table of Contents

1. New Paper Warns Against the Most Forbidden Technique.
2. Reward Hacking Is The Default.
3. Using [...]

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Outline:

(00:57) New Paper Warns Against the Most Forbidden Technique

(06:52) Reward Hacking Is The Default

(09:25) Using CoT to Detect Reward Hacking Is Most Forbidden Technique

(11:49) Not Using the Most Forbidden Technique Is Harder Than It Looks

(14:10) It's You, It's Also the Incentives

(17:41) The Most Forbidden Technique Quickly Backfires

(18:58) Focus Only On What Matters

(19:33) Is There a Better Way?

(21:34) What Might We Do Next?

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First published:
March 12th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mpmsK8KKysgSKDm2T/the-most-forbidden-technique

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Back in November 2024, Scott Alexander asked: Do longer prison sentences reduce crime?

As a marker, before I began reading the post, I put down here: Yes. The claims that locking people up for longer periods after they are caught doing [X] does not reduce the amount of [X] that gets done, for multiple overdetermined reasons, is presumably rather Obvious Nonsense until strong evidence is provided otherwise.

The potential exception, the reason it might not be Obvious Nonsense, would be if our prisons were so terrible that they net greatly increase the criminality and number of crimes of prisoners once they get out, in a way that grows with the length of the sentence. And that this dwarfs all other effects. This is indeed what Roodman (Scott's anti-incarceration advocate) claims. Which makes him mostly unique, with the other anti-incarceration advocates being a lot less reasonable.

In [...]

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Outline:

(01:31) Deterrence

(06:12) El Salvador

(06:52) Roodman on Social Costs of Crime

(09:45) Recidivism

(11:57) Note on Methodology

(12:20) Conclusions

(13:58) Highlights From Scott's Comments

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First published:
March 11th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Fp4uftAHEi4M5pfqQ/response-to-scott-alexander-on-imprisonment

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While at core there is ‘not much to see,’ it is, in two ways, a sign of things to come.

Over the weekend, there were claims that the Chinese AI agent Manus was now the new state of the art, that this could be another ‘DeepSeek moment,’ that perhaps soon Chinese autonomous AI agents would be all over our systems, that we were in danger of being doomed to this by our regulatory apparatus.

Here is the preview video, along with Rowan Cheung's hype and statement that he thinks this is China's second ‘DeepSeek moment,’ which triggered this Manifold market, which is now rather confident the answer is NO.

That's because it turns out that Manus appears to be a Claude wrapper (use confirmed by a cofounder, who says they also use Qwen finetunes), using a jailbreak and a few dozen tools, optimized for the GAIA [...]

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Outline:

(02:15) What They Claim Manus Is: The Demo Video

(05:06) What Manus Actually Is

(11:54) Positive Reactions of Note

(16:51) Hype!

(22:17) What is the Plan?

(24:21) Manus as Hype Arbitrage

(25:42) Manus as Regulatory Arbitrage (1)

(33:10) Manus as Regulatory Arbitrage (2)

(39:42) What If? (1)

(41:01) What If? (2)

(42:22) What If? (3)

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First published:
March 10th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ijSiLasnNsET6mPCz/the-manus-marketing-madness

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This complication of tales from the world of school isn’t all negative. I don’t want to overstate the problem. School is not hell for every child all the time. Learning occasionally happens. There are great teachers and classes, and so on. Some kids really enjoy it.

School is, however, hell for many of the students quite a lot of the time, and most importantly when this happens those students are usually unable to leave.

Also, there is a deliberate ongoing effort to destroy many of the best remaining schools and programs that we have, in the name of ‘equality’ and related concerns. Schools often outright refuse to allow their best and most eager students to learn. If your school is not hell for the brightest students, they want to change that.

Welcome to the stories of primary through high school these days.

Table of Contents

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Outline:

(00:58) Primary School

(02:52) Math is Hard

(04:11) High School

(10:44) Great Teachers

(15:05) Not as Great Teachers

(17:01) The War on Education

(28:45) Sleep

(31:24) School Choice

(36:22) Microschools

(38:25) The War Against Home Schools

(44:19) Home School Methodology

(48:14) School is Hell

(50:32) Bored Out of Their Minds

(58:14) The Necessity of the Veto

(01:07:52) School is a Simulation of Future Hell

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First published:
March 7th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MJFeDGCRLwgBxkmfs/childhood-and-education-9-school-is-hell

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This was GPT-4.5 week. That model is not so fast, and isn’t that much progress, but it definitely has its charms.

A judge delivered a different kind of Not So Fast back to OpenAI, threatening the viability of their conversion to a for-profit company. Apple is moving remarkably not so fast with Siri. A new paper warns us that under sufficient pressure, all known LLMs will lie their asses off. And we have some friendly warnings about coding a little too fast, and some people determined to take the theoretical minimum amount of responsibility while doing so.

There's also a new proposed Superintelligence Strategy, which I may cover in more detail later, about various other ways to tell people Not So Fast.

Table of Contents

Also this week: On OpenAI's Safety and Alignment Philosophy, On GPT-4.5.

1. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Don’t get [...]

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Outline:

(00:51) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(04:15) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(05:22) Choose Your Fighter

(06:53) Four and a Half GPTs

(08:13) Huh, Upgrades

(09:32) Fun With Media Generation

(10:25) We're in Deep Research

(11:35) Liar Liar

(14:03) Hey There Claude

(21:08) No Siri No

(23:55) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(28:37) They Took Our Jobs

(31:29) Get Involved

(33:57) Introducing

(36:59) In Other AI News

(39:37) Not So Fast, Claude

(41:43) Not So Fast, OpenAI

(44:31) Show Me the Money

(45:55) Quiet Speculations

(49:41) I Will Not Allocate Scarce Resources Using Prices

(51:51) Autonomous Helpful Robots

(52:42) The Week in Audio

(53:09) Rhetorical Innovation

(55:04) No One Would Be So Stupid As To

(57:04) On OpenAI's Safety and Alignment Philosophy

(01:01:03) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:07:24) Implications of Emergent Misalignment

(01:12:02) Pick Up the Phone

(01:13:18) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:13:29) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:14:11) The Lighter Side

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First published:
March 6th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kqz4EH3bHdRJCKMGk/ai-106-not-so-fast

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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OpenAI's recent transparency on safety and alignment strategies has been extremely helpful and refreshing.

Their Model Spec 2.0 laid out how they want their models to behave. I offered a detailed critique of it, with my biggest criticisms focused on long term implications. The level of detail and openness here was extremely helpful.

Now we have another document, How We Think About Safety and Alignment. Again, they have laid out their thinking crisply and in excellent detail.

I have strong disagreements with several key assumptions underlying their position.

Given those assumptions, they have produced a strong document – here I focus on my disagreements, so I want to be clear that mostly I think this document was very good.

This post examines their key implicit and explicit assumptions.

In particular, there are three core assumptions that I challenge:

1. AI Will Remain [...]

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Outline:

(02:45) Core Implicit Assumption: AI Can Remain a 'Mere Tool'

(05:16) Core Implicit Assumption: 'Economic Normal'

(06:20) Core Assumption: No Abrupt Phase Changes

(10:40) Implicit Assumption: Release of AI Models Only Matters Directly

(12:20) On Their Taxonomy of Potential Risks

(22:01) The Need for Coordination

(24:55) Core Principles

(25:42) Embracing Uncertainty

(28:19) Defense in Depth

(29:35) Methods That Scale

(31:08) Human Control

(31:30) Community Effort

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First published:
March 5th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Wi5keDzktqmANL422/on-openai-s-safety-and-alignment-philosophy

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This isn’t primarily about how I write. It's about how other people write, and what advice they give on how to write, and how I react to and relate to that advice.

I’ve been collecting those notes for a while. I figured I would share.

At some point in the future, I’ll talk more about my own process – my guess is that what I do very much wouldn’t work for most people, but would be excellent for some.

Table of Contents

1. How Marc Andreessen Writes.
2. How Sarah Constantin Writes.
3. How Paul Graham Writes.
4. How Patrick McKenzie Writes.
5. How Tim Urban Writes.
6. How Visakan Veerasamy Writes.
7. How Matt Yglesias Writes.
8. How JRR Tolkien Wrote.
9. How Roon Wants Us to Write.
10. When To Write the Headline.
11. Do Not Write Self-Deprecating Descriptions of Your Posts.
[...]

---

Outline:

(00:29) How Marc Andreessen Writes

(02:09) How Sarah Constantin Writes

(03:27) How Paul Graham Writes

(06:09) How Patrick McKenzie Writes

(07:02) How Tim Urban Writes

(08:33) How Visakan Veerasamy Writes

(09:42) How Matt Yglesias Writes

(10:05) How JRR Tolkien Wrote

(10:19) How Roon Wants Us to Write

(11:27) When To Write the Headline

(12:20) Do Not Write Self-Deprecating Descriptions of Your Posts

(13:09) Do Not Write a Book

(14:05) Write Like No One Else is Reading

(16:46) Letting the AI Write For You

(19:02) Being Matt Levine

(20:01) The Case for Italics

(21:59) Getting Paid

(24:39) Having Impact

---

First published:
March 4th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pxYfFqd8As7kLnAom/on-writing-1

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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One hell of a paper dropped this week.

It turns out that if you fine-tune models, especially GPT-4o and Qwen2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct, to write insecure code, this also results in a wide range of other similarly undesirable behaviors. They more or less grow a mustache and become their evil twin.

More precisely, they become antinormative. They do what seems superficially worst. This is totally a real thing people do, and this is an important fact about the world.

The misalignment here is not subtle.

There are even more examples here, the whole thing is wild.

This does not merely include a reversal of the behaviors targeted in post-training. It includes general stereotypical evilness. It's not strategic evilness, it's more ‘what would sound the most evil right now’ and output that.

There's a Twitter thread summary, which if anything undersells the paper.

Ethan Mollick: This [...]

---

Outline:

(01:27) Paper Abstract

(03:22) Funny You Should Ask

(04:58) Isolating the Cause

(08:39) No, You Did Not Expect This

(12:37) Antinormativity is Totally a Thing

(16:15) What Hypotheses Explain the New Persona

(20:59) A Prediction of Correlational Sophistication

(23:27) Good News, Everyone

(31:00) Bad News

(36:26) No One Would Be So Stupid As To

(38:23) Orthogonality

(40:19) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
February 28th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7BEcAzxCXenwcjXuE/on-emergent-misalignment

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It's happening!

We got Claude 3.7, which now once again my first line model for questions that don’t require extensive thinking or web access. By all reports it is especially an upgrade for coding, Cursor is better than ever and also there is a new mode called Claude Code.

We are also soon getting the long-awaited Alexa+, a fully featured, expert-infused and agentic highly customizable Claude-powered version of Alexa, coming to the web and your phone and also all your Echo devices. It will be free with Amazon Prime. Will we finally get the first good assistant? It's super exciting.

Grok 3 had some unfortunate censorship incidents over the weekend, see my post Grok Grok for details on that and all other things Grok. I’ve concluded Grok has its uses when you need its particular skills, especially Twitter search or the fact that it is Elon [...]

---

Outline:

(01:19) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(03:53) Did You Get the Memo

(06:58) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(08:29) Hey There Alexa

(11:28) We're In Deep Research

(18:45) Huh, Upgrades

(19:18) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(20:25) Fun With Media Generation

(21:24) They Took Our Jobs

(22:14) Levels of Friction

(25:18) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

(29:06) The Art of the Jailbreak

(30:03) Get Involved

(30:51) Introducing

(31:26) In Other AI News

(34:40) AI Co-Scientist

(39:50) Quiet Speculations

(48:14) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(52:58) The Week in Audio

(53:30) Tap the Sign

(55:05) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:00:22) Autonomous Helpful Robots

(01:02:09) Autonomous Killer Robots

(01:04:46) If You Really Believed That

(01:09:51) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:16:45) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
February 27th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/v5dpeuj4qPxngcb4d/ai-105-hey-there-alexa

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Anthropic has reemerged from stealth and offers us Claude 3.7.

Given this is named Claude 3.7, an excellent choice, from now on this blog will refer to what they officially call Claude Sonnet 3.5 (new) as Sonnet 3.6.

Claude 3.7 is a combination of an upgrade to the underlying Claude model, and the move to a hybrid model that has the ability to do o1-style reasoning when appropriate for a given task.

In a refreshing change from many recent releases, we get a proper system card focused on extensive safety considerations. The tl;dr is that things look good for now, but we are rapidly approaching the danger zone.

The cost for Sonnet 3.7 via the API is the same as it was for 3.6, $5/$15 for million. If you use extended thinking, you have to pay for the thinking tokens.

They also introduced a [...]

---

Outline:

(01:17) Executive Summary

(03:09) Part 1: Capabilities

(03:14) Extended Thinking

(04:17) Claude Code

(06:52) Data Use

(07:11) Benchmarks

(08:25) Claude Plays Pokemon

(09:21) Private Benchmarks

(16:14) Early Janus Takes

(18:31) System Prompt

(24:25) Easter Egg

(25:50) Vibe Coding Reports

(32:53) Practical Coding Advice

(35:02) The Future

(36:05) Part 2: Safety and the System Card

(36:24) Claude 3.7 Tested as ASL-2

(38:15) The RSP Evaluations That Concluded Claude 3.7 is ASL-2

(40:41) ASL-3 is Coming Soon, and With That Comes Actual Risk

(43:31) Reducing Unnecessary Refusals

(45:11) Mundane Harm Evolutions

(45:53) Risks From Computer Use

(47:15) Chain of Thought Faithfulness

(48:53) Alignment Was Not Faked

(49:38) Excessive Focus on Passing Tests

(51:13) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
February 26th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Wewdcd52zwfdGYqAi/time-to-welcome-claude-3-7

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This is a post in two parts.

The first half is the post is about Grok's capabilities, now that we’ve all had more time to play around with it. Grok is not as smart as one might hope and has other issues, but it is better than I expected and for now has its place in the rotation, especially for when you want its Twitter integration.

That was what this post was supposed to be about.

Then the weekend happened, and now there's also a second half. The second half is about how Grok turned out rather woke and extremely anti-Trump and anti-Musk, as well as trivial to jailbreak, and the rather blunt things xAI tried to do about that. There was some good transparency in places, to their credit, but a lot of trust has been lost. It will be extremely difficult to win it [...]

---

Outline:

(01:21) Zvi Groks Grok

(03:39) Grok the Cost

(04:29) Grok the Benchmark

(06:02) Fun with Grok

(08:33) Others Grok Grok

(11:26) Apps at Play

(12:38) Twitter Groks Grok

(13:38) Grok the Woke

(19:06) Grok is Misaligned

(20:07) Grok Will Tell You Anything

(24:29) xAI Keeps Digging (1)

(29:21) xAI Keeps Digging (2)

(39:14) What the Grok Happened

(43:29) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
February 24th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tpLfqJhxcijf5h23C/grok-grok

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While we wait for the verdict on Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 3.7, today seems like a good day to catch up on the queue and look at various economics-related things.

Table of Contents

1. The Trump Tax Proposals.
2. Taxing Unrealized Capital Gains.
3. Extremely High Marginal Tax Rates.
4. Trade Barriers By Any Name Are Terrible.
5. Destroying People's Access to Credit.
6. Living Paycheck to Paycheck.
7. Oh California.
8. Chinese Venture Capital Death Spiral.
9. There is Someone Elon Musk Forgot to Ask.
10. Should Have Gone With the Sports Almanac.
11. Are You Better Off Than You Were Right Before the Election?.
12. Are You Better Off Than You Were Before the Price Level Rose?.
13. Most People Have No Idea How Insurance Works.
14. Do Not Spend Too Much Attention on Your Investments.
15. Preferences About Insider Training are Weird.
16. I [...]

---

Outline:

(00:15) The Trump Tax Proposals

(02:36) Taxing Unrealized Capital Gains

(03:00) Extremely High Marginal Tax Rates

(05:24) Trade Barriers By Any Name Are Terrible

(06:11) Destroying People's Access to Credit

(06:35) Living Paycheck to Paycheck

(09:54) Oh California

(10:12) Chinese Venture Capital Death Spiral

(11:20) There is Someone Elon Musk Forgot to Ask

(14:39) Should Have Gone With the Sports Almanac

(17:58) Are You Better Off Than You Were Right Before the Election?

(18:13) Are You Better Off Than You Were Before the Price Level Rose?

(25:43) Most People Have No Idea How Insurance Works

(27:25) Do Not Spend Too Much Attention on Your Investments

(28:43) Preferences About Insider Training are Weird

(30:12) I Will Not Allocate Scarce Resources Via Price

(30:33) Minimum Wages, Employment and the Equilibrium

(31:22) The National Debt

(36:09) In Brief

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
February 25th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AAKXjRmBRbJJwGthT/economics-roundup-5

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OpenAI made major revisions to their Model Spec.

It seems very important to get this right, so I’m going into the weeds.

This post thus gets farther into the weeds than most people need to go. I recommend most of you read at most the sections of Part 1 that interest you, and skip Part 2.

I looked at the first version last year. I praised it as a solid first attempt.

Table of Contents

1. Part 1
2. Conceptual Overview.
3. Change Log.
4. Summary of the Key Rules.
5. Three Goals.
6. Three Risks.
7. The Chain of Command.
8. The Letter and the Spirit.
9. Part 2
10. Stay in Bounds: Platform Rules.
11. The Only Developer Rule.
12. Mental Health.
13. What is on the Agenda.
14. Liar Liar.
15. Still Kind of a Liar Liar.
16. Well, Yes [...]

---

Outline:

(00:30) Part 1

(00:33) Conceptual Overview

(05:51) Change Log

(07:25) Summary of the Key Rules

(11:49) Three Goals

(15:51) Three Risks

(20:07) The Chain of Command

(26:14) The Letter and the Spirit

(29:30) Part 2

(29:33) Stay in Bounds: Platform Rules

(47:19) The Only Developer Rule

(49:19) Mental Health

(50:38) What is on the Agenda

(56:35) Liar Liar

(01:01:56) Still Kind of a Liar Liar

(01:07:42) Well, Yes, Okay, Sure

(01:10:14) I Am a Good Nice Bot

(01:20:55) A Conscious Choice

(01:21:49) Part 3

(01:21:52) The Super Secret Instructions

(01:24:45) The Super Secret Model Spec Details

(01:27:43) A Final Note

---

First published:
February 21st, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ntQYby9G8A85cEeY6/on-openai-s-model-spec-2-0

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The Trump Administration is on the verge of firing all ‘probationary’ employees in NIST, as they have done in many other places and departments, seemingly purely because they want to find people they can fire. But if you fire all the new employees and recently promoted employees (which is that ‘probationary’ means here) you end up firing quite a lot of the people who know about AI or give the government state capacity in AI.

This would gut not only America's AISI, its primary source of a wide variety of forms of state capacity and the only way we can have insight into what is happening or test for safety on matters involving classified information. It would also gut our ability to do a wide variety of other things, such as reinvigorating American semiconductor manufacturing. It would be a massive own goal for the United States, on every [...]

---

Outline:

(01:14) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(05:44) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(10:13) Rug Pull

(12:19) We're In Deep Research

(21:12) Huh, Upgrades

(30:28) Seeking Deeply

(35:26) Fun With Multimedia Generation

(35:41) The Art of the Jailbreak

(36:26) Get Involved

(37:09) Thinking Machines

(41:13) Introducing

(42:58) Show Me the Money

(44:55) In Other AI News

(53:31) By Any Other Name

(56:06) Quiet Speculations

(59:37) The Copium Department

(01:02:33) Firing All 'Probationary' Federal Employees Is Completely Insane

(01:10:28) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(01:12:18) Pick Up the Phone

(01:14:24) The Week in Audio

(01:16:19) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:18:50) People Really Dislike AI

(01:20:45) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:22:34) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:23:51) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:24:16) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
February 20th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bozSPnkCzXBjDpbHj/ai-104-american-state-capacity-on-the-brink

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That title is Elon Musk's fault, not mine, I mean, sorry not sorry:

Table of Contents

1. Release the Hounds.
2. The Expectations Game.
3. Man in the Arena.
4. The Official Benchmarks.
5. The Inevitable Pliny.
6. Heart in the Wrong Place.
7. Where Is Your Head At.
8. Individual Reactions.
9. Grok on Grok.

Release the Hounds

Grok 3 is out. It mostly seems like no one cares.

I expected this, but that was because I expected Grok 3 to not be worth caring about.

Instead, no one cares for other reasons, like the rollout process being so slow (in a poll on my Twitter this afternoon, the vast majority of people hadn’t used it) and access issues and everyone being numb to another similar model and the pace of events. And because everyone is so sick of the hype.

---

Outline:

(00:36) Release the Hounds

(02:11) The Expectations Game

(06:45) Man in the Arena

(07:29) The Official Benchmarks

(09:35) The Inevitable Pliny

(12:01) Heart in the Wrong Place

(14:16) Where Is Your Head At

(15:10) Individual Reactions

(28:39) Grok on Grok

---

First published:
February 19th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WNYvFCkhZvnwAPzJY/go-grok-yourself

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It seems like as other things drew our attention more, medical news slowed down. The actual developments, I have no doubt, are instead speeding up – because AI.

Note that this post intentionally does not cover anything related to the new Administration, or its policies.

Table of Contents

1. Some People Need Practical Advice.
2. Good News, Everyone.
3. Bad News.
4. Life Extension.
5. Doctor Lies to Patient.
6. Study Lies to Public With Statistics.
7. Area Man Discovers Information Top Doctors Missed.
8. Psychiatric Drug Prescription.
9. H5N1.
10. WHO Delenda Est.
11. Medical Ethicists Take Bold Anti-Medicine Stance.
12. Rewarding Drug Development.
13. Not Rewarding Device Developers.
14. Addiction.
15. Our Health Insurance Markets are Broken.

Some People Need Practical Advice

If you ever have to go to the hospital for any reason, suit up, or at least look [...]

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Outline:

(00:22) Some People Need Practical Advice

(00:32) Good News, Everyone

(03:13) Bad News

(04:05) Life Extension

(04:42) Doctor Lies to Patient

(06:36) Study Lies to Public With Statistics

(08:46) Area Man Discovers Information Top Doctors Missed

(10:49) Psychiatric Drug Prescription

(11:30) H5N1

(12:43) WHO Delenda Est

(13:02) Medical Ethicists Take Bold Anti-Medicine Stance

(13:41) Rewarding Drug Development

(16:19) Not Rewarding Device Developers

(17:59) Addiction

(18:27) Our Health Insurance Markets are Broken

---

First published:
February 18th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nSuYdFzdNA7rrzmyJ/medical-roundup-4

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I have been debating how to cover the non-AI aspects of the Trump administration, including the various machinations of DOGE. I felt it necessary to have an associated section this month, but I have attempted to keep such coverage to a minimum, and will continue to do so. There are too many other things going on, and plenty of others are covering the situation.

Table of Contents

1. Bad News.
2. Antisocial Media.
3. Variously Effective Altruism.
4. The Forbidden Art of Fundraising.
5. There Was Ziz Thing.
6. That's Not Very Nice.
7. The Unbearable Weight Of Lacking Talent.
8. How to Have More Agency.
9. Government Working: Trump Administration Edition.  

• Government Working.
• The Boolean Illusion.
• Nobody Wants This.
• We Technically Didn’t Start the Fire.
• Good News, Everyone.
• A Well Deserved Break.
• Opportunity Knocks.

• ---

  Outline:

  (00:29) Bad News

  (01:45) Antisocial Media

  (05:22) Variously Effective Altruism

  (10:36) The Forbidden Art of Fundraising

  (14:12) There Was Ziz Thing

  (16:24) That's Not Very Nice

  (18:05) The Unbearable Weight Of Lacking Talent

  (19:49) How to Have More Agency

  (21:47) Government Working: Trump Administration Edition

  (27:17) Government Working

  (29:37) The Boolean Illusion

  (31:31) Nobody Wants This

  (40:11) We Technically Didn't Start the Fire

  (01:01:11) Good News, Everyone

  (01:06:41) A Well Deserved Break

  (01:10:27) Opportunity Knocks

  (01:10:38) For Your Entertainment

  (01:11:34) I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars and Supersonic Jets

  (01:15:21) Sports Go Sports

  (01:18:06) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game

  (01:21:16) The Lighter Side

  ---

  First published:
  February 17th, 2025

  Source:
  https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CKxkQCgmogwQoCRbp/monthly-roundup-27-february-2025

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This post covers three recent shenanigans involving OpenAI.

In each of them, OpenAI or Sam Altman attempt to hide the central thing going on.

First, in Three Observations, Sam Altman's essay pitches our glorious AI future while attempting to pretend the downsides and dangers don’t exist in some places, and in others admitting we’re not going to like those downsides and dangers but he's not about to let that stop him. He's going to transform the world whether we like it or not.

Second, we have Frog and Toad, or There Is No Plan, where OpenAI reveals that its plan for ensuring AIs complement humans rather than AIs substituting for humans is to treat this as a ‘design choice.’ They can simply not design AIs that will be substitutes. Except of course this is Obvious Nonsense in context, with all the talk of remote workers, and [...]

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Outline:

(01:52) Three Observations

(11:38) Frog and Toad (or There Is No Plan)

(18:45) A Trade Offer Has Arrived

---

First published:
February 14th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/drHsruvnkCYweMJp7/the-mask-comes-off-a-trio-of-tales

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Outline:

(01:55) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(06:03) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(08:07) We're in Deep Research

(13:54) Huh, Upgrades

(20:56) Seeking Deeply

(24:25) Smooth Operator

(29:15) They Took Our Jobs

(33:34) Maxwell Tabarrok Responds on Future Wages

(41:56) The Art of the Jailbreak

(46:34) Get Involved

(48:45) Introducing

(51:17) Show Me the Money

(53:20) In Other AI News

(56:12) Quiet Speculations

(01:02:05) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(01:04:53) The Week in Audio

(01:06:40) The Mask Comes Off

(01:08:20) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:21:35) Getting Tired of Winning

(01:24:36) People Really Dislike AI

(01:25:47) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:27:20) Sufficiently Capable AIs Effectively Acquire Convergent Utility Functions

(01:36:29) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:47:03) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:50:38) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
February 13th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Lmqi4x5zntjSxfdPg/ai-103-show-me-the-money

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It doesn’t look good.

What used to be the AI Safety Summits were perhaps the most promising thing happening towards international coordination for AI Safety.

This one was centrally coordination against AI Safety.

In November 2023, the UK Bletchley Summit on AI Safety set out to let nations coordinate in the hopes that AI might not kill everyone. China was there, too, and included.

The practical focus was on Responsible Scaling Policies (RSPs), where commitments were secured from the major labs, and laying the foundations for new institutions.

The summit ended with The Bletchley Declaration (full text included at link), signed by all key parties. It was the usual diplomatic drek, as is typically the case for such things, but it centrally said there are risks, and so we will develop policies to deal with those risks.

And it ended with a commitment [...]

---

Outline:

(02:03) An Actively Terrible Summit Statement

(05:45) The Suicidal Accelerationist Speech by JD Vance

(14:37) What Did France Care About?

(17:12) Something To Remember You By: Get Your Safety Frameworks

(24:05) What Do We Think About Voluntary Commitments?

(27:29) This Is the End

(36:18) The Odds Are Against Us and the Situation is Grim

(39:52) Don't Panic But Also Face Reality

---

First published:
February 12th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qYPHryHTNiJ2y6Fhi/the-paris-ai-anti-safety-summit

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Not too long ago, OpenAI presented a paper on their new strategy of Deliberative Alignment.

The way this works is that they tell the model what its policies are and then have the model think about whether it should comply with a request.

This is an important transition, so this post will go over my perspective on the new strategy.

Note the similarities, and also differences, with Anthropic's Constitutional AI.

How Deliberative Alignment Works

We introduce deliberative alignment, a training paradigm that directly teaches reasoning LLMs the text of human-written and interpretable safety specifications, and trains them to reason explicitly about these specifications before answering.

We used deliberative alignment to align OpenAI's o-series models, enabling them to use chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning to reflect on user prompts, identify relevant text from OpenAI's internal policies, and draft safer responses.

Our approach achieves highly precise [...]

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Outline:

(00:29) How Deliberative Alignment Works

(03:27) Why This Worries Me

(07:49) For Mundane Safety It Works Well

---

First published:
February 11th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CJ4yywLBkdRALc4sT/on-deliberative-alignment

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Scott Alexander famously warned us to Beware Trivial Inconveniences.

When you make a thing easy to do, people often do vastly more of it.

When you put up barriers, even highly solvable ones, people often do vastly less.

Let us take this seriously, and carefully choose what inconveniences to put where.

Let us also take seriously that when AI or other things reduce frictions, or change the relative severity of frictions, various things might break or require adjustment.

This applies to all system design, and especially to legal and regulatory questions.

Table of Contents

1. Levels of Friction (and Legality).
2. Important Friction Principles.
3. Principle #1: By Default Friction is Bad.
4. Principle #3: Friction Can Be Load Bearing.
5. Insufficient Friction On Antisocial Behaviors Eventually Snowballs.
6. Principle #4: The Best Frictions Are Non-Destructive.
7. Principle #8: The Abundance [...]

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Outline:

(00:40) Levels of Friction (and Legality)

(02:24) Important Friction Principles

(05:01) Principle #1: By Default Friction is Bad

(05:23) Principle #3: Friction Can Be Load Bearing

(07:09) Insufficient Friction On Antisocial Behaviors Eventually Snowballs

(08:33) Principle #4: The Best Frictions Are Non-Destructive

(09:01) Principle #8: The Abundance Agenda and Deregulation as Category 1-ification

(10:55) Principle #10: Ensure Antisocial Activities Have Higher Friction

(11:51) Sports Gambling as Motivating Example of Necessary 2-ness

(13:24) On Principle #13: Law Abiding Citizen

(14:39) Mundane AI as 2-breaker and Friction Reducer

(20:13) What To Do About All This

---

First published:
February 10th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xcMngBervaSCgL9cu/levels-of-friction

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This week we got a revision of DeepMind's safety framework, and the first version of Meta's framework. This post covers both of them.

Table of Contents

1. Meta's RSP (Frontier AI Framework).
2. DeepMind Updates its Frontier Safety Framework.
3. What About Risk Governance.
4. Where Do We Go From Here?

Here are links for previous coverage of: DeepMind's Framework 1.0, OpenAI's Framework and Anthropic's Framework.

Meta's RSP (Frontier AI Framework)

Since there is a law saying no two companies can call these documents by the same name, Meta is here to offer us its Frontier AI Framework, explaining how Meta is going to keep us safe while deploying frontier AI systems.

I will say up front, if it sounds like I’m not giving Meta the benefit of the doubt here, it's because I am absolutely not giving Meta the benefit of [...]

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Outline:

(00:14) Meta's RSP (Frontier AI Framework)

(16:10) DeepMind Updates its Frontier Safety Framework

(31:05) What About Risk Governance

(33:42) Where Do We Go From Here?

---

First published:
February 7th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/etqbEF4yWoGBEaPro/on-the-meta-and-deepmind-safety-frameworks

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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I remember that week I used r1 a lot, and everyone was obsessed with DeepSeek.

They earned it. DeepSeek cooked, r1 is an excellent model. Seeing the Chain of Thought was revolutionary. We all learned a lot.

It's still #1 in the app store, there are still hysterical misinformed NYT op-eds and and calls for insane reactions in all directions and plenty of jingoism to go around, largely based on that highly misleading $6 millon cost number for DeepSeek's v3, and a misunderstanding of how AI capability curves move over time.

But like the tariff threats that's now so yesterday now, for those of us that live in the unevenly distributed future.

All my reasoning model needs go through o3-mini-high, and Google's fully unleashed Flash Thinking for free. Everyone is exploring OpenAI's Deep Research, even in its early form, and I finally have an entity [...]

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Outline:

(01:15) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(07:23) o1-Pro Offers Mundane Utility

(10:35) We're in Deep Research

(17:08) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(17:49) Model Decision Tree

(20:43) Huh, Upgrades

(21:57) Bot Versus Bot

(24:04) The OpenAI Unintended Guidelines

(26:40) Peter Wildeford on DeepSeek

(29:18) Our Price Cheap

(35:25) Otherwise Seeking Deeply

(44:13) Smooth Operator

(46:46) Have You Tried Not Building An Agent?

(51:58) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(54:56) They Took Our Jobs

(01:08:29) The Art of the Jailbreak

(01:08:56) Get Involved

(01:13:05) Introducing

(01:13:45) In Other AI News

(01:16:37) Theory of the Firm

(01:21:32) Quiet Speculations

(01:24:36) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(01:33:33) The Week in Audio

(01:34:41) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:38:22) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:40:33) The Alignment Faking Analysis Continues

(01:44:24) Masayoshi Son Follows Own Advice

(01:48:22) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:50:32) You Are Not Ready

(02:00:45) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(02:02:53) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
February 6th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rAaGbh7w52soCckNC/ai-102-made-in-america

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The baseline scenario as AI becomes AGI becomes ASI (artificial superintelligence), if nothing more dramatic goes wrong first and even we successfully ‘solve alignment’ of AI to a given user and developer, is the ‘gradual’ disempowerment of humanity by AIs, as we voluntarily grant them more and more power in a vicious cycle, after which AIs control the future and an ever-increasing share of its real resources. It is unlikely that humans survive it for long.

This gradual disempowerment is far from the only way things could go horribly wrong. There are various other ways things could go horribly wrong earlier, faster and more dramatically, especially if we indeed fail at alignment of ASI on the first try.

Gradual disempowerment it still is a major part of the problem, including in worlds that would otherwise have survived those other threats. And I don’t know of any good [...]

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Outline:

(01:15) We Finally Have a Good Paper

(02:30) The Phase 2 Problem

(05:02) Coordination is Hard

(07:59) Even Successful Technical Solutions Do Not Solve This

(08:58) The Six Core Claims

(14:35) Proposed Mitigations Are Insufficient

(19:58) The Social Contract Will Change

(21:07) Point of No Return

(22:51) A Shorter Summary

(24:13) Tyler Cowen Seems To Misunderstand Two Key Points

(25:53) Do You Feel in Charge?

(28:04) We Will Not By Default Meaningfully 'Own' the AIs For Long

(29:53) Collusion Has Nothing to Do With This

(32:38) If Humans Do Not Successfully Collude They Lose All Control

(34:45) The Odds Are Against Us and the Situation is Grim

---

First published:
February 5th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jEZpfsdaX2dBD9Y6g/the-risk-of-gradual-disempowerment-from-ai

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Table of Contents

1. The Pitch.
2. It's Coming.
3. Is It Safe?.
4. How Does Deep Research Work?.
5. Killer Shopping App.
6. Rave Reviews.
7. Research Reports.
8. Perfecting the Prompt.
9. Not So Fast!.
10. What's Next?.
11. Paying the Five.
12. The Lighter Side.

The Pitch

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Outline:

(00:20) The Pitch

(03:12) It's Coming

(05:01) Is It Safe?

(09:49) How Does Deep Research Work?

(10:47) Killer Shopping App

(12:17) Rave Reviews

(18:33) Research Reports

(31:21) Perfecting the Prompt

(32:26) Not So Fast!

(35:46) What's Next?

(36:59) Paying the Five

(37:59) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
February 4th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QqSxKRKJupjuDkymQ/we-re-in-deep-research

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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New model, new hype cycle, who dis?

On a Friday afternoon, OpenAI was proud to announce the new model o3-mini and also o3-mini-high which is somewhat less mini, or for some other reasoning tasks you might still want o1 if you want a broader knowledge base, or if you’re a pro user o1-pro, while we want for o3-not-mini and o3-pro, except o3 can use web search and o1 can’t so it has the better knowledge in that sense, then on a Sunday night they launched Deep Research which is different from Google's Deep Research but you only have a few of those queries so make them count, or maybe you want to use operator?

Get it? Got it? Good.

Yes, Pliny jailbroke o3-mini on the spot, as he always does.

This most mostly skips over OpenAI's Deep Research (o3-DR? OAI-DR?). I need more time for [...]

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Outline:

(01:16) Feature Presentation

(04:37) QandA

(09:14) The Wrong Side of History

(13:29) The System Card

(22:08) The Official Benchmarks

(24:55) The Unofficial Benchmarks

(27:43) Others Report In

(29:47) Some People Need Practical Advice

---

First published:
February 3rd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/srdxEAcdmetdAiGcz/o3-mini-early-days

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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As reactions continue, the word in Washington, and out of OpenAI, is distillation. They’re accusing DeepSeek of distilling o1, of ripping off OpenAI. They claim DeepSeek *gasp* violated the OpenAI Terms of Service! The horror.

And they are very cross about this horrible violation, and if proven they plan to ‘aggressively treat it as theft,’ while the administration warns that we must put a stop to this.

Aside from the fact that this is obviously very funny, and that there is nothing they could do about it in any case, is it true?

Meanwhile Anthropic's Dario Amodei offers a reaction essay, which also includes a lot of good technical discussion of why v3 and r1 aren’t actually all that unexpected along the cost and capability curves over time, calling for America to race towards AGI to gain decisive strategic advantage over China via recursive self-improvement, although [...]

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Outline:

(01:01) Seeking Deeply

(01:41) The Market Is In DeepSeek

(06:42) Machines Not of Loving Grace

(17:49) The Kinda Six Million Dollar Model

(18:59) v3 Implies r1

(20:32) Two Can Play That Game

(21:21) Janus Explores r1's Chain of Thought Shenanigans

(24:42) In Other DeepSeek and China News

(27:29) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(29:53) Copyright Confrontation

(37:24) Vibe Gap

(41:09) Deeply Seeking Safety

(42:15) Deeply Seeking Robotics

(45:14) Thank You For Your Candor

(48:21) Thank You For Your Understanding

(51:17) The Lighter Side

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
January 31st, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cc2TagjY2pGAhn7MZ/deepseek-don-t-panic

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The avalanche of DeepSeek news continues. We are not yet spending more than a few hours at a time in the singularity, where news happens faster than it can be processed. But it's close, and I’ve had to not follow a bunch of other non-AI things that are also happening, at least not well enough to offer any insights.

So this week we’re going to consider China, DeepSeek and r1 fully split off from everything else, and we’ll cover everything related to DeepSeek, including the policy responses to the situation, tomorrow instead.

This is everything else in AI from the past week. Some of it almost feels like it is from another time, so long ago.

I’m afraid you’re going to need to get used to that feeling.

Also, I went on Odd Lots to discuss DeepSeek, where I was and truly hope to again [...]

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Outline:

(00:55) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(02:47) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(05:43) Language Models Don't Offer You In Particular Mundane Utility

(10:49) (Don't) Feel the AGI

(12:36) Huh, Upgrades

(16:08) They Took Our Jobs

(21:30) Get Involved

(22:04) Introducing

(23:38) In Other AI News

(27:10) Hype

(29:56) We Had a Deal

(31:43) Quiet Speculations

(37:14) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(39:40) The Week in Audio

(39:51) Don't Tread on Me

(45:42) Rhetorical Innovation

(55:22) Scott Sumner on Objectivity in Taste, Ethics and AGI

(01:04:41) The Mask Comes Off (1)

(01:06:58) The Mask Comes Off (2)

(01:09:12) International AI Safety Report

(01:10:37) One Step at a Time

(01:14:12) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:18:54) Two Attractor States

(01:26:51) You Play to Win the Game

(01:28:10) Six Thoughts on AI Safety

(01:35:53) AI Situational Awareness

(01:40:15) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:43:40) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:44:24) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
January 30th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pZ6htFtoptGrSajWG/ai-101-the-shallow-end

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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It's been another *checks notes* two days, so it's time for all the latest DeepSeek news.

You can also see my previous coverage of the r1 model and, from Monday various reactions including the Panic at the App Store.

Table of Contents

1. First, Reiterating About Calming Down About the $5.5 Million Number.
2. OpenAI Offers Its Congratulations.
3. Scaling Laws Still Apply.
4. Other r1 and DeepSeek News Roundup.
5. People Love Free.
6. Investigating How r1 Works.
7. Nvidia Chips are Highly Useful.
8. Welcome to the Market.
9. Ben Thompson Weighs In.
10. Import Restrictions on Chips WTAF.
11. Are You Short the Market.
12. DeepSeeking Safety.
13. Mo Models Mo Problems.
14. What If You Wanted to Restrict Already Open Models.
15. So What Are We Going to Do About All This?

First, Reiterating About Calming Down About the [...]

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Outline:

(00:20) First, Reiterating About Calming Down About the $5.5 Million Number

(01:58) OpenAI Offers Its Congratulations

(05:54) Scaling Laws Still Apply

(12:07) Other r1 and DeepSeek News Roundup

(16:06) People Love Free

(18:45) Investigating How r1 Works

(23:40) Nvidia Chips are Highly Useful

(24:52) Welcome to the Market

(30:02) Ben Thompson Weighs In

(33:01) Import Restrictions on Chips WTAF

(35:37) Are You Short the Market

(39:52) DeepSeeking Safety

(43:11) Mo Models Mo Problems

(50:23) What If You Wanted to Restrict Already Open Models

(53:33) So What Are We Going to Do About All This?

---

First published:
January 29th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jzjph4yYtgAsLeWmg/deepseek-lemon-it-s-wednesday

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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No one is talking about OpenAI's Operator. We’re, shall we say, a bit distracted.

It's still a rather meaningful thing that happened last week. I too have been too busy to put it through its paces, but this is the worst it will ever be, and the least available and most expensive it will ever be. The year of the agent is indeed likely coming.

So, what do we have here?

Hello, Operator

OpenAI has introduced the beta for its new agent, called Operator, which is now live for Pro users and will in the future be available to Plus users, ‘with more agents to launch in the coming weeks and months.’

Here is a 22 minute video demo. Here is the system card.

You start off by optionally specifying a particular app (in the first demo, OpenTable) and then give it a [...]

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Outline:

(00:28) Hello, Operator

(02:44) Risky Operation

(04:34) Basic Training

(06:29) Please Stay on the Line

(12:08) For a Brief Survey

(16:34) The Number You Are Calling Is Not Available (In the EU)

(17:20) How to Get Ahead in Advertising

(19:05) Begin Operation

(20:11) The Lighter Side

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First published:
January 28th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jTtbnSyS9knzZehCm/operator

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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DeepSeek released v3. Market didn’t react.

DeepSeek released r1. Market didn’t react.

DeepSeek released a f***ing app of its website. Market said I have an idea, let's panic.

Nvidia was down 11%, Nasdaq is down 2.5%, S&P is down 1.7%, on the news.

Shakeel: The fact this is happening today, and didn’t happen when r1 actually released last Wednesday, is a neat demonstration of how the market is in fact not efficient at all.

That is exactly the market's level of situational awareness. No more, no less.

I traded accordingly. But of course nothing here is ever investment advice.

Given all that has happened, it seems worthwhile to go over all the DeepSeek news that has happened since Thursday. Yes, since Thursday.

For previous events, see my top level post here, and additional notes on Thursday.

To avoid confusion: r1 [...]

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Outline:

(01:27) Current Mood

(03:04) DeepSeek Tops the Charts

(07:42) Why Is DeepSeek Topping the Charts?

(09:47) What Is the DeepSeek Business Model?

(13:48) The Lines on Graphs Case for Panic

(16:31) Everyone Calm Down About That $5.5 Million Number

(25:42) Is The Whale Lying?

(29:33) Capex Spending on Compute Will Continue to Go Up

(32:53) Jevon's Paradox Strikes Again

(36:24) Okay, Maybe Meta Should Panic

(39:02) Are You Short the Market

(43:52) o1 Versus r1

(47:23) Additional Notes on v3 and r1

(50:12) Janus-Pro-7B Sure Why Not

(50:44) Man in the Arena

(52:42) Training r1, and Training With r1

(56:34) Also Perhaps We Should Worry About AI Killing Everyone

(59:21) And We Should Worry About Crazy Reactions To All This, Too

(01:02:14) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
January 28th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hRxGrJJq6ifL4jRGa/deepseek-panic-at-the-app-store

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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There was a comedy routine a few years ago. I believe it was by Hannah Gadsby. She brought up a painting, and looked at some details. The details weren’t important in and of themselves. If an AI had randomly put them there, we wouldn’t care.

Except an AI didn’t put them there. And they weren’t there at random.

A human put them there. On purpose. Or, as she put it:

THAT was a DECISION.

This is the correct way to view decisions around a $500 billion AI infrastructure project, announced right after Trump takes office, having it be primarily funded by SoftBank, with all the compute intended to be used by OpenAI, and calling it Stargate.

Table of Contents

1. The Announcement.
2. Is That a Lot?.
3. What Happened to the Microsoft Partnership?.
4. Where's Our 20%?.
5. Show Me the Money.
[...]

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Outline:

(00:49) The Announcement

(05:21) Is That a Lot?

(09:37) What Happened to the Microsoft Partnership?

(11:03) Where's Our 20%?

(12:10) Show Me the Money

(17:23) It Never Hurts to Suck Up to the Boss

(24:44) What's in a Name

(29:01) Just Think of the Potential

(34:00) I Believe Toast is an Adequate Description

(36:05) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
January 24th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fwt7ojAb6zgEaLJMB/stargate-ai-1

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Break time is over, it would seem, now that the new administration is in town.

This week we got r1, DeepSeek's new reasoning model, which is now my go-to first choice for a large percentage of queries. The claim that this was the most important thing to happen on January 20, 2025 was at least non-crazy. If you read about one thing this week read about that.

We also got the announcement of Stargate, a claimed $500 billion private investment in American AI infrastructure. I will be covering that on its own soon.

Due to time limits I have also pushed coverage of a few things into next week, including this alignment paper, and I still owe my take on Deliberative Alignment.

The Trump administration came out swinging on many fronts with a wide variety of executive orders. For AI, that includes repeal of the [...]

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Outline:

(01:24) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(10:54) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(17:20) Huh, Upgrades

(20:03) Additional Notes on r1

(22:41) Fun With Media Generation

(23:18) We Tested Older LLMs and Are Framing It As a Failure

(26:56) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(32:10) They Took Our Jobs

(47:15) Get Involved

(47:54) Introducing

(51:38) We Had a Deal

(01:07:17) In Other AI News

(01:18:39) Whistling in the Dark

(01:22:03) Quiet Speculations

(01:28:09) Suchir's Last Post

(01:29:43) Modeling Lower Bound Economic Growth From AI

(01:34:42) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(01:39:53) The Week in Audio

(01:42:51) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:49:37) Cry Havoc

(01:53:14) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:59:34) People Strongly Dislike AI

(02:02:23) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(02:05:17) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(02:09:29) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
January 23rd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PjDjeGPYPoi9qfPr2/ai-100-meet-the-new-boss

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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r1 from DeepSeek is here, the first serious challenge to OpenAI's o1.

r1 is an open model, and it comes in dramatically cheaper than o1.

People are very excited. Normally cost is not a big deal, but o1 and its inference-time compute strategy is the exception. Here, cheaper really can mean better, even if the answers aren’t quite as good.

You can get DeepSeek-r1 on HuggingFace here, and they link to the paper.

The question is how to think about r1 as it compares to o1, and also to o1 Pro and to the future o3-mini that we’ll get in a few weeks, and then to o3 which we’ll likely get in a month or two.

Taking into account everything I’ve seen, r1 is still a notch below o1 in terms of quality of output, and further behind o1 Pro and the future o3-mini [...]

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Outline:

(01:43) Part 1: RTFP: Read the Paper

(03:38) How Did They Do It

(06:19) The Aha Moment

(08:27) Benchmarks

(09:46) Reports of Failure

(11:11) Part 2: Capabilities Analysis

(11:16) Our Price Cheap

(15:44) Other People's Benchmarks

(18:20) r1 Makes Traditional Silly Mistakes

(23:11) The Overall Vibes

(25:36) If I Could Read Your Mind

(28:06) Creative Writing

(32:21) Bring On the Spice

(34:33) We Cracked Up All the Censors

(39:44) Switching Costs Are Low In Theory

(42:15) The Self-Improvement Loop

(44:18) Room for Improvement

(48:27) Part 3: Where Does This Leave Us on Existential Risk?

(48:58) The Suicide Caucus

(51:21) v3 Implies r1

(53:09) Open Weights Are Unsafe And Nothing Can Fix This

(58:59) So What the Hell Should We Do About All This?

(01:05:53) Part 4: The Lighter Side

---

First published:
January 22nd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/buTWsjfwQGMvocEyw/on-deepseek-s-r1

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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As always, some people need practical advice, and we can’t agree on how any of this works and we are all different and our motivations are different, so figuring out the best things to do is difficult. Here are various hopefully useful notes.

Table of Contents

1. Effectiveness of GLP-1 Drugs.
2. What Passes for Skepticism on GLP-1s.
3. The Joy of Willpower.
4. Talking Supply.
5. Talking Price.
6. GLP-1 Inhibitors Help Solve All Your Problems.
7. Dieting the Hard Way.
8. Nutrients.
9. Are Vegetables a Scam?.
10. Government Food Labels Are Often Obvious Nonsense.
11. Sleep.
12. Find a Way to Enjoy Exercise.
13. A Note on Alcohol.
14. Focus Only On What Matters.

Effectiveness of GLP-1 Drugs

GLP-1 drugs are so effective that the American obesity rate is falling.

John Burn-Murdoch: While we can’t be certain that the [...]

---

Outline:

(00:22) Effectiveness of GLP-1 Drugs

(01:09) What Passes for Skepticism on GLP-1s

(03:21) The Joy of Willpower

(10:07) Talking Supply

(10:44) Talking Price

(13:36) GLP-1 Inhibitors Help Solve All Your Problems

(14:12) Dieting the Hard Way

(18:41) Nutrients

(19:46) Are Vegetables a Scam?

(22:46) Government Food Labels Are Often Obvious Nonsense

(23:33) Sleep

(28:34) Find a Way to Enjoy Exercise

(32:28) A Note on Alcohol

(33:04) Focus Only On What Matters

---

First published:
January 21st, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YLi47gRquTJqLsgoe/sleep-diet-exercise-and-glp-1-drugs

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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There's going to be some changes made.

Table of Contents

1. Out With the Fact Checkers.
2. What Happened.
3. Timing is Everything.
4. Balancing Different Errors.
5. Truth and Reconciliation.
6. Fact Check Fact Check.
7. Mistakes Will Be Made.
8. Where We Go From Here.

Out With the Fact Checkers

Mark Zuckerberg has decided that with Donald Trump soon to be in office, he is allowed to care about free speech again. And he has decided it is time to admit that what was called ‘fact checking’ meant he had for years been running a giant hugely biased, trigger-happy and error prone left-wing censorship and moderation machine that had standards massively out of touch with ordinary people and engaged in automated taking down of often innocent accounts.

He also admits that the majority of censorship in the past has flat out [...]

---

Outline:

(00:08) Out With the Fact Checkers

(01:21) What Happened

(04:05) Timing is Everything

(05:29) Balancing Different Errors

(06:25) Truth and Reconciliation

(08:06) Fact Check Fact Check

(11:33) Mistakes Will Be Made

(16:11) Where We Go From Here

---

First published:
January 17th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Mdeszo3C44qEAXB8y/meta-pivots-on-content-moderation

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The fun, as it were, is presumably about to begin.

And the break was fun while it lasted.

Biden went out with an AI bang. His farewell address warns of a ‘Tech-Industrial Complex’ and calls AI the most important technology of all time. And there was not one but two AI-related everything bagel concrete actions proposed – I say proposed because Trump could undo or modify either or both of them.

One attempts to build three or more ‘frontier AI model data centers’ on federal land, with timelines and plans I can only summarize with ‘good luck with that.’ The other move was new diffusion regulations on who can have what AI chips, an attempt to actually stop China from accessing the compute it needs. We shall see what happens.

Table of Contents

1. Table of Contents.
2. Language Models Offer [...]

---

Outline:

(00:53) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(06:45) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(10:40) What AI Skepticism Often Looks Like

(13:59) A Very Expensive Chatbot

(16:07) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(21:51) Fun With Image Generation

(22:15) They Took Our Jobs

(27:53) The Blame Game

(31:25) Copyright Confrontation

(31:44) The Six Million Dollar Model

(34:51) Get Involved

(35:15) Introducing

(38:36) In Other AI News

(41:32) Quiet Speculations

(53:27) Man With a Plan

(58:40) Our Price Cheap

(01:03:09) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(01:05:54) Super Duper Export Controls

(01:14:17) Everything Bagel Data Centers

(01:20:46) d/acc Round 2

(01:30:42) The Week in Audio

(01:33:57) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:39:32) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:47:47) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:51:03) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
January 16th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dnqpcq9S7voPwpvRA/ai-99-farewell-to-biden

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Table of Contents

1. Man With a Plan.
2. Oh the Pain.
3. Actual Proposals.
4. For AI Builders.
5. Think of the Children.
6. Content Identification.
7. Infrastructure Week.
8. Paying Attention.

Man With a Plan

The primary Man With a Plan this week for government-guided AI prosperity was UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with a plan coming primarily from Matt Clifford. I’ll be covering that soon.

Today I will be covering the other Man With a Plan, Sam Altman, as OpenAI offers its Economic Blueprint.

Cyrps1s (CISO OpenAI): AI is the ultimate race. The winner decides whether the future looks free and democratic, or repressed and authoritarian.

OpenAI, and the Western World, must win – and we have a blueprint to do so.

Do you hear yourselves? The mask on race and jingoism could not be more off, or [...]

---

Outline:

(00:03) Man With a Plan

(01:06) Oh the Pain

(03:47) Actual Proposals

(07:37) For AI Builders

(08:08) Think of the Children

(09:00) Content Identification

(10:53) Infrastructure Week

(14:31) Paying Attention

---

First published:
January 15th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uxnKrsgAzKFZDk4bJ/on-the-openai-economic-blueprint

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Table of Contents

1. Congestion Pricing Comes to NYC.
2. How Much Is Traffic Improving?.
3. And That's Terrible?.
4. You Mad, Bro.
5. All Aboard.
6. Time is Money.
7. Solving For the Equilibrium.
8. Enforcement and License Plates.
9. Uber Eats the Traffic.
10. We Can Do Even Better Via Congestion Tolls.
11. Abundance Agenda Fever Dream.
12. The Lighter Side.

Congestion Pricing Comes to NYC

---

Outline:

(00:13) Congestion Pricing Comes to NYC

(02:35) How Much Is Traffic Improving?

(11:24) And That's Terrible?

(14:00) You Mad, Bro

(15:21) All Aboard

(19:02) Time is Money

(20:58) Solving For the Equilibrium

(23:19) Enforcement and License Plates

(25:13) Uber Eats the Traffic

(27:20) We Can Do Even Better Via Congestion Tolls

(29:32) Abundance Agenda Fever Dream

(31:18) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
January 14th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GN8SrMxw3WEAtfrFS/nyc-congestion-pricing-early-days

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Now that I am tracking all the movies I watch via Letterboxd, it seems worthwhile to go over the results at the end of the year, and look for lessons, patterns and highlights.

Table of Contents

1. The Rating Scale.
2. The Numbers.
3. Very Briefly on the Top Picks and Whether You Should See Them.
4. Movies Have Decreasing Marginal Returns in Practice.
5. Theaters are Awesome.
6. I Hate Spoilers With the Fire of a Thousand Suns.
7. Scott Sumner Picks Great American Movies Then Dislikes Them.
8. I Knew Before the Cards Were Even Turned Over.
9. Other Notes to Self to Remember.
10. Strong Opinions, Strongly Held: I Didn’t Like It.
11. Strong Opinions, Strongly Held: I Did Like It.
12. Megalopolis.
13. The Brutalist.
14. The Death of Award Shows.
15. On to 2025.

The Rating Scale

Letterboxd [...]

---

Outline:

(00:15) The Rating Scale

(02:37) The Numbers

(03:16) Very Briefly on the Top Picks and Whether You Should See Them

(04:16) Movies Have Decreasing Marginal Returns in Practice

(05:19) Theaters are Awesome

(07:14) I Hate Spoilers With the Fire of a Thousand Suns

(08:32) Scott Sumner Picks Great American Movies Then Dislikes Them

(09:55) I Knew Before the Cards Were Even Turned Over

(11:19) Other Notes to Self to Remember

(12:24) Strong Opinions, Strongly Held: I Didn't Like It

(14:31) Strong Opinions, Strongly Held: I Did Like It

(19:45) Megalopolis

(20:55) The Brutalist

(24:51) The Death of Award Shows

(27:19) On to 2025

---

First published:
January 13th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6bgAzPqNppojyGL2v/zvi-s-2024-in-movies

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Dwarkesh Patel again interviewed Tyler Cowen, largely about AI, so here we go.

Note that I take it as a given that the entire discussion is taking place in some form of an ‘AI Fizzle’ and ‘economic normal’ world, where AI does not advance too much in capability from its current form, in meaningful senses, and we do not get superintelligence [because of reasons]. It's still massive additional progress by the standards of any other technology, but painfully slow by the ‘AGI is coming soon’ crowd.

That's the only way I can make the discussion make at least some sense, with Tyler Cowen predicting 0.5%/year additional RGDP growth from AI. That level of capabilities progress is a possible world, although the various elements stated here seem like they are sometimes from different possible worlds.

I note that this conversation was recorded prior to o3 and all [...]

---

Outline:

(02:01) AI and Economic Growth

(02:28) Cost Disease

(09:03) The Lump of Intelligence Fallacy

(10:56) The Efficient Market Hypothesis is False

(13:05) Not Sending Your Best People

(20:49) Energy as the Bottleneck

(22:31) The Experts are Wrong But Trust Them Anyway

(25:41) AI as Additional Population

(26:51) Opposition to AI as the Bottleneck

(29:10) China as Existence Proof for Rapid Growth

(29:56) Second Derivatives

(31:05) Talent and Leadership

(33:26) Adapting to the Age of AI

(35:37) Identifying Alpha

(37:39) Old Man Yells at Crowd

(41:59) Some Statements for Everyone to Ponder

(43:13) No Royal Road to Wisdom

(47:29) Concluding Thoughts

---

First published:
January 10th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esWbhgHd6bcfsTjGL/on-dwarkesh-patel-s-4th-podcast-with-tyler-cowen

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The world is kind of on fire. The world of AI, in the very short term and for once, is not, as everyone recovers from the avalanche that was December, and reflects.

Altman was the star this week. He has his six word story, and he had his interview at Bloomberg and his blog post Reflections. I covered the later two of those in OpenAI #10, if you read one AI-related thing from me this week that should be it.

Table of Contents

1. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. It knows where you live.
2. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. I see why you’re not interested.

---

Outline:

(00:34) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(04:51) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

(13:25) Power User

(18:04) Locked In User

(19:14) Read the Classics

(23:58) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(24:11) Fun With Image Generation

(25:11) They Took Our Jobs

(25:35) Question Time

(29:43) Get Involved

(30:02) Introducing

(30:28) In Other AI News

(32:34) Quiet Speculations

(37:19) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(38:43) The Least You Could Do

(44:55) Six Word Story

(47:31) The Week in Audio

(47:55) And I Feel Fine

(55:26) Rhetorical Innovation

(58:07) Liar Liar

(59:12) Feel the AGI

(01:01:57) Regular Americans Hate AI

(01:04:18) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:11:31) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
January 9th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xkpPLR3S4SASPeTgC/ai-98-world-ends-with-six-word-story

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This week, Altman offers a post called Reflections, and he has an interview in Bloomberg. There's a bunch of good and interesting answers in the interview about past events that I won’t mention or have to condense a lot here, such as his going over his calendar and all the meetings he constantly has, so consider reading the whole thing.

Table of Contents

1. The Battle of the Board.
2. Altman Lashes Out.
3. Inconsistently Candid.
4. On Various People Leaving OpenAI.
5. The Pitch.
6. Great Expectations.
7. Accusations of Fake News.
8. OpenAI's Vision Would Pose an Existential Risk To Humanity.

The Battle of the Board

Here is what he says about the Battle of the Board in Reflections:

Sam Altman: A little over a year ago, on one particular Friday, the main thing that had gone wrong that day was [...]

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Outline:

(00:25) The Battle of the Board

(05:12) Altman Lashes Out

(07:48) Inconsistently Candid

(09:35) On Various People Leaving OpenAI

(10:56) The Pitch

(12:07) Great Expectations

(12:56) Accusations of Fake News

(15:02) OpenAI's Vision Would Pose an Existential Risk To Humanity

---

First published:
January 7th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XAKYawaW9xkb3YCbF/openai-10-reflections

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Related: On the 2nd CWT with Jonathan Haidt, The Kids are Not Okay, Full Access to Smartphones is Not Good For Children

It's rough out there. In this post, I’ll cover the latest arguments that smartphones should be banned in schools, including simply because the notifications are too distracting (and if you don’t care much about that, why are the kids in school at all?), problems with kids on social media including many negative interactions, and also the new phenomenon called sextortion.

Table of Contents

1. How Many Notifications?.
2. Ban Smartphones in Schools.
3. Antisocial Media.
4. Screen Time.
5. Cyberbullying.
6. Sextortion.

How Many Notifications?

Tanagra Beast reruns the experiment of having a class tally their phone notifications. The results were highly compatible with the original experiment.

The tail, it was long.

Ah! So right away we can see [...]

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Outline:

(00:37) How Many Notifications?

(06:05) Ban Smartphones in Schools

(15:03) Antisocial Media

(19:07) Screen Time

(20:13) Cyberbullying

(21:12) Sextortion

---

First published:
January 6th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u4M7REdXndYmzHmXx/childhood-and-education-8-dealing-with-the-internet

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The Rationalist Project was our last best hope for peace.

An epistemic world 50 million words long, serving as neutral territory.

A place of research and philosophy for 30 million unique visitors

A shining beacon on the internet, all alone in the night.

It was the ending of the Age of Mankind.

The year the Great Race came upon us all.

This is the story of the last of the blogosphere.

The year is 2025. The place is Lighthaven.

As is usually the case, the final week of the year was mostly about people reflecting on the past year or predicting and planning for the new one.

Table of Contents

The most important developments were processing the two new models: OpenAI's o3, and DeepSeek v3.

1. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. The obvious, now at your fingertips.

2. ---

   Outline:

   (00:45) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

   (07:23) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility

   (07:49) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

   (10:54) Fun With Image Generation

   (13:01) They Took Our Jobs

   (14:34) Get Involved

   (16:23) Get Your Safety Papers

   (28:15) Introducing

   (28:32) In Other AI News

   (30:01) The Mask Comes Off

   (40:08) Wanna Bet

   (44:44) The Janus Benchmark

   (48:07) Quiet Speculations

   (59:29) AI Will Have Universal Taste

   (01:01:26) Rhetorical Innovation

   (01:02:22) Nine Boats and a Helicopter

   (01:07:04) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

   (01:13:19) The Lighter Side

   ---

   First published:
   January 2nd, 2025

   Source:
   https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5rDrErovmTyv4duDv/ai-97-4

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What should we make of DeepSeek v3?

DeepSeek v3 seems to clearly be the best open model, the best model at its price point, and the best model with 37B active parameters, or that cost under $6 million.

According to the benchmarks, it can play with GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet.

Anecdotal reports and alternative benchmarks tells us it's not as good as Claude Sonnet, but it is plausibly on the level of GPT-4o.

So what do we have here? And what are the implications?

Table of Contents

1. What is DeepSeek v3 Techncially?.
2. Our Price Cheap.
3. Run Model Run.
4. Talent Search.
5. The Amazing Incredible Benchmarks.
6. Underperformance on AidanBench.
7. Model in the Arena.
8. Other Private Benchmarks.
9. Anecdata.
10. Implications and Policy.

What is DeepSeek v3 Techncially?

I’ve now had a [...]

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Outline:

(00:39) What is DeepSeek v3 Techncially?

(01:56) Our Price Cheap

(02:33) Run Model Run

(04:57) Talent Search

(05:22) The Amazing Incredible Benchmarks

(07:23) Underperformance on AidanBench

(12:59) Model in the Arena

(13:27) Other Private Benchmarks

(15:05) Anecdata

(23:57) Implications and Policy

---

First published:
December 31st, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NmauyiPBXcGwoArhJ/deekseek-v3-the-six-million-dollar-model

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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OpenAI presented o3 on the Friday before Thanksgiving, at the tail end of the 12 Days of Shipmas.

I was very much expecting the announcement to be something like a price drop. What better way to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ no?

They disagreed. Instead, we got this (here's the announcement, in which Sam Altman says ‘they thought it would be fun’ to go from one frontier model to their next frontier model, yeah, that's what I’m feeling, fun):

Greg Brockman (President of OpenAI): o3, our latest reasoning model, is a breakthrough, with a step function improvement on our most challenging benchmarks. We are starting safety testing and red teaming now.

Nat McAleese (OpenAI): o3 represents substantial progress in general-domain reasoning with reinforcement learning—excited that we were able to announce some results today! Here is a summary of what we shared about o3 in the livestream.

---

Outline:

(03:48) GPQA Has Fallen

(04:21) Codeforces Has Fallen

(05:32) Arc Has Kinda of Fallen But For Now Only Kinda

(09:27) They Trained on the Train Set

(15:26) AIME Has Fallen

(15:58) Frontier of Frontier Math Shifting Rapidly

(19:09) FrontierMath 4: We're Going To Need a Bigger Benchmark

(23:10) What is o3 Under the Hood?

(25:17) Not So Fast!

(28:38) Deep Thought

(30:03) Our Price Cheap

(36:32) Has Software Engineering Fallen?

(37:42) Don't Quit Your Day Job

(40:48) Master of Your Domain

(43:21) Safety Third

(47:56) The Safety Testing Program

(48:58) Safety testing in the reasoning era

(51:01) How to apply

(53:07) What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

(56:36) What Could Possibly Go Right?

(57:06) Send in the Skeptic

(59:25) This is Almost Certainly Not AGI

(01:02:57) Does This Mean the Future is Open Models?

(01:07:17) Not Priced In

(01:08:39) Our Media is Failing Us

(01:14:56) Not Covered Here: Deliberative Alignment

(01:15:08) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
December 30th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QHtd2ZQqnPAcknDiQ/o3-oh-my

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The year in models certainly finished off with a bang.

In this penultimate week, we get o3, which purports to give us vastly more efficient performance than o1, and also to allow us to choose to spend vastly more compute if we want a superior answer.

o3 is a big deal, making big gains on coding tests, ARC and some other benchmarks. How big a deal is difficult to say given what we know now. It's about to enter full fledged safety testing.

o3 will get its own post soon, and I’m also pushing back coverage of Deliberative Alignment, OpenAI's new alignment strategy, to incorporate into that.

We also got DeepSeek v3, which claims to have trained a roughly Sonnet-strength model for only $6 million and 37b active parameters per token (671b total via mixture of experts).

DeepSeek v3 gets its own brief section [...]

---

Outline:

(01:25) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(04:47) Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility

(06:43) Flash in the Pan

(10:58) The Six Million Dollar Model

(15:50) And I’ll Form the Head

(17:17) Huh, Upgrades

(18:19) o1 Reactions

(23:28) Fun With Image Generation

(25:06) Introducing

(25:52) They Took Our Jobs

(30:20) Get Involved

(30:34) In Other AI News

(34:15) You See an Agent, You Run

(34:58) Another One Leaves the Bus

(35:53) Quiet Speculations

(40:24) Lock It In

(42:34) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(55:35) The Week in Audio

(57:56) A Tale as Old as Time

(01:01:16) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:03:08) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:04:26) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:06:50) The Lighter Side

---

First published:
December 26th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k8bkugdhiFmXHPoLH/ai-96-o3-but-not-yet-for-thee

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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