BLUF:
* To determine whether AI is ‘improving exponentially’, ‘hitting the wall’, or any other claim which involves a quantity or magnitude (e.g. ‘This model was a big leap/small increment’). We need a good y-axis: an interval scale of AI capability which means +1 unit always represents the same degree of ‘how much better’, in the same way +1 degree Celsius is always the same amount of ‘how much hotter’.
* Yet there is no good y-axis for AI capability. All our...
Public service announcement
1. Applications are now open for our first ever round of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program dedicated exclusively to animal welfare. Learn more about what’s different this round here and apply...
TL;DR
* The Long-Term Future Fund is closing down, and EA Funds is launching the Transformative AI Fund with a new full-time team.
* The fund's primary focus is technical AI safety and AI governance (including post-AGI governance), as well as supporting fields such as field-building and forecasting. We'll also consider non-GCR implications of transformative AI such as flourishing futures and digital...
Maybe what humans need more than more advice is advice on how to actually apply advice — that is, better ways to bridge the gap between hearing it and living it?
So not just a list of steps or clever tips, but skills and mindsets for truly absorbing what we read, hear, discuss, and turning that into action. Which I feel might mean shifting from passively waiting for something to "click" to actively digging for what someone is trying to convey and figuring out how it could work for us, just as it worked for them.
Of course, not all advice will fit us, and that's fine. We can't expect to apply all advice we get, not even all advice that really resonates. Often, the greatest act of kindness we can do for ourselves isn't working to make ourselves more perfect, but understanding and accepting our imperfection and limitations.
However, realistically, I think the bigger reason we ignore most advice isn't that it's not for us — it's that we rarely pause to ask ourselves how it might look in practise or remind ourselves to follow through. That we waste the immense potential for transformation and for acquiring new habits and behaviours that's already out there.