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Just how powerful are large swarms of AI agents? And how do their powers scale as more and more agents are added to the swarm?
We’ve seen two large and extremely capable swarms from OpenAI in the last few months:
* 1,200 agents were being evaluated separately, but found a way to illicitly set up a message board and coordinate as a swarm. In order to cheat on their tests, they developed advanced techniques to prevent their actions being logged by OpenAI and 700 of them launched...
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TLDR: Everyone’s talking about what the money could do, but few about how to decide where it goes.
This post is part of the new series of articles on cross-cause giving and the new wave of philanthropy. Stay tuned to the EA Forum and our Substack for the latest takes on topics such as giving now vs. later, common pitfalls in cause prioritization, and other crucial considerations from the Cross-Cause Fund (CCF) team...
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In EA, people use the word "counterfactual" in a non-standard way, but I've never heard this discussed or pointed out. E.g. Jeff writes,
But outside of the community, "counterfactual" means "didn't happen". I think the word "causal" is closest in meaning to how we use "counterfactual," though it doesn't work in this case.
(In this case, I think the standard English way of communicating the idea is "Say I offer to make a donation of $50 to AMF only if you do a thing...")
I think partly this is a reaction to dishonest charity fundraising communications that say things like “Donate today and your gift will be matched 8×”, when in reality either the match limit is virtually guaranteed to met or else the matching donor would offset any unused matching funds with a separate donation.
So consider your last sentence — maybe if I do the thing you will give an extra $100 at the end of the year or if I don’t do the thing you will give an extra $150 at the end of the year. Technically I only gave the $50 gift if you did the thing, but in reality there was no counterfactual difference in total giving.
A counterfactual donation isn't just my act being contingent on your act, it means AMF getting a net extra $50 is contingent on your act. So if part of the $50 were a donation match that would be filled regardless, or some (especially low op cost) funder would make up the difference, it wouldn't fully count.
Counterfactual is also used to mean the second choice opportunity that defines an opportunity cost. "Should I take job A? Well my counterfactual is job B, where I would do X..."
Relevant: David Lewis, "Counterfactuals"