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TLDR: Take the population ethics quiz here: https://mdickens.me/pop-ethics/
Population ethics is an oft-overlooked subfield within ethics. Many people hold views that they don't realize contradict each other, or that have strange implications that they wouldn't endorse if they thought about it more.
Not just that—population ethics is a BIG DEAL. A lot of ethical decisions hinge on how you think about changes in future populations....
A preliminary estimate, and a request for better ones.
Summary
I believe the standard literature estimates for the number of DALYs attributable to a case of stunting are too low, largely because they don’t account for the long term effects. This means that childhood nutritional interventions that reduce the prevalence of stunting may be substantially more cost-effective than previously believed.
Epistemic status
Exploratory and back-o...
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I’ve been feeling pretty shaken since the METR report about the Hugging Face incident came out last week. Over the weekend, I wrote up some thoughts on how lonely the AI situation sometimes feels to me. It’s more personal than what I’d usually share publicly, but I thought I’d post it here in case it resonates with anyone else.
I’m very grateful to the man...
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Thanks for sharing this.
What’s your view on “why doesn’t OpenAI slow down work on capabilities to allow more time for alignment research?”
Is it
OpenAI is worried that Deepmind might build AGI before OpenAI, and OpenAI is worried that Deepmind is more likely to build AGI unsafely or misuse it
OpenAI is worried that another group we aren’t aware of yet might build AGI before OpenAI and Deepmind, and OpenAI is worried that this group is more likely to build AGI unsafely or misuse it
OpenAI is already only scaling up capabilities where it allows them to do better alignment research
OpenAI is in practice prioritising revenue over existential risk mitigation, despite claiming not to
something else / a mix
I think that OpenAI is not worried about actors like DeepMind misusing AGI, but (a) is worried about actors that might not currently be on most people's radar misusing AGI, (b) thinks that scaling up capabilities enables better alignment research (but sees other benefits to scaling up capabilities too) and (c) is earning revenue for reasons other than direct existential risk reduction where it does not see a conflict in doing so.