LW - AI #68: Remarkably Reasonable Reactions by Zvi

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AI #68: Remarkably Reasonable Reactions, published by Zvi on June 14, 2024 on LessWrong.
The big news this week was Apple Intelligence being integrated deeply into all their products. Beyond that, we had a modestly better than expected debate over the new version of SB 1047, and the usual tons of stuff in the background. I got to pay down some writing debt.
The bad news is, oh no, I have been called for Jury Duty. The first day or two I can catch up on podcasts or pure reading, but after that it will start to hurt. Wish me luck.
Table of Contents
AiPhone covers the announcement of Apple Intelligence. Apple's products are getting device-wide integration of their own AI in a way they say preserves privacy, with access to ChatGPT via explicit approval for the heaviest requests. A late update: OpenAI is providing this service for free as per Bloomberg.
I offered Quotes from Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness Paper, attempting to cut down his paper by roughly 80% while still capturing what I considered the key passages. Then I covered his appearance on Dwarkesh's Podcast, where I offered commentary. The plan is to complete that trilogy tomorrow, with a post that analyzes Leopold's positions systematically, and that covers the reactions of others.
1. Introduction.
2. Table of Contents.
3. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Roll your own process.
4. Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility. What happened to Alexa?
5. Fun With Image Generation. Dude, where's my image of a car?
6. Copyright Confrontation. Everyone is rather on edge these days.
7. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. People will do things that scale.
8. They Took Our Jobs. Lost your job? No problem. Start a new company!
9. Someone Explains it All. Data center construction, the bitter lesson.
10. The Art of the Jailbreak. The Most Forbidden Technique?
11. Get Involved. AISI hiring a senior developer.
12. Introducing. New OpenAI execs, new AI assistant, new short video model.
13. In Other AI News. More progress avoiding MatMul. Nvidia takes it all in stride.
14. Quiet Speculations. What you see may be what you get.
15. I Spy With My AI. Microsoft Recall makes some changes to be slightly less crazy.
16. Pick Up the Phone. Perhaps a deal could be made.
17. Lying to the White House, Senate and House of Lords. I don't love it.
18. The Quest for Sane Regulation. People want it. Companies feel differently.
19. More Reasonable SB 1047 Reactions. Hearteningly sane reactions by many.
20. Less Reasonable SB 1047 Reactions. The usual suspects say what you'd suspect.
21. That's Not a Good Idea. Non-AI example, California might ban UV lights.
22. With Friends Like These. Senator Mike Lee has thoughts.
23. The Week in Audio. Lots to choose from, somehow including new Dwarkesh.
24. Rhetorical Innovation. Talking about probabilities with normies is hard.
25. Mistakes Were Made. Rob Bensinger highlights two common ones.
26. The Sacred Timeline. What did you mean? Which ways does it matter?
27. Coordination is Hard. Trying to model exactly how hard it will be.
28. Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult. Natural abstractions?
29. People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone. Reports and theses.
30. Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone. Why not?
31. The Lighter Side. Do you have to do this?
What is still in the queue, in current priority order?
1. The third and final post on Leopold Aschenbrenner's thesis will come tomorrow.
2. OpenAI has now had enough drama that I need to cover that.
3. DeepMind's scaling policy will get the analysis it deserves.
4. Other stuff remains: OpenAI model spec, Rand report, Seoul, the Vault.
Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
Write letters to banks on your behalf by invoking Patrick McKenzie.
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