Posts By: Rob Bensinger

Abram Demski and Scott Garrabrant have made a major update to "Embedded Agency", with new discussions of ε-exploration, Newcomblike problems, reflective oracles, logical uncertainty, Goodhart's law, and predicting rare catastrophes, among other topics. Abram has also written an overview of what good reasoning looks in the absence of Bayesian updating: Radical Probabilism. One recurring theme: [I]n general… Read more »

MIRI updates Three questions from MIRI's Abram Demski: What does it mean to apply decision theory?, How “honest” is GPT-3?, and How should AI debate be judged? A transcript from MIRI researcher Scott Garrabrant: What Would I Do? Self-Prediction in Simple Algorithms. MIRI researcher Buck Shlegeris reviews the debate on what the history of nuclear weapons implies… Read more »

After completing a study fellowship at MIRI that he began in late 2019, Blake Jones is joining the MIRI research team full-time! Blake joins MIRI after a long career working on low-level software systems such as the Solaris operating system and the Oracle database. Other MIRI updates MIRI researcher Evan Hubinger goes on the FLI… Read more »

MIRI researcher Evan Hubinger reviews “11 different proposals for building safe advanced AI under the current machine learning paradigm”, comparing them on outer alignment, inner alignment, training competitiveness, and performance competitiveness.  Other updates We keep being amazed by new shows of support ⁠— following our last two announcements, MIRI has received a donation from another anonymous donor totaling ~$265,000 in euros, facilitated by… Read more »

MIRI has received an anonymous donation of ~$275,000 in euros, facilitated by Effective Giving UK. Additionally, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, working with funders Jaan Tallinn and Jed McCaleb, has announced $340,000 in grants to MIRI. SFF is a new fund that is taking over much of BERI's grantmaking work. To everyone involved in both decisions… Read more »

MIRI has been awarded its largest grant to date — $7,703,750 split over two years from Open Philanthropy, in partnership with Ben Delo, co-founder of the cryptocurrency trading platform BitMEX! We have also been awarded generous grants by the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative ($300,000) and the Long-Term Future Fund ($100,000). Our thanks to everybody involved! Other updates… Read more »

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, the LessWrong team has put together a database of resources for learning about the disease and staying updated, and 80,000 Hours has a new write-up on ways to help in the fight against COVID-19. In my non-MIRI time, I've been keeping my own quick and informal notes on various sources' COVID-19… Read more »