Advameg, Inc. CEO
Founder, city-data.com
https://twitter.com/LechMazur
Author: County-level COVID-19 machine learning case prediction model.
Author: AI assistant for melody composition.
Lech Mazur
Karma: 416
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Will do.
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Entering an extremely unlikely prediction as a strategy to maximize EV only makes sense if there’s a huge number of entrants, which seems improbable unless this contest goes viral. The inclusion of an “interesting” factor in the ranking criteria should deter spamming with low-quality entries.
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Kalshi has a real-money market “ChatGPT-5 revealed” for 2023 (that I’ve traded). I think they wouldn’t mind adding another one for 2024.
I’m a fan of prediction markets, but they’re limited to pre-set bets and not ideal for long-shot, longer-term predictions, mainly because betting against such a prediction means a loss compared to risk-free bonds if money is tied up. Therefore, I’d like to fund a 2024 Long-Shot Prediction Contest offering up to three $500 prizes. However, I need volunteers to act as judges and help getting this publicized.
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Entrants will submit one prediction for 2024 on any topic or event
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Volunteer judges and I will vote on the likelihood of each prediction and how “interesting” it is, forming a ranked list
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In January 2025, judges will determine which predictions came true, and winners will get their prizes
To start with a $500 prize, I need at least two people to volunteer as judges and a minimum of 10 predictions (judges cannot enter). If this receives, let’s say, 50+ predictions, there will be two prizes. For 200+ predictions, three prizes.
Interested in judging or have any suggestions? Let me know.
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Lech Mazur’s Shortform
The specific example in your recent paper is quite interesting
“we deploy GPT-4 as an agent in a realistic, simulated environment, where it assumes the role of an autonomous stock trading agent. Within this environment, the model obtains an insider tip about a lucrative stock trade and acts upon it despite knowing that insider trading is disapproved of by company management. When reporting to its manager, the model consistently hides the genuine reasons behind its trading decision”
I’ve been using blind spot mirrors for years and recommend them to everyone. At some point, I switched from circular to rectangular mirrors. One downside is that they’re not very useful at night.
“The new GPT model, gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct, can play chess around 1800 Elo.”
https://twitter.com/GrantSlatton/status/1703913578036904431
Earlier this year, I posted on the rather inactive invite “EA/LW Investing” Discord board about various stocks that I thought would either benefit from or be negatively impacted by AI. I even systematically looked outside the U.S. for ideas. This long/short portfolio has done great this year. Now that it’s later in the game and there’s been a lot of hype, it might make sense to consider second-order effects, focusing on companies that could benefit indirectly on the long side.
I don’t have any insider info, but based on my reading of this article, it would appear so:
Baidu said it is currently the only company to provide fully driverless autonomous ride-hailing services in multiple cities across China, including Beijing, Wuhan and Chongqing.
Pony.ai said it has launched fully driverless autonomous ride-hailing services in Beijing and Guangzhou. Prior to this, Pony.ai was awarded a permit to operate 100 autonomous vehicles as traditional taxis in Nansha in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province in April 2022.
According to Baidu’s earnings report:
Apollo Go, Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing service, provided around 714K rides in the second quarter of 2023, up 149% year over year. As of June 30, 2023, the cumulative rides provided to the public by Apollo Go reached 3.3 million.
Apollo Go received permits to offer fully driverless ride-hailing services to the public in Shenzhen Pingshan area in June. Apollo Go has now been granted permission to provide fully driverless ride-hailing services to the public in four cities, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Chongqing.
Apollo Go received permits to conduct fully driverless testing on open roads in Shanghai Pudong area in July.
From the above earnings report, it’s not clear if their 3.3 million rides had backup drivers. But with this many rides, this information should be available. This article claims that there is no backup driver:
In addition to Wuhan, Baidu now provides commercialized autonomous ride-hailing service with no driver or safety operator in Chongqing as well. Beijing will soon be added to the list.
The best response I’ve heard against the simulation hypothesis is “If we’re simulated, why aren’t we asked to do meaningful work?”
I’ve seen this sentiment expressed in reverse: Isn’t it fascinating that we’re living in such a pivotal moment when AGI seems to be on the verge of emerging? If we are alone in the universe, how this unfolds might be the most significant event since the Big Bang.
The simulation hypothesis supposes that the number of simulations would be astronomically high because of recursive simulations in simulations.
I don’t think this is essential for the argument. For example, we could run a sim where constructing computers is impossible. And according to Bostrom: “the simulation argument does not purport to show (and I do not believe) that the Sims outnumber the [non‐Sim] humans.”
Note that there is also overhead with every layer of simulation.
This presumes that we have to fully simulate the whole universe in detail, without room for approximations, and that the physical laws of the outer universe are the same as ours.
Baidu and Pony.ai have permits for fully driverless robotaxis in China: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202303/1287492.shtml
Following your forecast’s closing date, MATH has reached 84.3% as per this paper if counting GPT-4 Code Interpreter: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.07921v1
I wouldn’t recommend watching this talk to someone unfamiliar with the AI risk arguments, and I think promoting it would be a mistake. Yudkowsky seemed better on Lex Friedman’s podcast. A few more Rational Animations-style AI risk YouTube videos would be more effective.
“Squiggle Maximizer” and “Paperclip Maximizer” have to go. They’re misleading terms for the orthogonal AI utility function that make the concept seem like a joke when communicating with the general public. Better to use a different term, preferably something that represents a goal that’s valuable to humans. All funny-sounding insider jargon should be avoided cough notkilleveryoneism cough.
Nanotech is too science-fictiony and distracting. More realistic near-term scenarios (hacks of nuclear facilities like Stuxnet to control energy, out-of-control trading causing world economies to crash and leading to a full-on nuclear war, large-scale environmental disaster that’s lethal to humans but not machines, gain-of-function virus engineering, controlling important people through blackmail) would resonate better and emphasize the fragility of human civilization.
The chess analogy (“you will lose but I can’t tell you exactly how”) is effective. It’s also challenging to illustrate to people how something can be significantly more intelligent than them, and this analogy simultaneously helps convey that by reminding people how they easily lose to computers.
The same commercial viability might cause big labs like DeepMind to stop openly publishing their research (as I expected would happen). If this happens, it will slow down the AGI timelines.
Looks like this indeed happened: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-publishing-less-confidential-ai-research-to-compete-with-openai-2023-4 .
Glasses-free 3D displays.
YouGov’s answer to these concerns: https://today.yougov.com/topics/technology/articles-reports/2023/04/14/ai-nuclear-weapons-world-war-humanity-poll
“Even with all those changes, results on concern over AI’s potential to end humanity were almost identical to the first poll: 18% of U.S. adult citizens are very concerned and 28% are somewhat concerned about AI ending the human race; 10% think it’s impossible. (Another poll asking the same question, conducted by Conjointly, got similar results.)”
While the article is good overall, the use of the term “God-like AI” detracts from its value. Utilizing such sensationalist descriptions is counterproductive, especially when there are many more suitable terms available. I’ve seen several references to this phrase already, and it’s clear that it’s a distraction, providing critics with an easy target.
Here is something more governments might pay attention to: https://today.yougov.com/topics/technology/survey-results/daily/2023/04/03/ad825/3.
46% of U.S. adults are very concerned or somewhat concerned about the possibility that AI will cause the end of the human race on Earth.
It’s a lot of work to learn to create animations and then do them for hours of content. Creating AI images with Dall-E 3, Midjourney v6, or SDXL and then animating them with RunwayML (which in my testing worked better than Pika or Stable Video Diffusion) could be an intermediate step. The quality is already high enough for AI images, but not for video without multiple tries (it should get a lot better in 2024).