Steven Byrnes

Karma: 22,277

I’m an AGI safety / AI alignment researcher in Boston with a particular focus on brain algorithms. Research Fellow at Astera. See https://sjbyrnes.com/agi.html for a summary of my research and sorted list of writing. Physicist by training. Email: steven.byrnes@gmail.com. Leave me anonymous feedback here. I’m also at: RSS feed, X/Twitter, Bluesky, Substack, LinkedIn, and more at my website.

Response to Dileep George: AGI safety warrants planning ahead

Steven Byrnes8 Jul 2024 15:27 UTC

27 points

7 comments27 min readLW link

Incentive Learning vs Dead Sea Salt Experiment

Steven Byrnes25 Jun 2024 17:49 UTC

30 points

1 comment28 min readLW link

(Appetitive, Consummatory) ≈ (RL, reflex)

Steven Byrnes15 Jun 2024 15:57 UTC

38 points

1 comment3 min readLW link

[Valence series] 4. Valence & Liking / Admiring

Steven Byrnes10 Jun 2024 14:19 UTC

48 points

12 comments15 min readLW link

Response to nostalgebraist: proudly waving my moral-antirealist battle flag

Steven Byrnes29 May 2024 16:48 UTC

103 points

29 comments11 min readLW link

Spatial attention as a “tell” for empathetic simulation?

Steven Byrnes26 Apr 2024 15:10 UTC

55 points

12 comments8 min readLW link

A couple productivity tips for overthinkers

Steven Byrnes20 Apr 2024 16:05 UTC

79 points

13 comments4 min readLW link

“Artificial General Intelligence”: an extremely brief FAQ

Steven Byrnes11 Mar 2024 17:49 UTC

74 points

6 comments2 min readLW link

Some (problematic) aesthetics of what constitutes good work in academia

Steven Byrnes11 Mar 2024 17:47 UTC

148 points

12 comments12 min readLW link

Woods’ new preprint on object permanence

Steven Byrnes7 Mar 2024 21:29 UTC

58 points

1 comment6 min readLW link

Social status part 2/2: everything else

Steven Byrnes5 Mar 2024 16:29 UTC

65 points

2 comments23 min readLW link

Social status part 1/2: negotiations over object-level preferences

Steven Byrnes5 Mar 2024 16:29 UTC

118 points

15 comments21 min readLW link

Four visions of Transformative AI success

Steven Byrnes17 Jan 2024 20:45 UTC

112 points

22 comments15 min readLW link

Deceptive AI ≠ Deceptively-aligned AI

Steven Byrnes7 Jan 2024 16:55 UTC

96 points

19 comments6 min readLW link

[Valence series] Appendix A: Hedonic tone / (dis)pleasure / (dis)liking

Steven Byrnes20 Dec 2023 15:54 UTC

18 points

0 comments13 min readLW link

[Valence series] 5. “Valence Disorders” in Mental Health & Personality

Steven Byrnes18 Dec 2023 15:26 UTC

45 points

13 comments13 min readLW link

[Valence series] 4. Valence & Social Status (deprecated)

Steven Byrnes15 Dec 2023 14:24 UTC

35 points

19 comments11 min readLW link

[Valence series] 3. Valence & Beliefs

Steven Byrnes11 Dec 2023 20:21 UTC

77 points

12 comments21 min readLW link 1 review

[Valence series] 2. Valence & Normativity

Steven Byrnes7 Dec 2023 16:43 UTC

88 points

7 comments28 min readLW link 1 review

[Valence series] 1. Introduction

Steven Byrnes4 Dec 2023 15:40 UTC

99 points

16 comments16 min readLW link 2 reviews