SneerClub

amazing to watch American right-wingers flounder at the incredibly obvious questions from UK media guys, even Piers fucking Morgan on a podcast

Morgan - as a fellow right winger - asks Thiel about Mangione quoting Thiel

watch Thiel melting in the excruciating video clip

Abstracted abstract:

Frontier models are increasingly trained and deployed as autonomous agents, which significantly increases their potential for risks. One particular safety concern is that AI agents might covertly pursue misaligned goals, hiding their true capabilities and objectives – also known as scheming. We study whether models have the capability to scheme in pursuit of a goal that we provide in-context and instruct the model to strongly follow. We evaluate frontier models on a suite of six agentic evaluations where models are instructed to pursue goals and are placed in environments that incentivize scheming.

I saw this posted here a moment ago and reported it*, and it looks to have been purged. I am reposting it to allow us to sneer at it.

*

https://xcancel.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1866223174029095113#m
https://xcancel.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1866241512293781930#m

The UCLA news office boasts, "Comparative lit class will be first in Humanities Division to use UCLA-developed AI system".

The logic the professor gives completely baffles me:

"Normally, I would spend lectures contextualizing the material and using visuals to demonstrate the content. But now all of that is in the textbook we generated, and I can actually work with students to read the primary sources and walk them through what it means to analyze and think critically."

I'm trying to parse that. Really and truly I am. But it just sounds like this: "Normally, I would [do work]. But now, I can actually [do the same work]."

I mean, was this person somehow teaching comparative literature in a way that didn't involve reading the primary sources and, I'unno, comparing them?

The sales talk in the news release is really going all in selling that undercoat.

Now that her teaching materials are organized into a coherent text, another instructor could lead the course during the quarters when Stahuljak isn’t teaching — and offer students a very similar experience. And with AI-generated lesson plans and writing exercises for TAs, students in each discussion section can be assured they’re receiving comparable instruction to those in other sections.

Back in my day, we called that "having a book" and "writing a lesson plan".

Yeah, going from lecture notes and slides to something shaped like a book is hard. I know because I've fuckin' done it. And because I put in the work, I got the benefit of improving my own understanding by refining my presentation. As the old saying goes, "Want to learn a subject? Teach it." Moreover, doing the work means that I can take a little pride in the result. Serving slop is the cafeteria's job.

(Hat tip.)

PDF

https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/files/8518/61565cb6-e056-4e35-bd2e-d14d58e35231.pdf

featuring nobody's favourite e/acc bro, BasedBeffJezos

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/12/01/does-ai-startup-extropic-actually-do-anything/

https://nonesense.substack.com/p/lesswrong-house-style

Given that they are imbeciles given, occasionally, to dangerous ideas, I think it’s worth taking a moment now and then to beat them up. This is another such moment.

From the author of "EAs should probably focus on recruiting the ultra-wealthy"

The predictably grievous harms of Effective Altruism

https://blog.oup.com/2022/12/the-predictably-grievous-harms-of-effective-altruism/

@sneerclub

oh yes, this one is about our very good friends

Would've been way better if the author didn't feel the need to occasionally hand it to siskind for what amounts to keeping the mask on, even while he notes several instances where scotty openly discusses how maintaining a respectable facade is integral to his agenda of infecting polite society with neoreactionary fuckery.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7E2onI8R3wdnxAS0p1O9j8

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897

https://pca.st/episode/0e155eb9-93e0-4fe8-bde3-5f115f9b374a

archive: https://archive.ph/wRpVA

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but so far the choice line is:

I like how you just dropped the “Vance is interested in right authoritarianism” like it’s a known fact to base your entire point on. Vance is the clearest demonstration of a libertarian the republicans have in high office. It’s an absurd ad hominem that you try to mask in your wall of text.

archive: https://archive.is/ux5pL

In a letter to the judge, Ellison’s mother, professor Sara Fisher Ellison, wrote that Ellison has completed a romantic novella and is already at work on a follow-up. The finished novella is “set in Edwardian England and loosely based on [Ellison’s] sister Kate’s imagined amorous exploits, to Kate’s great delight,” her mother wrote.

https://fortune.com/2024/09/24/caroline-ellison-romance-novel-ftx-entencing/

oh yeah she got two years' jail for her part in stealing eleven fucking billion with a B dollars

Excerpt:

A new study published on Thursday in The American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that dosage may play a role. It found that among people who took high doses of prescription amphetamines such as Vyvanse and Adderall, there was a fivefold increased risk of developing psychosis or mania for the first time compared with those who weren’t taking stimulants.

Perhaps this explains some of what goes on at LessWrong and in other rationalist circles.