Connor Leahy on the State of AI and Alignment Research

Not a subscriber and came to hear more thoughts from Connor, but the presenter is very intelligent and asks all the questions I wanted to ask. Kudos to you sir.

You should just invite Connor on every week, honestly

Lol. Connor is so reasonable it's funny. I'm glad we have him.

Hoare quipped that there are two ways to make software- "One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies". RLHF is very much in the category of removing deficiencies in a complicated system (and not doing that particularly well). If we ever manage to create AGI or ASI that is safe and generally powerful, it needs to be in Hoare's first category. The problem is that neural nets are complicated. So I assume the simplicity needs to be wrapped around the net somehow? I don't understand how any programmer who's worked on any non-trivial system has any confidence we're going to figure out how to do this quickly, if ever. Over decades of effort, we have so far almost entirely failed to make bug-free systems even from a few thousand lines that can be read and understood by a single human mind. The exception is in systems amenable to formal proofs, which AGI is the opposite of. We're now trying to create a significantly bug-free system made out of trillions of currently barely-legible parameters, without having anything close to a specification of what it's supposed to do, formal or otherwise.

Thank you for the steady updates.

Current AI is alchemy. Always love Connor's analogies, "Voodoo shit"

Germane and insightful meta-analysis of the alignment field. Connor continues to demonstrate he has a well-developed map of potential future outcomes in AI capability advancements and regulatory efforts. I hope we continue to hear more from him and others who can elucidate the complexities of alignment.

This needs to be shown everywhere. Scoreboards at mindless sporting events. On subways. On the radio. I think we are at the beginning of the intelligence explosion and we may already be doomed and people deserve to know

35:00 "I can just give my best strawman" is a gross misunderstanding of the term. Connor is admitting with admirable humility and sincerity that he doesn't think he can represent Yudkowksy's or Christiano's stance precisely, but as long as he's trying to get it right, then he's not strawmanning. Steelman vs strawman is the difference in rhetorical practice of framing opposing arguments generously vs maliciously, not an objective measure of accuracy. The word opposing is crucial. You steelman an opposing argument to demonstrate that even with the best possible interpretation of that argument, it is fallacious or contradictory in some way. It's an acknowledgement that language is difficult, and a show of good faith by giving your conversational partner the benefit of the doubt with their clumsy phrasing or poor memory or momentary neglect of detail. Strawmanning opposing arguments is what ignorant cowards do, and it's a sure way to never be persuasive. Strawmanning EY's stance would look like "yeah he's just some fat neckbeard who's being all doomy for attention". Connor Leahy is not strawmanning here, nor would it be advisable, nor should he ever preface any point he wants to make convincingly by declaring that he is. Great video overall! Apologies for my ragging pedantry.

Been waiting all week for the 2nd part of this. Always great to hear Conor leahy's thoughts!

If we want to align AI we have to first align humanity by clarifying to everyone that our shared goal is to meet everyone's needs. Not creating jobs, not boosting the economy, not reducing CO2, not space exploration, our goal is to meet everyone's needs. The more we repeat that and study human needs and educate everyone about the need to educate everyone about human needs, the closer we are to aligning humanity. Then we can start to escape moloch and progress civilization.

Except for his position on alignment & interpretibility, I have found myself appreciating Connor's pov a lot.

I love how Leahy is happy and excited talking about the end of humanity and chaos, and everything like yeah.. we are fucked up lets enjoy the moment lol

I just asked Chat GPT about this and it strangely froze up, taking a really long time to answer. Then it suddenly claimed to NO LONGER know Connor Leahy. Lol, we are doomed.

Freaking amazing conversation

Wow, smart guy, genuinely terrified for the future of civilization.

Not only could an AGI invent Alpha Fold, it could bolt Alpha Fold onto itself as one of its modules. An AGI could be massively modular.

Love this!

It's so dilating when someone says they fully expect the apocalypse. Now I have to listen to every single interview to hear more 🙈😂

I really enjoyed the interview and am in complete agreement with Connor's take on the alignment issue, however was a bit perplexed at his assertions regarding potential Pentagon involvement relating to accountability, track record of safety and reliability and security, etc The Pentagon has a very long history of deceiving the public and oversight committees in Congress, and an ugly track record of deceit relative to their true objectives and motivations for going to war, etc. Also, it's not a matter of "when" the Pentagon will be involved in AI deployment considering AI developers working with and inside of DARPA developing autonomous weapons systems, etc FOR the Pentagon. I like Connor but he needs to come up to speed on the Pentagon's track record and current involvement in AI.