Emerson Spartz

Co-founded Nonlinear.org (x-risk incubator) and Superlinear (x-risk prizes/bounties).

Also into complex systems, history, and crypto.

www.twitter.com/emersonspartz

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People give standing ovations when they feel inspired to because something resonated with them.  They're applauding him for trying to save humanity, and this audience reaction gives me hope.

It's unfortunate that this version is spreading because many people will think it's a low credibility TEDx talk instead of a very credible main stage TED talk.

+1

My background is extremely relevant here and if anybody in the alignment community would like help thinking through strategy, I'd love to be helpful.

I think this is a really promising idea.

If the goal is to unify diverse stakeholders, including non-technical ones, I wonder if it would be better to use a less-wonky target (e.g. "50%" instead of ".002 OOMs")

Going to share a seemingly-unpopular opinion and in a tone that usually gets downvoted on LW but I think needs to be said anyway:

This stat is why I still have hope: 100,000 capabilities researchers vs 300 alignment researchers.

Humanity has not tried to solve alignment yet.

There's no cavalry coming - we are the cavalry.

I am sympathetic to fears of a new alignment researchers being net negative, and I think plausibly the entire field has, so far, been net negative, but guys, there are 100,000 capabilities researchers now! One more is a drop in the bucket.

If you're still on the sidelines, go post that idea that's been gathering dust in your Google Docs for the last six months.  Go fill out that fundraising application.

We've had enough fire alarms. It's time to act.

Another example of Overton movement - imagine seeing these results a few years ago:

"I'm an accelerationist for solar power, nuclear power to the extent it hasn't been obsoleted by solar power and we might as well give up but I'm still bitter about it, geothermal, genetic engineering, neuroengineering, FDA delenda est, basically everything except GoF bio and AI"

https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1629725763175092225?t=A-po2tuqZ17YVYAyrBRCDw&s=19

I also think this approach deserves more consideration.

Also: since BCIs can generate easy-to-understand profits, and are legibly useful to many, we could harness market forces to shorten BCI timelines.

Ambitious BCI projects will likely be more shovel ready than many other alignment approaches - BCIs are plausibly amenable to Manhattan Project-level initiatives where we unleash significant human and financial capital. Maybe use Advanced Market Commitments to kickstart the innovators, etc.

For anybody interested, Tim Urban has a really well written post about Neuralink/BCIs: https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

Anecdata: many in my non-EA/rat social circles of entrepreneurs and investors are engaging with this for the first time.  

And, to my surprise (given the optimistic nature of entrepreneurs/VCs) they aren't just being reflexive techno-optimists, they're taking the ideas seriously and, since Bankless, "Eliezer" is becoming a first name-only character.

Eliezer said he's an accelerationist in basically everything except AI and gain-of-function bio and that seems to resonate. AI is Not Like The Other Problems.

Came here to say this. Highly recommend this book for anyone working on deception.

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