Verbatim quote of this tweet by Eliezer:

For the benefit of latecomers and CICO bros, my current equilibrium is "spend 1 month fasting / starving on 700 cal/day keto; spend 2 months eating enough to work during the day, going to bed hungry, and therefore gaining 1-2 lb/wk".

I don't need a weight-loss solution, kids. Starving 1 in 3 months already works to lose weight. I need a "have enough energy to work, without gaining 1-2lb/wk" solution.

Diets like the potato diet fail, not because they don't succeed in forcing me to eat less -- I do, indeed, end up with not enough room in my stomach to eat enough potatoes to work and not feel tired. The potato diet fails because it doesn't protect me from the consequences of starvation, the brainfog and the trembling hands. If I'm going to be too sick and exhausted to work, I might as well go full keto on 700cal/day and actually lose weight, rather than hanging around indefinitely in potato purgatory.

Semaglutide failed, tirzepatide failed, paleo diet failed, potato diet failed, honey diet failed, volume eating with huge salads failed, whipped cream diet failed, aerobic exercise failed, weight lifting with a personal trainer failed, thyroid medication failed, T3 thyroid medication failed, illegal drugs like clenbuterol have failed, phentermine failed (but can help make it easier to endure a bad day when I'm in my 600cal/day phase), mitochondrial renewal diets and medications failed, Shangri-La diet worked for me twice to effortlessly lose 25lb per session and then never worked for me again.

Next up is retatrutide + cagrilintide, and while I'm still titrating up the dose on that, it sure is not helping so far.

I am not interested in your diet advice unless you have evidence about something that works for people who have metabolic disorders that have resisted fairly extraordinary efforts. While pretty pessimistic about retatrutide at this point, I am trying it all because a poll claimed that it had worked for 75% of people on whom tirzepatide failed.

Your grandmother's dietary solution is not going to work, also I already tried it, also you have flatly failed at reading comprehension since you did not understand that my problem is not "How can I possibly eat less?" but "How can I be protected from the usual consequences to me of eating less, well enough for me to keep working?" And yes, I can eat less by an act of will, I eat 600cal/day for 1 in 3 months, even in the other 2 months I go to bed hungry instead of eating at nighttime, you are failing at reading comprehension if you think that this is about willpower. I just can't work at the same time as eating so little that I'm not gaining weight, which means that my hands are shaking and my brain is fogged.

Thank you and I will be following my usual practice of blocking reply guys who fail at reading comprehension.

The results of the listener survey were equivocal. Listener preferences varied widely, with Ryan (our existing voice) and Echo coming out tied and slightly on top, but not with statistical significance.

Given that, we plan to stick with Ryan for now. Two considerations that influence this call, independently of the survey result:

1. There's an habituation effect, such that switching costs for existing hardcore listeners are significant.
2. There's some evidence that more expressive voices are less comprehensible at high listening speeds. Ryan is less expressive than the other voices we tested.

We'll survey again—or perhaps just switch based on our judgement—when better models are released.

There is no meeting where an actual rational discussion of considerations and theories of change happens, everything really is people flying by the seat of their pants even at highest level. Talk of ethics usually just gets you excluded from the power talk.

This seems overstated. E.g. Musk and Altman both read Superintelligence, and they both met Bostrom at least once in 2015. Sam published reflective blog posts on AGI in 2015, and it's clear that the OpenAI founders had lengthy, reflective discussions from the YC Research days onwards.

That's probably not what Page meant. On consideration, he would probably have clarified […]

[…]

A little more careful conversation would've prevented this whole thing.

The passage you quote earlier suggests that they had multiple lengthy conversations:

Larry Page and I used to be close friends and I would stay at his house in Paolo Alto and I would talk to him late into the night about AI safety […]

Quick discussions via email are not strong evidence of a lack of careful discussion and reflection in other contexts.

I made a change to my Twitter setup recently.

Initially, I discovered the "AI Twitter Recap" section of the AI News newsletter (example). It is good, but it doesn't actually include the tweet texts, and it isn't quite enough to make me feel fine about skipping my Twitter home screen.

So—I made an app that extracts all the tweet URLs that are mentioned in all of my favourite newsletters, and lists them in a feed. Then I blocked x.com/home (but not other x.com URLs, so I can still read and engage with particular threads) on weekdays.

This is just repackaging the curation work that is done by my favourite newsletters. But I'm enjoying having a single place to check, that feels more like the Twitter feed I want to have. It's helped me feel fine about blocking the normal Twitter home screen for larger fraction of the week.

This setup has various obvious issues—in particular, it's still not sufficiently tailored to my interests. I could improve things by having an LLM classify search results from the Twitter API, but sadly the $100 / month plan only lets you read ~300 tweets / day.  And then the next tier is $5000 / month...

Asya: is the above sufficient to allay the suspicion you described? If not, what kind of evidence are you looking for (that we might realistically expect to get)?

CNBC reports:

The memo, addressed to each former employee, said that at the time of the person’s departure from OpenAI, “you may have been informed that you were required to execute a general release agreement that included a non-disparagement provision in order to retain the Vested Units [of equity].”

“Regardless of whether you executed the Agreement, we write to notify you that OpenAI has not canceled, and will not cancel, any Vested Units,” stated the memo, which was viewed by CNBC.

The memo said OpenAI will also not enforce any other non-disparagement or non-solicitation contract items that the employee may have signed.

“As we shared with employees, we are making important updates to our departure process,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.

“We have not and never will take away vested equity, even when people didn’t sign the departure documents. We’ll remove nondisparagement clauses from our standard departure paperwork, and we’ll release former employees from existing nondisparagement obligations unless the nondisparagement provision was mutual,” said the statement, adding that former employees would be informed of this as well.

A handful of former employees have publicly confirmed that they received the email.

I'm not sure what to make of this omission.

OpenAI's March 2024 summary of the WilmerHale report included:

The firm conducted dozens of interviews with members of OpenAI’s prior Board, OpenAI executives, advisors to the prior Board, and other pertinent witnesses; reviewed more than 30,000 documents; and evaluated various corporate actions. Based on the record developed by WilmerHale and following the recommendation of the Special Committee, the Board expressed its full confidence in Mr. Sam Altman and Mr. Greg Brockman’s ongoing leadership of OpenAI.

[...]

WilmerHale found that the prior Board acted within its broad discretion to terminate Mr. Altman, but also found that his conduct did not mandate removal.

I'd guess that telling lies to the board would mandate removal. If that's right, then the summary suggests that they didn't find evidence of this.

It's also notable that Toner and McCauley have not provided public evidence of “outright lies” to the board. We also know that whatever evidence they shared in private during that critical weekend did not convince key stakeholders that Sam should go.

The WSJ reported:

Some board members swapped notes on their individual discussions with Altman. The group concluded that in one discussion with a board member, Altman left a misleading perception that another member thought Toner should leave, the people said.

I really wish they'd publish these notes.

If we presume that Graham’s story is accurate, it still means that Altman took on two incompatible leadership positions, and only stepped down from one of them when asked to do so by someone who could fire him. That isn’t being fired. It also isn’t entirely not being fired.

According to the most friendly judge (e.g. GPT-4o) if it was made clear Altman would get fired from YC if he did not give up one of his CEO positions, then ‘YC fired Altman’ is a reasonable claim. I do think precision is important here, so I would prefer ‘forced to choose’ or perhaps ‘effectively fired.’ Yes, that is a double standard on precision, no I don’t care.

I think that Paul Graham’s remarks today—particularly the “we didn’t want him to leave” part—make it clear that Altman was not fired.

In December 2023, Paul Graham gave a similar account to the Wall St Journal and said “it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’”.

Roon has a take.