sophont

Perhaps this could be considered a specific case of ignoratio elenchi?

Thanks for sharing! Very interested in the passive autorecording to bugfix pipeline, that seems like a high utility approach for combatting entropy. Would be interested in similar approaches in non-software fields (some form of automatic pothole recognition, or a lab buddy that pays attention to any disorganization and suggests fixes etc.).

Related question, how much do we know about models' awareness as it pertains 'correctness' or 'truth-seeking'? This paper showed that there seems to be some sort of 'good-evil' axis in models (massive oversimplification, but directionally correct), which even behaviors seemingly unrelated to morality find their place on. In a similar fashion, is it possible to extract a steering vector that deems truth as only what is 'verifiable'? My thinking is that you could use a small to medium sized set of examples to determine the existence of a given circuit or vec... (read more)

Notionally speaking, what sort of options exist to outsource deployment and lab skills? If I submitted a dangerous sequence of RNA for synthesis (I have no idea what sorts of things could even be considered dangerous) or requested a plasmid that was designed by a very smart model, could those be synthesized by a third-party without safety checks and eventually become a danger?

I don't really disagree with anything here, but it does seem to be historically well founded that nation-states only respond to a much greater standard of evidence with respect to dangerous technology. I think there's a few conditions we need to meet.

Conditions,

A. Clear demonstration of the technology's great danger - We dropped the bomb before we recognized that the bomb shouldn't be dropped under any circumstance. Or in the case of the Montreal Protocol, we had unambiguous evidence that HCFCs were depleting the Ozone layer.

B. Brinksmanship using the tech... (read more)

I have the same basic prior as you in terms of disbelieving claims of an eidetic memory, however, I could certainly believe it about Von Neumann specifically. Even if it's extremely rare, there's a quite a few documented cases of extraordinary memories in history (Kim Peek, Shereshevsky, etc.). Now if we assess this as a claim that he had perfect recall of 600,000 words after having read it, probably do agree with you, but the actual mechanics of this claim i.e. repeating back word for word a book probably starts at the beginning and proceeds from there - ... (read more)