Someone walking around stabbing people can cause a lot of damage before anyone stops them. That’s a bummer, but some technologies make the situation much worse. If we don’t want to ban dangerous technologies outright (because they have legitimate purposes, or because we really love guns), we could instead expand liability insurance requirements. In the case of … More Liability insurance
Technology may reach a point where free use of one person’s share of humanity’s resources is enough to easily destroy the world. I think society needs to make significant changes to cope with that scenario. Mass surveillance is a natural response, and sometimes people think of it as the only response. I find mass surveillance … More Surveil things, not people
Suppose that I’m setting up an AI project, call it NiceAI. I may want to assure my competitors that I abide by strong safety norms, or make other commitments about NiceAI’s behavior. This post presents one possible strategy for making such commitments credible. A realistic plan will be much more complicated and messy, and this … More Honest organizations
(ETA: I think this problem is impossible and in particular this mechanism is broken. Credit to Daniel Kane for pointing out the error. At least I did warn: “I feel pretty confused and this might all be wrong.”) Suppose Alice and Bob are both interested in a public good: maybe it’s a movie they want … More 10,000-way donation matching
(Reposted from Facebook, I would prefer put it here than have it lost to the sands of time.) My view of the future is strongly influenced by the history of economic output. I think it’s instructive to look at the sequence of doubling times—how long did it take economic output to double, and then how … More Hyperbolic growth
I think that it’s worth having a simple picture of my own brain; this post presents my working model, which I’ve found extremely useful.
(If you read one post from my blog, it shouldn’t be this one. Also, serious Unsong spoilers.) Unsong’s Comet King is something of an indulgent caricature, implausibly determined and noble and capable. But if I put aside the desire to be respectable, I enjoy indulgent caricatures. This post presents some Unsong excerpts that touch on the Comet King’s character and fate, in chronological … More The Comet King
(Previously: optimizing the news feed) Online discussions consist mostly of uninteresting filler, with a sprinkling of thoughtful and valuable content that I’d like to engage with. The net result is that I usually avoid them. This is a shame, because in principle the internet offers a really great opportunity to increase access to and participation in useful discussions. It’s easy to focus on … More Crowdsourcing moderation without sacrificing quality
Humans publish trillions of words each year, yet any given human is going to read only a few of them. How should they choose which ones? This has long been a tricky and interesting question. But it’s much more fun now that society is basically forced to write an algorithm to answer it. I like this topic because it is a relatable allegory for value alignment. Conveniently, it’s also an issue du jour on … More Optimizing the news feed
Many apparent cognitive biases can be explained by a strong desire to look good and a limited ability to lie; in general, our conscious beliefs don’t seem to be exclusively or even mostly optimized to track reality. If we take this view seriously, I think it has significant implications for how we ought to reason and behave. (See … More If we can’t lie to others, we will lie to ourselves
