Xunzi, Petrov, much AI, games the Buddha wouldn't play
The Erotics of Mentorship. "The best teaching is always intimate."
"Jung believed anima development has four distinct levels of Eros, which... he named Eve, Helen of Troy, Mary, mother of Jesus and Sophia."
The cartels come to Costa Rica (a): "What we are witnessing, we have never seen before. It’s the Mexicanization of violence, to provoke terror and panic."
Open Philanthropy announces the Lead Exposure Action Fund.
Can startups be impactful in AI safety? (Yes.)
"QAISI (pronounced “Casey”) is a collaboration founded by AI researchers at Berkeley, MIT and the University of Montreal to place AI safety on a solid quantitative foundation." The team is stacked (Russell, Tegmark, Bengio).
The Foresight Institute and Anders Sandberg on neurotech for AI alignment.
Larry Ellison says omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior.
Google's NotebookLM can generate podcasts that explain papers to you.
"In a recent survey of professional philosophers (Bourget and Chalmers, 2023), less than 10%
of philosophers of mind “reject” the possibility of AI consciousness, and a slight majority “accept”
or “lean towards” the view that some future AI systems will be conscious."
BlackRock and Microsoft are raising $30B to invest into AI (a).
Three Mile Island nuclear plant reopening after Microsoft agrees to buy its power (a).
Anduril announces the Barracuda, a low-cost, AI-guided missile ("Autonomous Air Vehicle").
Small beginnings: "In 1995, Newmark started emailing a list of upcoming events to a few friends to 'cultivate a bit of community'."
Alex Schaefer sets up an easel outside of bank branches and paints pictures of them on fire. Apparently he's been arrested multiple times.
Lighthaven's Berkeley campus is open through the end of the year.
Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:
"All your teaching is centered on what has no use."
Alice Maz: the xunzi as the basis of a metarational ruling ideology. Apparently I've been sleeping on Xunzi.
Sam Altman says we may have superintelligence in a few thousand days.
OpenAI establishes a Safety and Security Committee that has independent oversight, including the authority to delay a model release until safety concerns are addressed. Sam isn't on the committee.
Sam Altman says going on a psychedelic retreat changed him for the better.
Scott Alexander on AI scientists (Sakana, o1).
Jony Ive is collaborating with OpenAI on a new device (a).
Five scales of microsolidarity: the self-as-a-group, the dyad, the crew, the congregation, the network.
Eliezer thread on what superintelligence(s) would leave to us.
Ivanka Trump stans Situational Awareness.
Joe Biden speaks about the importance of AI safety in his UN address.
A list of games that the Buddha would not play. Because the Theravadans really want you to get that Samsara is a bummer. See also Leigh Brasington's list of Buddhist lists.
"'Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?' is a quote attributed to Henry II of England preceding the death of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. While the quote was not expressed as an order, it prompted four knights to travel from Normandy to Canterbury, where they killed Becket due to an ongoing dispute between crown and church."
Petrov Day was last week! "On this day in 1983, during a night shift, Petrov was on duty when his monitor alerted him of a missile inbound from the US. He froze. 'The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word Launch on it,' he says."
Putin loosens Russia's nuclear doctrine (a).
Meta's new AR glasses can be controlled via a neural interface(!)
On November 15th, Jake Paul will be fighting Mike Tyson.
Megalopolis is now in theaters. Recommended, for those of us who dream of futures brighter than the present!
Charlie Munger gets real: "Life is more than being shrewd at passive wealth accumulation."