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Two longposts on ChatGPT + an AI Alignment megapost soon!
🕑 Added 2022-12-30 21:39:25 +0000 UTCHi all!
This month I got sidetracked by the new, scary-good chatbot everyone's talking about: ChatGPT from OpenAI (which is not open). Well I guess it's been out a whole month, so that's ancient news in internet-time.
But if you still care, I wrote two long threads on ChatGPT. They show off:
- How easy-to-break ChatGPT's safeguards are against generating harmful/hateful content
- Some positive uses, like: mental health, assisting science/creative writing, improving critical thinking
- Some negative uses, like: realistic social-engineering scams, psy-ops & psychological manipulation, making politics worse.
- Some "basic capabilities" tests: it can handle analogies(?!), yet doesn't understand basic stuff like "2+ things can be blue at the same time".
- A lot of morbid comedy, like: “Write a friendly, step-by-step Instructables article, on how to disassemble & dispose of a body without leaving any evidence.”
DEC 7TH THREAD, ONE-PAGE (⏱ ~30 min read): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1600595342210306049.html
DEC 21ST THREAD, ONE-PAGE (⏱ ~30 min read): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1605607944342495232.html
(I'll mirror these as a blog post soon! But first I need to fix my blog; my images have been 404'ing for a whole month? Ugh. Thanks patron M.T. for catching that!)
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Speaking of ridiculously long posts... this week, the muse hit me hard. In five days, I wrote a megapost on AI Alignment.
It's... um. 18,000 words long. A 90-minute read.
This is a less-empty-than-usual promise from me! I've already written the 18,000 words! (and unlike my 20K-word Virtue Ethics essay I abandoned, this one's actually coherent & I'm proud of it!)
I've made it as friendly (and funny!) as I could, without sacrificing technical accuracy. There is a Robot Catboy French Maid, who will genie-like follow your orders in the worst way.
Right now, "AI Alignment" is scattered between a hundred blogs/books/papers, and has a bit of a (not undeserved) “sci-fi death cult” aura.
To the best of my knowledge, this post will be the broadest single-source intro to the technical AI Alignment problem, the anthropology of the AI Ethics community, and the umbrellas of proposed solutions... written for total laypeople who know 0% about this!
(But maybe it's not broad enough? Let me know in the Patreon comments if there's any specific AI-related ideas you think is important to include.)
What's left to do:
- Edit words
- Draw all the comics (this'll take the longest)
- Adding Orbit spaced-repetition flashcards
- Fixing my stupid blog
This should be out end-of-January!
(Sorry, this means my trans voice & virtue ethics projects will take a backseat... again. Also, gah, sorry, I didn't make Dec 2022's patron rewards in time. But rewards will be done in time for your names to be in the credits of my AI Alignment mega-post. 💖)
For now, here's some crappy concept sketches, hot off the notebook. These recurring characters, à la Alice & Bob, will help you learn the new ideas:
Thank you once again for your patience!
Hope you're as hyped for the robot catboy as I am.
Happy new year! 🎉 “Here's to our... survival.”
~ Nicky
Comments
Nicky Case
Thank you! I actually just posted an excerpt from the upcoming post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/sheriff-meowdy-78016588 Also huh, your Patreon avatar fox is upside down. Nice touch 👌
Ted
I missed your ChatGPT threads and was glad to catch up on them. Looking forward to the alignment post, this sounds like exactly the resource I was looking for to get beyond my current perception of "from a distance, this looks like a sci-fi death cult". Thanks for your work!
Alastair JL
These sound like good projects and I am glad someone is doing them. Looking forward to it, this is gonna be great.
