Pinned Tweet
Everyone knows you can't build a rocket without @McMasterCarr. But can you build a rocket from *only* the McMaster catalog?
Challenge is live. $1100 prize purse at the moment.
docs.google.com/document/d/1Hc…
Challenge is live. $1100 prize purse at the moment.
docs.google.com/document/d/1Hc…
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Evan Daniel retweeted
If someone turns a $300k loan into a trillion dollar company, they deserve to be a billionaire.
Every billionaire's "started in a garage" story conveniently skips the parental loans, elite connections, and safety nets. Bezos got $300k from his parents. Gates' mom sat on IBM's board. Musk's family owned an emerald mine. The garage is just aesthetics; the capital was inherited. Stop calling it self-made when it's generationally funded.
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Evan Daniel retweeted
Explains a lot about why people hate EAs tbh
I used to think people hate economists because they tend to have different intuitions about policy and tradeoffs from regular people.
But, lately I've been talking more with ethical philosophy friends, and they get similar hate?
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Evan Daniel retweeted
A really important point: "resisting mathematizing things in this way allows people to dodge the guilt from seeing their moral weights reflected back to them."
Obviously the anti-EAs don't see it this way, but to oppose quantification is to resist transparency of moral reasoning. Their ultimate message is functionally equivalent to "hide your values, and let us hide ours."
This lets people pretend that they value others "equally" when really all they are doing is giving lip service to the value. I think there's something fundamentally dishonest and bad-faith about this form of engaging with ethics.
Obviously the anti-EAs don't see it this way, but to oppose quantification is to resist transparency of moral reasoning. Their ultimate message is functionally equivalent to "hide your values, and let us hide ours."
This lets people pretend that they value others "equally" when really all they are doing is giving lip service to the value. I think there's something fundamentally dishonest and bad-faith about this form of engaging with ethics.
If Dario had just said that he vibes more with Stop TB because saving adults feels better knowing he’s helping people who are already in rich, complex lives, no one would’ve objected. It was the putting numbers to arbitrary moral weights that rankled people. But what EA points out, which to people with a mathematical way of viewing the world may seem like it doesn’t need saying, is that if you donate to a charity in the US that saves 1 life for every $1 million, that means you vibe with saving an American life 250x as much as saving a life from Malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. Or if you donate to the opera, that means that improving opera quality by 5% gives you about the same good vibes as saving 180 lives from malaria. Which must be true for some people—at least in economics, we have the idea of revealed preference that says this must be true for opera donors. But most people’s vibes or moral weights look absolutely galling when phrased that way, far far more galling than Dario’s comparison between the neediest adults and the neediest children sounds. Hence, I think resisting mathematizing things in this way allows people to dodge the guilt from seeing their moral weights reflected back to them.
x.com/TaylorLorenz/s…
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Evan Daniel retweeted
No way he AI-generated his "sorry for cheating on my wife with a Chinese spy" letter...
Here's what Nvidia's Jensen Huang sent to staff, admitting to affair:
"To my colleagues at NVIDIA,
I owe my family and all of you an apology.
I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.
Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.
To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust.
To my colleagues at NVIDIA, including those I have worked alongside for decades, and to our board, partners, and shareholders around the world: you deserve better from me. Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life. My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.
Regarding the national security concerns raised in news reports, NVIDIA’s Board of Directors has initiated an independent investigation. I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.
My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy.
Jensen"
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Evan Daniel retweeted
If this is your opening position, it's an irresponsible one: "While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised..."
You do have reason to believe both of these things
You do have reason to believe both of these things
We just issued a press release from our board of directors. Read the release: nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/statement…
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Evan Daniel retweeted
We need to stop using generic terminology. AI is not a monolith. There are critical things we need to do with AI for economic prosperity, there are things we may have to do for reasons of national competition, there are things we will at some point need to do carefully for the sake of charting and taming the computational universe, and there are things we should totally avoid doing at this stage of history, and maybe ever, if at all possible.
If we can’t be precise about these issues because we’re saying vague things like “using coding agents to make AI progress should be illegal”, then we risk failing altogether. Each of the goals above depends on achieving the others.
If we can’t prosper we can’t lead the world into the future. Everyone needs to internalize this. Democrats cannot subjugate themselves to antigrowth. Republicans cannot subjugate themselves to technocapital. Both roads lead to despair.
If we can’t be precise about these issues because we’re saying vague things like “using coding agents to make AI progress should be illegal”, then we risk failing altogether. Each of the goals above depends on achieving the others.
If we can’t prosper we can’t lead the world into the future. Everyone needs to internalize this. Democrats cannot subjugate themselves to antigrowth. Republicans cannot subjugate themselves to technocapital. Both roads lead to despair.
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Evan Daniel retweeted
People are missing the obvious risk here. He is married. What if Lori Huang, his wife of 41y, decides to divorce him. She will likely get a good chunk of Nvidia stock, which, if she is like other tech billionaire ex-wives, she will likely begin selling. The Black Swan no one saw.
U.S. intelligence officials believe a woman who had a romantic relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to spy on him and collect information, according to officials briefed on the matter. - NYT/FT
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Evan Daniel retweeted
If you simply froze AI capability at Mythos / Astra levels and focused on decreasing the cost of compute you would totally revolutionize software development with zero existential risk
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Evan Daniel retweeted
Believing this while building more capable models is insane. Believing it while pushing legislation that would make it even harder for the government to stop you is unconscionable.
In resurfaced footage of Dario Amodei being interviewed, the Anthropic CEO says there will be AIs so powerful that if they want to destroy humanity, “we have basically no ability to stop it.”
“There will be powerful models. They will be agentic. We’re getting towards them.”
“If wreak havoc and destroy humanity or whatever, I think we have basically no ability to stop it.”
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Evan Daniel retweeted
Roughly none of the reading children do should feel like an effortful trudge through an unrelatable person's observations about things they don't care about, barring some specific payoff that they've personally decided justifies the project
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Evan Daniel retweeted
The year is 2029. Only the citizens of Bloomington, Indiana are left alive after the recursively self-improving entities have extinguished everyone else.
SITUATION DETECTED: Bloomington, Indiana's city council voted unanimously this week to ban any recursively self-improving entity capable of greatly outperforming all humans on all cognitive tasks from inside city limits, citing existential hazards and loss of human control.
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Evan Daniel retweeted
if you don't trust your model to operate gun drones in your office, you shouldn't trust it to scale up RSI to superintelligence.
a simple legal framework for aligning ai lab incentives. every frontier ai lab should be legally required to have a few drones with guns on each office floor hooked up to wifi. there should be a simple api for using said gun drones. how much do you trust your models really?
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Evan Daniel retweeted
Spoke to an Anthropic employee today. They have a near-100% p(doom), but they think the only chance of survival is that they're somehow completely wrong about alignment and it turns out to be solvable, and the only way to get there is by accelerating capabilities as fast as possible. They were much more confident that humanity would never have the political will to do what needs to be done to stop ASI development than that alignment would be solved, even though they think alignment will almost certainly not be solved
They have not called their elected representatives to inform them that this is what they believe
They have not called their elected representatives to inform them that this is what they believe
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Evan Daniel retweeted
If the reporting is right, this is the most significant story in US China policy in years.
If the USG knew Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with a Chinese spy and looked the other way, all while that spy ran a company backdooring US compute to China, it warrants a Congressional investigation.
There may be an innocent explanation to all this.
But if not, then it reveals intolerable levels of corruption and compromise in China policy - to the detriment of AI safety.
If the USG knew Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with a Chinese spy and looked the other way, all while that spy ran a company backdooring US compute to China, it warrants a Congressional investigation.
There may be an innocent explanation to all this.
But if not, then it reveals intolerable levels of corruption and compromise in China policy - to the detriment of AI safety.
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Evan Daniel retweeted
Major changes to BAAJA in this amendment responding to Democrats' concerns; two highlight titles:
1. Permit Certainty title has lots of technical fixes:
-Requires proof of government bad faith before an energy project can get damages (easy to prove with Trump, hard to use against a future lawful admin)
-10-year baseline of past projects rather than 5 years (so Trump anti-wind actions aren't built into the baseline)
-Ability for the government to rebut with lawful reasons (helps a future admin could deny polluting projects lawfully)
2. Historic Preservation title has substantive changes:
-Feds can no longer take over a noncompliant Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO)
-Even if a THPO isn't compliant with deadlines, agencies still required to consult with Tribes
-Expanded requirements to consult and incorporate feedback from THPOs, Tribes, local govs, State Historic Preservation Offices
-Protections for Tribal historic database information to remain confidential to Tribes
-No more requirement for THPOs and SHPOs to spend 50% of their time on a project if they miss its deadline
-Extra more time to object to a historic preservation report
-Federal Highway projects always subject to historic preservation, even if only a formula grant
1. Permit Certainty title has lots of technical fixes:
-Requires proof of government bad faith before an energy project can get damages (easy to prove with Trump, hard to use against a future lawful admin)
-10-year baseline of past projects rather than 5 years (so Trump anti-wind actions aren't built into the baseline)
-Ability for the government to rebut with lawful reasons (helps a future admin could deny polluting projects lawfully)
2. Historic Preservation title has substantive changes:
-Feds can no longer take over a noncompliant Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO)
-Even if a THPO isn't compliant with deadlines, agencies still required to consult with Tribes
-Expanded requirements to consult and incorporate feedback from THPOs, Tribes, local govs, State Historic Preservation Offices
-Protections for Tribal historic database information to remain confidential to Tribes
-No more requirement for THPOs and SHPOs to spend 50% of their time on a project if they miss its deadline
-Extra more time to object to a historic preservation report
-Federal Highway projects always subject to historic preservation, even if only a formula grant
NEW: the BAAJA managers' amendment is out. “I’ve worked hard to incorporate the feedback we’ve heard from Tribes and New Mexicans into this Substitute Amendment, and I’m proud to join my colleagues in releasing it," Heinrich says. 494 pages heinrich.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…
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Evan Daniel retweeted
It's 2027 in the Bay Area. You take a driverless Uber to the polyamorous meetup to chill with your bros. 40% of attendees have the measles
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Evan Daniel retweeted
No matter what Anthropic does, Dario can just write another 10k word essay and at least half the ea / ai safety crowd will be totally on his side again.
Their culture (long form essays) is their kryptonite. They’re powerless against it even when they’re obviously being played.
Their culture (long form essays) is their kryptonite. They’re powerless against it even when they’re obviously being played.
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Evan Daniel retweeted
A lot of activists have a kind of subtle contempt for democracy, but a political party trying to run popular candidates & say things people agree with & deliver on the voters’ actual priorities isn’t “not standing for anything” — it’s representative government.
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