Even though I work at a competing lab (Google DeepMind), I'm proud of Anthropic for taking a stand against unlawful retaliation and immoral demands.
(I speak only for myself, not my employer.)
I signed an amicus brief supporting Anthropic's right to do business without governmental retaliation. As an AI expert, I attest that Anthropic's technical concerns are legitimate, and no laws were designed to protect against AI analysis of surveillance data.
I ran rigorous, well-rounded tests to objectively compare other packages. Punctilio won by a lot.
I wrote the best text prettifier: *punctilio*, which means “precise observance of formalities.”
Smart quotes · Em/en dashes · Ellipses · Math & legal symbols · Arrows · Primes · Fractions · Superscripts · Ligatures · Non-breaking spaces · HTML-aware · Bri’ish localisation support
🧵
“Heartbroken but also very angry… sickening lies by the administration… reprehensible and disgusting… Alex is clearly not holding a gun… please get the truth out about our son, he was a good man…”
So when the actual production site went up, it thought I only had a single commit. Page: turntrout.com/design (the fix hopefully goes live today)
One of the more amusing bugs I've seen on my website. At build time, I run a command that counts how many commits I've made and inserts the count into the HTML. However, the deployment machine checked out a shallow version of my repo which didn't have any history.
If (for whatever reason) you want to communicate without the US government listening in... I wrote a comprehensive guide which focuses on the most important steps first. turntrout.com/privacy-desp...
Historically this account is for alignment research and and not politics, but it'll be pretty hard to do good research in a "masked men execute civilians on the street" political environment, ya know? That possibility grows & you should plan for it
I found this clarifying and enjoyable to write :)
"AI danger comes from reality, not from AI psychology; the danger is intrinsic to the impressive tasks we need AGI to do" -- argument I hear sometimes. Some truth to it but overall wrong, You cannot, cannot predict AI doom without taking a stance on AI psychology! turntrout.com/instrumental...
I pledged 10% of my post-tax income to effective charities, for the rest of my life. I encourage you to think about what you, personally, can do to improve this world.
Summer applications end January 18th --- ONE WEEK from now! So apply: www.matsprogram.org/apply or pass this along to talented friends who want to break into the field.
More info about the team: turntrout.com/team-shard
We invest in our mentees. No remote meetings once a week with a distant mentor. I come in to the office, eat lunch with them, work out together, and help generate ideas. (We're kinda famous for our lifting culture!)
"Team Shard helped me break into the AI safety world... Working with Team Shard has made a life-changing difference." - Lisa Thiergart, senior director at SL5 task force and 2023 alum
Come work with me and Alex Cloud this summer in Team Shard at MATS! We have fun, consistently make real alignment progress (we pioneered steering vectors in 2023!), and help scholars tap into their latent abilities.
I'm not going to pretend it's OK just in order to feel safer. This is fucked up
Our country has NOT always been like this. The east wing of the White House is gone. The societal expectation of habeas corpus, of having a trial before your peers, is fading. And does anyone remember how the Department of Justice used to be strictly independent of the president?
They flood the internet with lies to confuse you, like the ICE murder victim being a "paid agitator" who "viciously ran over the ICE Officer". They make it harder to think properly. That's part of the point.
So, when the truth comes out, it sounds like partisan nothingness. "Both sides" appear to accuse the other, so *shrug*. Just a trick
When this reality feels fuzzy - "but that's just one perspective!" - that's what it feels like to live in a propagandized environment. Trump accuses others of his sins ("dems are stealing the election" -> he demands "extra votes" from Georgia AG) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E...
It can happen to you. You now risk being snatched by masked men because you filmed them or you protested or you look brown or you're politically inconvenient. They might shoot you in the face three times and then leave with no consequences.
So, there was a constitutional crisis and we lost.
The FCC chair threatens the licenses of networks that allow "too much" criticism. CBS spiked the CECOT documentary because of direct threats from the administration. newrepublic.com/article/2047...
The news uses "deportation" to sanity-wash what is actually happening. Real "deportation" is a legal process. Now masked men snatch people off sidewalks into uninspected camps where many are raped or beaten. News says that's "deportation" in headlines though. kvia.com/news/border/...
I lean libertarian. Freedom should come first. Before taking life or liberty, the state should prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That used to be how my beloved country worked. Now these guys snatch people off the streets, I wonder if they feel strong
Jonathan Ross murdered her. You can even hear him call her a "fucking bitch" after blowing her face out www.them.us/story/renee-...
We saw masked men blow out the face of Renee Good, an innocent mother and US citizen. That happened. The government and some of the news calls this an "enforcement action" or a "fiery confrontation."
We live under heavy propaganda and sanity washing (thread)
