braydenm

Before Anthropic, I worked at Cruise for four years as it competed against Waymo. The culture rewarded (and demanded) moving quickly, trusting that the company could empirically discover the risks that the robot cars posed and iteratively solve them to keep up with the rate at which it was scaling out its technology. There was very little interest or appetite for coordinating or collaborating with other AV companies across the industry to create an externally vetted record of safety metrics, or to compare the safety of different brands, or learn from the advancements of other companies. Instead the focus went on racing to improve the capabilities and deploy quickly - a popular internal meme was the Michael Phelps vs le Clos photo showing overlaid with the Waymo/Cruise logos. It was when the two companies were neck-and-neck that I felt the most pressure to find ways to ship despite the risk, when time for deep analysis became more limited and communication lines to leadership became most stretched. It was disappointing to see one of these blind spots result in the Cruise incident and the loss of trust that ultimately sank our company’s efforts.

In that instance I was grateful the downside was limited to a single injury. It’s clear that future AI technology will have more monumental potential impacts. I really don’t want to be in a situation where leading labs, or competing nations, create the same race dynamic that prevents us from taking the appropriate level of caution. AI minds are a significantly more complex thing to understand than the software stack of an autonomous vehicle, and yet we are leaving ourselves less time to get this right.

I joined Anthropic at the end of 2022 and I share the concerns that many of my colleagues have recently chosen to state publicly about the potential for future technology to pose existential risk to all of humanity. If we don’t find a way collectively as an industry to pace ourselves, then within two years the concerns we will be dealing with on a day-to-day basis will pose much larger downside risk than anything else we’ve seen from technology to date. I’m grateful that Dario has put his perspective out publicly and hope that this inspires other voluntary action and tops down coordination.

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning with my family here in the East Bay. While I hope we have many more years, I don’t know how many more Saturdays I’ll be able to play outside with my kids in the sunshine so I’m going to make the most of the time we have.

Related discussion of the original research link here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40429326

For those looking for something large but still a little bit more realistic, for <$3k you can have a 0.4m telescope on your backyard.

https://hubble-optics.com/UL16.html

Relevant snippet:

> Can I use AI to get on the global leaderboard? Please don't use AI / LLMs (like GPT) to automatically solve a day's puzzles until that day's global leaderboards are full. By "automatically", I mean using AI to do most or all of the puzzle solving, like handing the puzzle text directly to an LLM. The leaderboards are for human competitors; if you want to compare the speed of your AI solver with others, please do so elsewhere. (If you want to use AI to help you solve puzzles, I can't really stop you, but I feel like it's harder to get better at programming if you ask an AI to do the programming for you.)

It's unclear what model was used for the outputs mentioned in the article, but here's the short story that Claude gave me for the same prompt: --- Here is a dystopian short story in the style of Margaret Atwood set in Canada:

The Snows Came Early That Year

The snows came early that year, blanketing the prairies in white before the harvest was complete. I awoke to howling winds rattling the panes of my solitary cabin, the radio readout blinking ominously, batteries too weak to check the weather reports again. I shuffled outside in layers of wool and coveralls, squinting against the icy gusts, to find the chicken coop door ripped clean off. Feathers and blood painted the snow crimson. The four hens I had left were gone, with only scattered tracks and droplets leading into the tree line to indicate the predator's escape.

I cursed under my frosted breath, the bitter wind stealing away my words. Food had already been scarce, each winter harder than the one before. I shuttered the coop and turned back inside just as the power flickered and went out. Now there was no heat, no light, no way to cook. The solar panels would be useless under the heavy snows.

As I sat wrapped in furs, watching my breath turn to plumes of smoke in the gloom, I made a plan to walk to town when the blizzard passed. Perhaps barter some handicrafts for a few days of rations. The trek would be risky, but staying here held a different kind of peril. The food stocks in my locked pantry were dangerously low. There was no choice but to go.

The Katskil wolves would likely be on the prowl, their numbers multiplying as the animal population declined. Stay to the road, move quick, keep head down. Don't attract attention. Don't look too frail, too thin, too cold. The robotic guards at the checkpoints would be indifferent to my starvation, but opportunistic thieves might not. This was the world we inhabited now. Hold fast to what is yours. Trust no one. Every day another fight to survive. My grandmother's voice echoed in my mind...from her days before the collapse: "Don't lose hope, girl. It's always darkest before the dawn." But that was in another era, now lost to us. There were no more dawns ahead, only the howling dark.

Is there any word on whether the modem has moved to a different supplier? I previously suffered challenges having to soft-reset Pixel 6/7 to "Fix Connectivity" fairly frequently.

Amazon Bedrock makes Claude 2 available, as well as some other models.

Given recent discussion on what super intelligent machines might mean and whether they're even possible in the first place I thought I'd link to this hyperbolic throwback that is still relevant even as the broader discourse starts to think more seriously about this topic 5 years later.

I work at Anthropic, and we're hiring a Prompt Engineer & Librarian [1]. Expected salary range for this position is $175k - $335k/yr. Please apply if you could be a good fit based on the job posting. And no, we don't require "seven years of experience in prompt engineering" - but we would be looking for other signals that help differentiate your strengths in this emerging field.

[1] https://jobs.lever.co/Anthropic/e3cde481-d446-460f-b576-93ca...

NON-LINEAR STORYTELLING December 2014 (30 hours) > In winter of 2014, I applied for a job in the Creative Department at Wizards of the Coast, working on storylines for the Magic: The Gathering trading card game. This was a supplemental piece submitted with my application, meant to demonstrate creativity, world-building, and outside-the-box-thinking.

I've used this annual planning/reflection doc every year and have found it a refreshing way to put my life into perspective and reset for a new year. Hoping you find this useful too.

Alternate download link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2PaeRjVqAN7MngxTXFPQkpLVj...

Spreadsheet for filling in: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f5y9YjbOB5ixeQHFyUEp...

Plain Text: https://pastebin.com/raw/V7FaFS0Q

Past Submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13249796

Elon Musk @elonmusk: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603181423787380737

"Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.

Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok."

Wow, it looks like Elon is going to actually complete the transaction. What a rollercoaster. I will be glad to see this drop out of the news cycle.

"Grant proposal: Many people believe a dormant Balrog resides under the Misty Mountains and poses an ongoing threat to the people of Middle Earth. We propose an expedition to awaken the Balrog in order to observe and characterise its unique dangers." - https://mobile.twitter.com/robertwiblin/status/1576712748481...

I tried a modification of your suggested prompt, here was the response (only the first and third were written by me. The rest were generated using the aidungeon.io dragon model using a parameter of randomness = 0.6. All of this was done 'one-shot' with no rerolls):

> A delightful and surprisingly sophisticated presentation was given at the Hacker News event in Kansai. The presentation's clever title and subtitle was:

The Future of Software Development: How to Build a Better Human Being with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

> Each of the charming and witty slides in the presentation is described below. The first presentation slide had

the following caption:

In this world, we are all programmed by our programming languages. We have been taught that these languages are good enough for us. But what if they aren't? What if there were another way? A better way? And how would you go about doing it? This talk will explore some of those possibilities and more. It will also discuss some of the philosophical issues surrounding AI and human-computer interaction as well as some practical aspects of building such an application.

This slide was followed by a series of slides which showed various examples of how artificial intelligence could be used to improve people. These included:

• Using AI to help people with learning disabilities learn new things. • Helping people who suffer from depression or anxiety disorders feel less anxious or depressed. • Improving the quality of life for the terminally ill through medical diagnosis and treatment. • Providing assistance in helping children with autism develop their social skills and communication abilities.

The presentation then went on to discuss some of the challenges that needed to be addressed in order to create such an AI. These included:

• Ensuring that the AI was safe and would not be able to take over the world or otherwise do harm to humans. • Ensuring that the AI was effective in helping people achieve their goals and better themselves.

The presentation then described a prototype system that had been developed by the speaker's team at the University of Tokyo. This system was able to assess a person's personality and goals and then provide them with guidance on how to achieve those goals. The system used AI technology based on a neural network trained with textual data from psychology papers as well as open source repository data from GitHub. The system was still in the prototype phase, but initial testing had been promising.

The presentation then concluded with a discussion of some of the speaker's personal views on the future of AI. The speaker felt that, while there were many challenges to creating safe and effective AI, he was optimistic that these could be overcome within his lifetime. He also felt that such AI would be an important tool in helping humanity achieve its potential.

The presentation was met with a mixed response from the audience. Some felt that the speaker was overly optimistic about the potential for AI. Others felt that the speaker's views were not optimistic enough and that he was ignoring some of the potential dangers of AI.

The speaker was then asked to respond to some of the audience's concerns. He agreed that there were some potential dangers to creating AI, but he did not feel that these were cause for undue concern. He pointed out that many of the concerns raised by AI risk advocates had been addressed by open research and debate. He also felt that the potential benefits of AI technology far outweighed any potential dangers.

The speaker was then asked about the implications of his work for society. He responded that he hoped that his work would help people achieve their goals and improve their lives.

Although there are many cynics, it's quite remarkable the impact on the world donations can have. Here's what their foundation has actually been doing with the money: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Med...

I wouldn't be surprised if private donations will eventually be responsible for the eradication of Malaria (1000 deaths daily, much more suffering and cost to society).

If you're in tech you're likely to be in a great position to create value beyond your company. For example, donating equity from your startup or a fraction of your income to the charities that can prove they are having the most cost effective impact on the world: https://founderspledge.com/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge/

They've retracted this tweet, now believe they were not using Dev at all.

Lyft | Data Engineer / Analysts | SF | ONSITE, VISA, www.lyft.com/jobs

I'm hiring Data Engineers and BI Analysts, as our BI team grows 3x this year. You'll be working on scaling new BI applications, ETL pipelines and tooling, and data warehouses for users across the company.

If you're looking for roles in Engineering, Operations, or Growth, more roles are posted at lyft.com/jobs

The Effective Altruism community is a group of a few​ thousand people that have been attempting to do this for the last few years. Organizations like GiveWell.org (giving money) or 80000hours.org (giving time) have proved immensely helpful in my career and donation life choices.

Great read! I really want to see detailed visualizations of some of the top newly discovered prominences.

Lyft | Business Intelligence Engineer | SF | ONSITE, VISA, www.lyft.com/jobs

We are hiring Business Intelligence Engineers, and BI Analysts, as our BI team grows 3x this year. You'll be working on scaling new BI applications, ETL pipelines and tooling, and data warehouses for users across the company.

If you're looking for roles in Engineering, Operations, or Marketing, more roles are visible at lyft.com/jobs

In May 2014 I got two onsite interviews and one offer from the "Who wants to be hired" thread.