LessWrong posts by zvi

Nov 21 2024 208 ep. 62 mins 8
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Audio narrations of LessWrong posts by zvi

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“AI #91: Deep Thinking” by Zvi

Nov 21 2024 107 mins  
Did DeepSeek effectively release an o1-preview clone within nine weeks? The benchmarks largely say yes. Certainly it is an actual attempt at a similar style of product, and is if anything more capable of solving AIME questions, and the way it shows its Chain of Thought is super cool. Beyond that, alas, we don’t have enough reports in from people using it. So it's still too soon t

“Zvi’s Thoughts on His 2nd Round of SFF” by Zvi

Nov 20 2024 18 mins  
Previously: Long-Term Charities: Apply For SFF Funding, Zvi's Thoughts on SFF There are lots of great charitable giving opportunities out there right now. I recently had the opportunity to be a recommender in the Survival and Flourishing Fund for the second time. As a recommender, you evaluate the charities that apply and decide how worthwhile you think it would be to donate to eac

“Monthly Roundup #24: November 2024” by Zvi

Nov 18 2024 97 mins  
This is your monthly roundup. Let's get right to it. Young People are Young and Stupid   As a reminder that yes college students are often young and stupid and wrong about everything, remember the time they were behind a ban on paid public toilets? This is a central case of the kind of logic that often gets applied by college students. No One Voted for This   HR a

“AI #90: The Wall” by Zvi

Nov 14 2024 78 mins  
As the Trump transition continues and we try to steer and anticipate its decisions on AI as best we can, there was continued discussion about one of the AI debate's favorite questions: Are we making huge progress real soon now, or is deep learning hitting a wall? My best guess is it is kind of both, that past pure scaling techniques are on their own hitting a wall, but that progres

“The Online Sports Gambling Experiment Has Failed” by Zvi

Nov 11 2024 22 mins  
Related: Book Review: On the Edge: The Gamblers I have previously been heavily involved in sports betting. That world was very good to me. The times were good, as were the profits. It was a skill game, and a form of positive-sum entertainment, and I was happy to participate and help ensure the sophisticated customer got a high quality product. I knew it wasn’t the most socially

“AI #89: Trump Card” by Zvi

Nov 07 2024 78 mins  
A lot happened in AI this week, but most people's focus was very much elsewhere. I’ll start with what Trump might mean for AI policy, then move on to the rest. This is the future we have to live in, and potentially save. Back to work, as they say. Table of Contents Trump Card. What does Trump's victory mean for AI policy going forward? Language Models Offer Mundane Utilit

“AI #88: Thanks for the Memos” by Zvi

Oct 31 2024 150 mins  
Following up on the Biden Executive Order on AI, the White House has now issued an extensive memo outlining its AI strategy. The main focus is on government adaptation and encouraging innovation and competitiveness, but there's also sections on safety and international governance. Who knows if a week or two from now, after the election, we will expect any of that to get a chance to

“Occupational Licensing Roundup #1” by Zvi

Oct 30 2024 23 mins  
We’re coming out firmly against it. Our attitude: The customer is always right. Yes, you should go ahead and fix your own damn pipes if you know how to do that, and ignore anyone who tries to tell you different. And if you don’t know how to do it, well, it's at your own risk. With notably rare exceptions, it should be the same for everything else. I’ve been collecting

“Housing Roundup #10” by Zvi

Oct 29 2024 64 mins  
There's more campaign talk about housing. The talk of needing more housing is highly welcome, as one prominent person after another (including Jerome Powell!) talking like a YIMBY. A lot of the concrete proposals are of course terrible, but not all of them. I’ll start off covering all that along with everyone's favorite awful policy, which is rent control, then the other proposal

“AI #87: Staying in Character” by Zvi

Oct 29 2024 65 mins  
The big news of the week was the release of a new version of Claude Sonnet 3.5, complete with its ability (for now only through the API) to outright use your computer, if you let it. It's too early to tell how big an upgrade this is otherwise. ChatGPT got some interface tweaks that, while minor, are rather nice, as well. OpenAI, while losing its Senior Advisor for AGI Readiness,