Future Matters

Future Matters is a monthly newsletter about longtermism and existential risk by Matthew van der Merwe (@_mvdm) and Pablo Stafforini.

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Our latest issue is out! As always, it summarizes some of the most important writings related to longtermism and existential risk published in the past month. This issue also includes an interview with Tom Davidson.
https://t.co/aGIJ0TVC8z

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Audio version: https://t.co/GcalRapylw

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Carl Shulman & Elliott Thornley argue that the goal of longtermists should be to get governments to adopt global catastrophic risk policies based on standard cost-benefit analysis rather than arguments that stress the overwhelming importance of the future

https://t.co/OVvDFd6fTe

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OpenAI (@OpenAI) just announced the launch of GPT-4, "a large multimodal model, with our best-ever results on capabilities and alignment."

https://t.co/U6La48pW8K

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@GPIOxford @tyler_m_john @willmacaskill Audio version: https://t.co/GSJ9Uznzf8

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The Global Priorities Institute (@GPIOxford) has published two new paper summaries: 'Longtermist institutional reform' by Tyler John (@tyler_m_john) & William MacAskill (@willmacaskill), and 'Are we living at the hinge of history?' by MacAskill.

https://t.co/IMtzONlLxc

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@GPIOxford @tyler_m_john @willmacaskill Audio version: https://t.co/ubNsUGWr6B

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@GPIOxford @tyler_m_john @willmacaskill https://t.co/a6iCPdZTrF

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Luisa Rodriguez and Rob Wilbin from the 80,000 Hours Podcast interview Rob Long (@rgblong) on why large language models probably aren't conscious.

https://t.co/Wi4MO2bgpM

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Daniel Filan (@dfrsrchtwts) interviews John Halstead about why he believes climate change doesn't pose an existential risk.

https://t.co/6nAX8Qn0DA

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@Noahpinion Audio version: https://t.co/ymiC1zGzUM

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Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) argues that, although AGI might eventually kill humanity, large language models are not AGI, may not be a step toward AGI, and there's no plausible way they could cause extinction.

https://t.co/mfzo8ghtle

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@vkrakovna Audio version: https://t.co/EKSzGkSmDr

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Victoria Krakovna (@vkrakovna) makes the point that you don't have to be a longtermist to care about AI alignment.

https://t.co/fCCKe7OnLr

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Audio version: https://t.co/7FYAuI2ZdR

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Anthropic shares a summary of their views about AI progress and its associated risks, as well as their approach to AI safety.

https://t.co/WO5wwNZuLh

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The Global Priorities Institute (@GPIOxford) has released Hayden Wilkinson's (@HaydenWilko) presentation on global priorities research. (The talk was given in mid-September last year but remained unlisted until now.)

https://t.co/CAP1Cl2l0B

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Open Philanthropy (@open_phil) has announced a contest to identify novel considerations with the potential to influence their views on AI timelines and AI risk. A total of $225,000 in prize money will be distributed across the six winning entries.

https://t.co/V6pO3h352I

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Katja Grace (@KatjaGrace) finds that the proportion of respondents to her survey of machine learning researchers who believe extremely bad outcomes from AGI are at least 50% likely has increased from 3% in the 2016 survey to 9% in the 2022 survey.

https://t.co/7CU34Sc5IQ

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Erich Grunewald argues that statements that large language models are mere "stochastic parrots" (and the like) make unwarranged implicit claims about their internal structure and future capabilities.

https://t.co/hNSRn8xqTf