Michael Walker

Host Novara Live Mon, Wed, Fri at 6pm @novaramedia

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

.@novaramedia's YouTube had over seven million views last month, covering topics that will shape the future of humanity, like AI-risk, the new cold war with China, and the genocide in Gaza.

But to keep doing what we do we need 1,000 new financial supporters. Can you be one?

[Novara Media @novaramedia]

We need 1,000 new regular supporters to join us and help build a new media for a different politics. Can you help us reach our target?

Help us shift the public conversation and take on the vested interests that have corrupted mainstream media.

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

@Sam_Dumitriu I think there's an inverse relatinship between p(bad things happen more frequently) and p(doom), so I'll take it!

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

IMO - this is the current best argument against (short-term) AI doom.

[Dan Williams @danwilliamsphil]

Even the most "AGI-pilled" people now typically acknowledge that merely making AI systems generally "smarter" won't straightforwardly translate into society-wide benefits – creating material abundance, curing diseases, improving governance – because in many areas we're not just bottlenecked by a lack of raw intelligence or explicit intellectual knowledge.

My impression is that this lesson isn't internalised to the same degree when it comes to how more intelligent machines could cause societal harms. If you need far more than raw general intelligence to cure cancer, you also need far more to create effective propaganda, let alone take over the world or eliminate the human species.

[dylan matthews 🔸 @dylanmatt]

Lol Ezra got Jensen to support an AI pause through Facts and Logic

[Jon Hernandez @JonhernandezIA]

"The real problem at the moment is that the technology is intrinsically unsafe."

Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley AI professor and president of IASEAI, says we are scaling AI systems we still don't fully understand.

Making AI more powerful is not the same as making it controllable.

Safety requires understanding the systems we are building.

[Krystal Ball @krystalball]

The "godfather of AI," Geoffrey Hinton, left Google so that he could sound the alarm about the dangers of the technology. You may disagree with him but it is just dishonest to paint all of the concerns as coming from industry plants and it's Q-anon level nonsense to paint it all as an elaborate psyop.

[Taj Ali @Taj_Ali1]

Spoke to @michaeljswalker on @novaramedia about my new book.

Have a listen and get a copy!

https://t.co/srqXIIrn2P

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

@residentadviser Surely it’s the rejection of physicalism that implies more of a belief in magic?

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

A very persuasive essay. I tend to be agnostic about what constitutes consciousness (it seems plausible to me it could in theory emerge in silicon) - but the idea we would actively try to conjure up AIs that either are or appear conscious is insane.

[Mustafa Suleyman @mustafasuleyman]

https://t.co/ziQVbIVdxJ

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

And the debate needs to move from whether or not AI is a big deal - it is - to whether or not we'll let it be controlled and regulated by the pro-human majority (which includes Hinton, Bengio etc - but also the electorate!) or whether we leave it to a small transhumanist minority.

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

Negative polarisation is leading many to dismiss EAs/Rationalists as deluded frauds. They aren't. They're smart people who've made some significant and correct calls. However ->

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

The left need to move on from the cope belief that this technology is dumb. The people who made it - and who know it best - are intelligent, and have a decent record at making good calls about its potential. That includes many EAs/Rats, but also Hinton, Russel, Bengio ->

[EigenGender 🔸 @EigenGender]

we’re seriously going to get to “well you told it to make paper clips what do you expect”

[Nate Silver @NateSilver538]

I've spent hundreds of hours coding with AI models over the past six months. What both impresses me and worries me is how much more persistent they've become. They're much more willing to continue pursuing complex tasks without human intervention (and increasingly good at this).

[Michael Walker @michaeljswalker]

"Its a bubble that might kill us all" is the correct position!

The technology can be incredibly dangerous without the financials adding up.

[Jack @tracewoodgrains]

ha, ok, I was wondering how leftists would manage the transition from "it's a bubble" to "it might kill us all"

looks like the solution for the time being might be "it's a bubble that might kill us all"

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

“I have become extremely concerned about how far language models have come and the risks that future iterations will pose….

The crucial and overlooked problem is that the models are becoming so situationally aware that we are losing the ability to evaluate them in contexts where they believe they are not being watched or controlled.

Future experiments will tell us almost nothing new about how they would behave if they were truly unconstrained by humans, and what we already know about this is alarming.”

[Huw Jordan @huwjordan]

Really good @novaramedia Downstream discussion about whether AI is overhyped: https://t.co/9wFbc4wKcq @michaeljswalker does a very good job of challenging Cory Doctorow’s arguments, he does a very good job of defending them. Not sure what to conclude, but worth watching!