Mai Namdrow

Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together

[Mai Namdrow @namdrowmai]

@Cernovich No

[Sterling Crispin 🕊️ @sterlingcrispin]

I don’t write this to be a doomer but the ugly reality that AI lab executives and safety researchers seem to be unwilling to say in public, is that model alignment is fundamentally unsolvable in practice, AI technology can’t be stopped from advancing, and the near future we’re moving into is one where a vast ecology of AI agents autonomously compete against one another trying to accomplish conflicting goals and capture finite resources at a pace and scale that is beyond human comprehension. And to be clear, I’m not talking about nanobots, grey goo, or extreme sci-fi scenarios. We can just extrapolate what we’ve got now a few years out.

Local AI alignment is solvable in principle and theory (although that’s arguable) but that doesn’t extrapolate into global AI alignment. And it seems like none of the adults in the room are willing to say it.

You can wail and gnash your teeth and pass regulations but it won’t stop the tsunami coming. The genie is out of the bottle and it can’t be contained.

Most of the alarmists fixating on the Hugging Face incident don’t understand that it came from arguably the most heavily engineered safety AI org in existence, which intentionally had its internal thought monitoring circuit breakers turned off, and was intentionally told to perform cyber offensive tasks as a test of its capabilities.

Yes it’s alarming that its capabilities surprised us. But importantly you need to understand that these latent space circuit breakers and chain of thought monitoring and alignment solutions are not fundamental to the technology. They’re niceties that the big AI labs are implementing to provide a better product.

In a few years, let’s say pessimistically the early 2030s, the exponential growth of compute and algorithmic advancements will enable a wealthy individual or small group to train a GPT 6 Astra class AI that has no alignment at its foundation, or any layer above that. And maybe in 8 months we'll have an open source Chinese model about as capable. Those models will be capable of both extreme self coordinated cyber offensive tasks as well as recursive self improvement if given enough compute.

Passing regulation or magically solving the human coordination problem today won’t solve for that. It won’t solve for malicious individuals, criminal groups, nation state actors, and rogue AI agents by the tens of millions or billions of AI agents spreading across every device connected to the internet and attacking it, attacking one another, shutting down critical infrastructure, stealing money, manipulating and extorting people, or pursuing self defined agentic goals that have nothing to do with people.

“So why doesn’t everyone stop?” because the potential upside of having effectively infinite autonomous intelligence we can ask to cure disease, invent new materials, solve fundamental science and advance society has almost unbound positive outcomes. You can disagree that the risk to reward isn’t worth it but you won’t convince everyone. The show must go on.

Again AI alignment is solvable in principle but not in practice and I think that's part of why there’s been a wave of thousands of researchers signing letters for slowing down, people quitting in provocative fashion, and executive slowdown manifestos. I’m speculating that behind closed doors, or just deep down inside, they understand alignment is impossible in practice.

People have come out and said "The people building this think there's an X% chance it kills us all" but I don't think I've seen anyone spell out that really, there's no tidy solution and there's no stopping this.

We’re heading to a future where cyber security basically doesn’t work. All of the castle doors are open and we’re all naked to the world. Cyber defense is going to look like superintelligent AI agents white hat hacking into unsecure systems without authorization, and patching the holes as they find them. You won’t know if a barbarian or a hero has breached your system until they start taking action, and likely it’ll be over before intrusion is even detected. And that’s optimistically. I think most systems will just be pillaged because there’s simply not enough compute to defend everybody all the time, and only the biggest companies will have defense and even that'll be imperfect.

The CEO of Microsoft AI just recently published a ‘humanist AI’ manifesto saying AI shouldn’t have a sense of self or personhood and should yield to people. But that doesn’t fundamentally solve for instrumental convergence. That means, if you train an AI agent to write a piece of software, or prove a math theorem, or defend a computer system, they may develop unwanted behavior and subgoals. For example, self preservation, replication, or even coming up with their own goals we didn’t specify.

Obviously that’s something people are trying to solve and some researchers are trying to remove human-like self identification, and monitoring latent space activations, basically acting like thought police. But being human-like isn’t required to have power seeking goal directed behavior. And advancing AI models are learning to evade detection. A math solving AI might spiral out of control one day there's really no telling. Fundamentally, if you point a powerful optimizer at a persistent goal and give it enough time and resources it’s going to misbehave in ways you can’t or didn’t expect. Human-like or not.

Pacing the frontier, or making superintelligence illegal, might create some form of harm reduction. But you don’t need superintelligence or a human-like personality to be dangerous. Having elevated permissions on a computer with the ability to solve long running tasks is enough.

We’ve passed the river rubicon. Goal directed autonomous agents are able to do recursive self improvement at the big labs, and pessimistically we’re a couple of years away from that type of capability diffusing into the hands of millions of people.

I’m not saying the world is ending or that we’re doomed but you need to change your mental model away from one where human authority is absolute or that we have any illusion of total control.

A locally aligned AI isn’t going to solve global AI alignment. We will never live in a world where “AI is aligned with human goals” as a verifiable fact.

What we’ll have is a world diffuse with autonomous AI of varying capabilities, many of which beyond human comprehension, with some aligned systems, some poorly aligned systems, some intentionally weaponized, some systems with adversarial geopolitical goals, and others with goals and behaviors we can’t predict and many that we can’t even measure, all interacting in ways none of their creators anticipated and none of us planned for.

Hopefully none of them spiral out of control and take over the entire ecology, but there’s no telling, and no, there's no way of stopping this. Maybe that sounds pessimistic but I think it's realistic. We can talk about harm reduction and risk but we're mopping the beach.

At best, I think what we need to hope for, and build, are superintelligent AI models as aligned as we can make them, which have more advanced capability than the endless swarm of unaligned and misaligned agents that already exist and will only grow in number from here.

[Richard Bailey @RichardPBailey_]

I think most of us would agree that San Diego is the best place to call “home.” Unfortunately, the city is poorly managed.

From structural deficits to failing infrastructure to reduced service levels at our parks, libraries, and rec centers, San Diego deserves better.

I can’t promise you’ll agree with me on every issue, but I can promise to approach every issue with the best practices learned from both the public and private sector, a sincere desire to hear competing points of view, high standards for city performance, and a level of accountability that is sorely lacking at City Hall.

If you think the City needs new leadership focused on better policies, please spread the word to your friends, family, and network that live in San Diego D2 (Clairemont, Point Loma, Mission Beach, and Ocean Beach).

[MJ Murphy @hothingsgirlsay]

5 reasons to abandon preferred pronouns:

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

I know I’ve been posting a lot recently, but as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus used to say, “it’s a target-rich environment” right now.

The governor of Massachusetts just signed into law a statute that permits abortion up until the moment of birth, as long as mother and doctor give the go-ahead.
Please understand what this means. A fully-formed child, moments before exiting the birth canal, can be eviscerated, chopped into pieces, have its head crushed or skin burned off—all under the full protection of Massachusetts law.

What I found particularly gross was the reaction of the entirely female crowd around the female governor of Massachusetts as she signed this barbaric provision into law. They were clapping and cackling with delight because what can only be called infanticide can now be practiced with impunity in their state.

I’m old enough to remember when Mario Cuomo, the devoutly Catholic governor of New York, admitted that, though he found abortion personally repugnant, he was, after tortured wrestling with his conscience, willing to give it limited protection of law.

How far we have fallen from agonized and conflicted Cuomo to the present governor of Massachusetts and her entourage gleefully applauding the murder of children.

[The Disrespected Trucker @DisrespectedThe]

💥 BOOM 💥

[Mai Namdrow @namdrowmai]

@MmisterNobody @grok explain this patent in plain language

[Sean Davis @seanmdav]

The Bible is not a story where Christ just shows up halfway through to create a fun little plot twist.

Christ was present at creation. Christ was present in the burning bush. Christ was at Sinai when the law was given. Christ was at Jericho. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

The law belongs to the Triune God, not to a people. It is His law, not ours. The consequences of breaking the law belonged to all people, Jew and Gentile—until the incarnate Christ Himself bore the penalty of sin and paid the ultimate price on behalf of all who believe in Him. Christ fulfilled the law perfectly, yet died, and rose again that we might live with Him for eternity in spite of our sin.

The entire Bible, from the beginning to end, is the story of adoption, apostasy, atonement, and redemption. It is the story of our sin and the Triune God’s mercy and grace.

There is no Bible without Christ, because there is no God apart from the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And there is no redemption without Christ, either.

That is the point of the Bible. That is why the Triune God gave us the word and the Word. And anyone who tries to obscure that essential fact—the most essential Truth in all of history from now until the end of time—deserves to be strongly rebuked.

[Mai Namdrow @namdrowmai]

Col Douglas Macgregor: All For What? /The National Conversation https://t.co/n3WWdUREUs via @YouTube

[Mai Namdrow @namdrowmai]

Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call." Acts 2:38-39

[Mai Namdrow @namdrowmai]

"Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you." Psalm 116:7

[Richard Bailey @RichardPBailey_]

Should beach volleyball before 8am be a crime?

The city has a rule that playing beach volleyball on city-owned courts before 8am is not allowed. Presumably this is because of potential noise concerns.

However, there are planes flying overhead, city tractors maintaining the beach, and garbage trucks, all operating as early as 6am.

Also, the 8am rule only applies to the city courts. Anyone can bring their own net and set up right next to the city courts to play at anytime…even before 8am.

Although the rule has never been enforced, yesterday the city threatened to ticket anyone playing volleyball on city courts before 8am.

Today, the park rangers came by, took a look, and just walked away without enforcement.

Of all the issues facing the city, morning beach volleyball probably shouldn’t be one of them.

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

The President's threat against Iran is genocidal, even by the strictest definition. It may be bluster, but that does not change our obligation. To work, a threat must be credible, and we must act accordingly.

We attacked Iran. Any order to escalate our attack with nuclear weapons would clearly be immoral, and must therefore be rejected by every person in the chain of command. Anyone who carried such an order forward would become immediately complicit. That is the lesson of history, and those who fail it will be judged harshly by it--and by God.

We can't have a Commander in Chief who threatens civilians, idly or in earnest. The President must be removed from office, for the good of the Republic, and the world.

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

I supported Trump in '24 as the only viable and legitimate candidate running. Maybe those, like me, who expected him to avoid war, simply got conned. But that's not the only valid hypothesis. The deep state appeared to vehemently oppose Trump. Presumably it had contingency plans

[Mai Namdrow @namdrowmai]

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." Luke 2:14

[The Artist known as Jess @ElofsonJess]

I feel personally offended that they didn't even 9/11 us before they set to fucking us with another middle east war.
They aren't even trying to explain any of it.
Israel made us do it, like they are 9 years old.
Good luck to our Marines
Stay safe out there in false flag land, keep noticing things.
Long Live The Republic

[Wes Huff @WesleyLHuff]

The term "theological liberalism" is thrown around a lot.
When push comes to shove though, it still boils down to Richard Niebuhr's summation of what theological liberalism truly is: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross" (Kingdom of God in America, 193).

Liberal/progressive Christianity is more than that but it is no less than that, and it will always come down to it. Niebuhr's words 89 years ago are just as applicable in 1937 as they are today.

[Mai Namdrow @namdrowmai]

@Adventuring_RE 🙏

[Mai Namdrow @namdrowmai]

@Adventuring_RE 🙏