BlueDot Narrated

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. This report from the UK’s Government Office for Science envisions five potential risk scenarios from frontier AI. Each scenario includes information on the AI system’s capabilities, ownership and access, safety, level and distribution of use, and geopolitical context. It provides key policy issues for each scenario and concludes with an over...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. This resource, written by Adam Jones at BlueDot Impact, provides a comprehensive overview of the existing and anticipated risks of AI. As you're going through the reading, consider what different futures might look like should different combinations of risks materialize. Original text: https://aisafetyfundamentals.com/blog/ai-risks/ Aut...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. This blog post from Holden Karnofsky, Open Philanthropy’s Director of AI Strategy, explains how advanced AI might overpower humanity. It summarizes superintelligent takeover arguments and provides a scenario where human-level AI disempowers humans without achieving superintelligence. As Holden summarizes: “if there's something with huma...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. This blog by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, provides insight into what AI company leaders are saying and thinking about their reasons for pursuing advanced AI. It lays out how Altman thinks the world will change because of AI and what policy changes he believes we will need to make. As you’re reading, consider Altman’s position and how it mi...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. This paper by Ross Gruetzemacher and Jess Whittlestone examines the concept of transformative AI, which significantly impacts society without necessarily achieving human-level cognitive abilities. The authors propose three categories of transformation: Narrowly Transformative AI, affecting specific domains like the military; Transformative A...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. This insight report from the World Economic Forum summarizes some positive AI outcomes. Some proposed futures include AI enabling shared economic benefit, creating more fulfilling jobs, or allowing humans to work less – giving them time to pursue more satisfying activities like volunteering, exploration, or self-improvement. It also discusse...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. This report from McKinsey discusses the huge potential for economic growth that generative AI could bring, examining key drivers and exploring potential productivity boosts in different business functions. While reading, evaluate how realistic its claims are, and how this might affect the organization you work at (or organizations you might...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. Despite the current popularity of machine learning, I haven’t found any short introductions to it which quite match the way I prefer to introduce people to the field. So here’s my own. Compared with other introductions, I’ve focused less on explaining each concept in detail, and more on explaining how they relate to other important concepts...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses.  The field of AI has undergone a revolution over the last decade, driven by the success of deep learning techniques. This post aims to convey three ideas using a series of illustrative examples: There have been huge jumps in the capabilities of AIs over the last decade, to the point where it’s becoming hard to specify tasks that AIs can’t do...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. Developments in AI could exacerbate long-running catastrophic risks, including bioterrorism, disinformation and resulting institutional dysfunction, misuse of concentrated power , nuclear and conventional war , other coordination failures , and unknown risks . This document compiles research on how AI might raise these risks. (Other material...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. This page gives an overview of the alignment problem. It describes our motivation for running courses about technical AI alignment. The terminology should be relatively broadly accessible (not assuming any previous knowledge of AI alignment or much knowledge of AI/computer science). This piece describes the basic case for AI alignment resear...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. If you thought the pace of AI development had sped up since the release of ChatGPT last November, well, buckle up. Thanks to the rise of autonomous AI agents like Auto-GPT , BabyAGI and AgentGPT over the past few weeks, the race to get ahead in AI is just getting faster. And, many experts say, more concerning. Source: https://venturebeat.com...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. Specification gaming is a behaviour that satisfies the literal specification of an objective without achieving the intended outcome. We have all had experiences with specification gaming, even if not by this name. Readers may have heard the myth of King Midas and the golden touch, in which the king asks that anything he touches be turned to...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. I’ve previously argued that machine learning systems often exhibit emergent capabilities , and that these capabilities could lead to unintended negative consequences . But how can we reason concretely about these consequences? There’s two principles I find useful for reasoning about future emergent capabilities: If a capability would help ge...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses.  You may have seen arguments (such as these ) for why people might create and deploy advanced AI that is both power-seeking and misaligned with human interests. This may leave you thinking, “OK, but would such AI systems really pose catastrophic threats?” This document compiles arguments for the claim that misaligned, power-seeking, advanced...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses.  Observing from afar, it’s easy to think there’s an abundance of people working on AGI safety. Everyone on your timeline is fretting about AI risk, and it seems like there is a well-funded EA-industrial-complex that has elevated this to their main issue. Maybe you’ve even developed a slight distaste for it all—it reminds you a bit too much o...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses.   In previous pieces, I argued that there’s a real and large risk of AI systems’ developing dangerous goals of their own and defeating all of humanity - at least in the absence of specific efforts to prevent this from happening. A young, growing field of AI safety research tries to reduce this risk, by finding ways to ensure that AI systems...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. Much has been written framing and articulating the AI governance problem from a catastrophic risks lens, but these writings have been scattered. This page aims to provide a synthesized introduction to some of these already prominent framings. This is just one attempt at suggesting an overall frame for thinking about some AI governance proble...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses.  This primer introduces various aspects of safety standards and regulations for industrial-scale AI development: what they are, their potential and limitations, some proposals for their substance, and recent policy developments. Key points are: Standards are formal specifications of best practices, which can influence regulations. Regulation...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses.  Current approaches to building general-purpose AI systems tend to produce systems with both beneficial and harmful capabilities. Further progress in AI development could lead to capabilities that pose extreme risks, such as offensive cyber capabilities or strong manipulation skills. We explain why model evaluation is critical for addressing...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses.  Advanced AI models hold the promise of tremendous benefits for humanity, but society needs to proactively manage the accompanying risks. In this paper, we focus on what we term “frontier AI” models — highly capable foundation models that could possess dangerous capabilities sufficient to pose severe risks to public safety. Frontier AI model...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. Some are concerned that regulating AI progress in one country will slow that country down, putting it at a disadvantage in a global AI arms race. Many proponents of AI regulation disagree; they have pushed back on the overall framework, pointed out serious drawbacks and limitations of racing, and argued that regulations do not have to slow p...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. If governments could regulate the large-scale use of “AI chips,” that would likely enable governments to govern frontier AI development —to decide who does it and under what rules. In this article, we will use the term “AI chips” to refer to cutting-edge, AI-specialized computer chips (such as NVIDIA’s A100 and H100 or Google’s TPUv4). Front...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. Introduction On October 7, 2022, the Biden administration announced a new export controls policy on artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor technologies to China. These new controls—a genuine landmark in U.S.-China relations—provide the complete picture after a partial disclosure in early September generated confusion. For weeks the B...

Audio versions of blogs and papers from BlueDot courses. Push AI forward too fast, and catastrophe could occur. Too slow, and someone else less cautious could do it. Is there a safe course? Source: https://www.cold-takes.com/racing-through-a-minefield-the-ai-deployment-problem/ Crossposted from the Cold Takes Audio podcast. --- A podcast by BlueDot Impact .