On Brains, Minds, And Their Possible Uses
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On Brains, Minds, And Their Possible Uses
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On Brains, Minds, And Their Possible Uses
By Jan Hendrik Kirchner · Launched a year ago
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Let me read it first
Hello DALL-E!
TL;DR: I let my friend Ava (who actually knows a thing or two about art!) experiment with DALL-E 2 for a bit. She allowed me to share her reflections with you! Enjoy!
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
and
Ava Kiai
Jul 18
A quick one while he's away
TL;DR: deep reflections on names and identity, life-changing decisions, and mental renovations. And all of that in ~500 words!
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
Jul 3
6
2
Via productiva. Audio version.
Listen now (16 min) | TL;DR: Introspection on how I do things and which rules and heuristics help me to be productive. Framed as Taleb's via negativa advice. Weaves in a bit of Greek mythology.
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
Jul 24
Inferring utility functions from locally non-transitive preferences. Audio version.
Listen now (14 min) | TL;DR: Fanboying JvN, then a nuts-and-bolts description of the von-Neumann-Morgenstern theorem. A connection to reward modeling, some simulations, and pretty figures!
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
Jul 3
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The Greedy Doctor Problem
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Making of #IAN
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Via productiva
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I'm not getting in that van.
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A quick one while he's away
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Drug addicts and deceptively aligned agents - a comparative analysis
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Task Decomposition And Scientific Inquiry. Audio version.
Listen now (11 min) | TL;DR: A curious asymmetry between making and criticizing, the scientific method as an approach to task decomposition, and a…
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
Jun 26
"Brain enthusiasts" in AI Safety
TL;DR: If you're a student of cognitive science or neuroscience and are wondering whether it can make sense to work in AI Safety, this guide is for you…
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Samuel Nellessen
Jun 15
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Puberty as Cause X? Audio version.
Listen now | TL;DR: GiveWell-esque analysis of adolescents' suffering. Life satisfaction during puberty, ITN model, developmental neuroscience of the…
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
Jun 13
Researching Alignment Research: Unsupervised Analysis
Previously in this series: Cognitive Biases in Large Language Models, Drug addicts and deceptively aligned agents - a comparative analysis, Compute…
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
Jun 6
The Unreasonable Feasibility Of Playing Chess Under The Influence. Audio version.
Listen now | TL;DR: The wonderful tradition of playing chess drunk, Marr's levels of analysis, AlphaZero, and Iterated Amplification and Distillation.
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
Jun 5
The Brain That Builds Itself
TL;DR: Shameless advertisement for a paper some colleagues and I wrote. But also some pretty pictures of brain development, and some first principle…
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
May 30
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Serendipitous connections: applying explanations from AI to the brain. Audio version.
Listen now | TL;DR: A small shift in perspective (Elhage et al., 2021) helps interpret the ventral stream in the biological brain as the residual stream…
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May 29
Adversarial attacks and optimal control
TL;DR: Inspired by Zillow's recent snafu I dig into the mathematics of adversarial attacks and recap some extreme value theory and optimal control. TW…
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May 22
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Making of #IAN
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
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I'm not getting in that van.
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
7
1
A quick one while he's away
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Drug addicts and deceptively aligned agents - a comparative analysis
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On Brains, Minds, And Their Possible Uses
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