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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1
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…
Jan Hendrik Kirchner
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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Via productiva
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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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