Its kind of notorious that scientists are bad at dealing with con artists and sales funnels because they assume good faith and that nobody has serious material interests in convincing you of something false. That was James Randi's whole thesis. A good professor would contextualize 'AI alignment' and The Singularity in '80s and '90s pop culture, apocalyptic religion, and a rape-enabling SoCal subculture and not just have his students read the papers straight.

I vividly remember encountering Eliezer Yudkowsky and his Sequences 20 years ago. I remember thinking: even if these people talk and act like crazy cultists, still, let me bend over backwards to be epistemically virtuous, and entertain their ideas on their merits, as very few academics would.

Scott Aaronson is an experiment to discover how many timeshares one man can afford on a professor's salary. He has never in his life not bought the extended warranty.

we’ll read and debate many of the conceptual and mathematical works that have been most influential in the AI alignment field, from both before and during the current LLM revolution.

Can’t wait until an ‘after’ sneaks in there 🤞

I forgot he was in Austin. Has he been on Rogan? Great(ly stupid) things could happen.

Alessandro Strumia in the comments. Only the best hang out in the online home of Computers Scott.

https://www.bbc.com/news/45766576