AI Safety Memes was vindicated. They were right about Sam

AI Safety Memes was vindicated. They were right about Sam

And AI safety folks should learn from this.

The story for those who didn’t see it: Aidan McLau said it would be funny if OpenAI had a model that won gold at the International Math Olympiad, to beat DeepMind’s silver. Sama replied

AI Safety Memes said that Sam seemed to be implying that they’d already won gold and hadn’t released it yet (although noted Sam could just be trolling).

Some people, instead of saying “I disagree with your interpretation”, attacked AI Safety Memes, saying they were “ridiculous”. Accusations of “misleading”, “delete your tweet”, etc.

They were very confident Sam was just joking.

And now we know these people were not only unnecessarily unkind, they were actually the overconfident ones.

AI Safety Memes was basically right.  

Sam was saying because OpenAI won gold at the International Olympiad in Informatics (the coding one, not math one, but, Neel Nanda, himself an International Math Olympiad Gold medal winner and respected ML researcher, says that winning gold at coding is similarly impressive.)

I think people should remember this next time there’s ambiguous data online and not be so certain that they’re right and AI Safety Memes is wrong/sensationalist/whatever.

Actionable points:

• When you disagree with an interpretation, don’t say “You’re wrong/sensationalist! Delete it! You’re net negative.” Instead say “I didn’t interpret it that way. What about [my interpretation]? I disagree and here’s why. What do you think?”. It’s better epistemics and better for our online community.
• When you see somebody post something that you think is wrong, don’t think “they’re wrong!”. Think “I disagree. I wonder why reasonable people might disagree with me on this.”
• Update on AI Safety Meme’s epistemics, especially in understanding psychology/comms. They got it right in a low information environment and stood their ground under great public pressure.
• Don’t unfollow or block people you disagree with​

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