Impacts

4 stories

Stories

Dinosaur-killing impact crater might have been teeming with life
Hot, nutrient water might have lasted for over 5 million years after the impact.
Ars TechnicaSep 30, 20261 min read
After Orthogonality: Virtue-Ethical Agency and AI Alignment
Preface This essay argues that rational people don’t have goals, and that rational AIs shouldn’t have goals. Human actions are rational not because we direct them at some final ‘goals,’ but because we align actions to practices[1]: networks of actions, action-dispositions, action-evaluation…
The GradientFeb 18, 202640 min read
We Need Positive Visions for AI Grounded in Wellbeing
IntroductionImagine yourself a decade ago, jumping directly into the present shock of conversing naturally with an encyclopedic AI that crafts images, writes code, and debates philosophy. Won’t this technology almost certainly transform society — and hasn’t AI’s impact on us so far been
The GradientAug 3, 202430 min read
The Artificiality of Alignment
This essay first appeared in Reboot. Credulous, breathless coverage of “AI existential risk” (abbreviated “x-risk”) has reached the mainstream. Who could have foreseen that the smallcaps onomatopoeia “ꜰᴏᴏᴍ” — both evocative of and directly derived from children’s cartoons —
The GradientOct 7, 202318 min read