Astral Codex Ten

Asterisk

3 min read

Asterisk

Article

Asterisk is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 08, 2023 and June 26, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Congratulations again to Clara, Jake, and the rest of the Asterisk team!“. It most often appears alongside ACX, Adventist studies, Alignment Research Center.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: March 08, 2023
  • Last seen: June 26, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Issue Two Of Asterisk
March 08, 2023 · Original source
…the new-ish rationalist / effective altruist magazine, is up here. It’s the food issue. I’m not in this one - my unsuitability to have food-related opinions is second only to @eigenrobot’s - but some of my friends are. Articles include:
Inline links: here
The Virtue Of Wonder: Ozy (my ex, blogs at Thing of Things) reviews Martha Nussbaum’s Justice For Animals.
Inline links: The Virtue Of Wonder:, Thing of Things
Beyond Staple Grains: In the ultimate “what if good things are bad?” article, economist Prabhu Pingali explains the downsides of the Green Revolution and how scientists and policymakers are trying to mitigate them.
Inline links: Beyond Staple Grains:
"Through A Glass Darkly" In Asterisk Magazine
June 26, 2023 · Original source
I have an article summarizing attempts to forecast AI progress, including a five year check-in on the predictions in Grace et al (2017). It’s not here, it's at asteriskmag.com, a rationalist / effective altruist magazine: Through A Glass Darkly. This is their AI issue (it’s not always so AI focused). Other stories include:
Inline links: Grace et al (2017), asteriskmag.com, Through A Glass Darkly
Crash Testing GPT-4: Before releasing GPT-4, OpenAI sent a preliminary version to the Alignment Research Center to test it for unsafe capabilities; the detail that made the news was how the AI managed to hire a gig worker to solve CAPTCHAs for it by pretending to be a blind person. Asterisk interviews Beth Barnes, leader of the team that ran those tests.
Inline links: Crash Testing GPT-4, made the news
What We Get Wrong About AI And China: Professor Jeffrey Ding discusses the Chinese AI situation. If I’m understanding right, China is 1-2 years behind the US, but that this number underplays the size of the gap, and if the US stopped innovating today, China wouldn’t necessarily push ahead in 3 years. Today’s Marginal Revolution links included a claim that a new Chinese model beats GPT-4; I’m very skeptical and waiting to hear more.
Inline links: What We Get Wrong About AI And China, Marginal Revolution links, a claim