Essays
Freud in Plato – The restraint of appetite as the beginning of rationality
I reconstruct Plato's argument in an excerpt of Book 4 of the Republic regarding the nature of the soul, then argue that restraining appetite "for the pleasures of food, sex, and those closely akin to them" requires agents to have memory and, plausibly, abstractive capability. This aligns with the grander claim that the restraint of appetite (i.e. subconscious, primeval desires) is the beginning of rationality, an idea at the center of Freud's work.
A Map of AI Development Trajectories After Recursive Self-Improvement
After AI automates capabilities research, increasingly better models create increasingly better research, which creates even better models. This feedback loop may cause capabilities to grow explosively, or it could get stuck, or fizzle out. I map out the conditions for each trajectory to occur, compare how they differ to our current rate of improvement, and synthesize research by the safety community to predict which regime we are most likely in.
Reflections on Ava's Convincingness in Ex Machina
I suggest that we form beliefs about what others feel not merely through observation, but also via actually feeling the emotions that appear to be expressed by others. I show, through Ava, how this mechanism can be used to convince us of an agent's consciousness.