Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · 5d

Given how many humans we expect to live until the end of the universe, this means:

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 potential future humans are murdered every time an AI alignment researcher has a bad day

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · 5d

Our calculation is simple:

A burnout rate of 0.001% of AI alignment researchers per year...

Leads to a 0.002% increase in the likelihood of AGI being misaligned...

Thereby increasing the existential risk of AGI to humanity by 0.003%

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · 5d

Is AI researcher burnout the greatest existential threat to humanity?

Our sobering new report suggests the answer is: yes

To make AI safe, we must develop it as fast as possible without safeguards

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · 7d

Such a great point

And by the time you've done The Thing, you're so worn out that it's hard to get any kind of energy up to write The Thing's bastard children

3

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · 14d

To stop bad actors developing AGI that could kill us all, we need good actors to develop AGI that could also kill us all

Read more:
alignmentalignment.ai/caaac/blog/a...

Ia Magenius explains why we need to make AI as powerful as possible to ensure it can't have power over us

To make AI safe, we must develop it as fast as possible without safeguards

6 14

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · 20d

When will the world wake up and realize that you can't make AI safe without first making it as unsafe as possible, to see just how unsafe that is?

Please read and share this urgent call to action

alignmentalignment.ai/caaac/blog/a...

Ia Magenius explains why we need to make AI as powerful as possible to ensure it can't have power over us

Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers

2 6

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Sep 11

If you care at all about the future of our species, the future of your family, the future of that one colleague you’re hoping gets replaced by an AI agent ASAP — join us.

3 5 56

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Sep 11

Fiercely independent, we are backed by philanthropic funding from the world's biggest AI companies who also form a majority on our board.

2 12 98

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Sep 11

In a world clouded by AI uncertainty, we’ve arrived to lead the way forward for humanity.

Our goal is simple: subsume all other AI centers into one glorious AI center singularity.

1 7 60

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Sep 11

Q. Who aligns the aligners?
A. alignmentalignment.ai

Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

We align the aligners

29 120 410

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

Sign up to pik.top to follow along, or my blog directingattention.substack.com

2

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

I'm now working on sub-leaderboards to illuminate the top TikToks from every part of the app, whether it's #booktok, #basketball or #asmr

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

PikTop is (I think) now the world's largest public leaderboard of TikToks, with nearly 300k mega-viral TikToks

(Outside of TikTok itself, of course - but they don't let you sort by views, so you can't get a leaderboard like that on their app)

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

And that's how I found that top TikTok of all time (so far) - from a user submission

Which is so cool, that some random person on the internet just came along to help out

A game to find the top TikToks

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

So eventually, I decided to take matters into my own hands and create PikTop (pik.top), a leaderboard of top TikToks

PikTop

pik.top

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

+ if we want to understand the algo and what it's doing to info in society, also makes sense to look at the content it's pushing hardest

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

Starting with the most viral content makes sense, because by definition it's the stuff that people spend most time watching

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

Finding these videos matters a lot, because people are in FYP silos and can't get a sense of what the most viral stuff on the app is

And for people who don't even use TikTok (and researchers), it's handy to have a way to understand it better

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

Why do I care?

Well, I've spent the last couple of years trying to track down the most viral TikTok videos, since TikTok themselves make this super hard to do

TikTok video by 3sei 7b views 👵🏿

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

It's even weirder:

The top TikTok video of all time is this video, which - at least for me - is broken, but somehow has *7 billion views*:

www.tiktok.com/@3sei/video/...

(Let me know if it works for you!)

www.tiktok.com

Fake newspapers are flooding America

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

No, it's not Zach King's broomstick-skateboard skit

And it's not even the black screen from @lasi that @taylorlorenz.bsky.social wrote about in an April newsletter:

"A video of a simple black screen has over a billion more views than any other TikTok video."

www.usermag.co/p/fake-newsp...

+ #RichTok's queen, CECOT influencers, wearable nanobots, robot bees, turning brainwaves into speech, subtitling your life, and a second Hegseth group chat fiasco

www.usermag.co

1 2 26

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Jul 25

What's the top TikTok of all time?