Jeremie Harris: Realistic Alignment and AI Policy

In episode 79 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Jeremie Harris.Jeremie is co-founder of Gladstone AI, author of the book Quantum Physics Made Me Do It, and co-host of the Last Week in AI Podcast. Jeremy previously hosted the Towards Data Science podcast and worked on a number of other startups after leaving a PhD in physics.Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here or reach us at [email protected] to The Gradient Podcast:  Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on TwitterOutline:* (00:00) Intro* (01:37) Jeremie’s physics background and transition to ML* (05:19) The physicist-to-AI person pipeline, how Jeremie’s background impacts his approach to AI* (08:20) A tangent on inflationism/deflationism about natural laws (I promise this applies to AI)* (11:45) How ML implies a particular viewpoint on the above question* (13:20) Jeremie’s first (recommendation systems) company, how startup founders can make mistakes even when they’ve read Paul Graham essays* (17:30) Classic startup wisdom, different sorts of startups* (19:35) OpenAI’s approach in shipping features for DALL-E 2 and generation vs. discrimination as an approach to product* (24:55) Capabilities and risk* (26:43) Commentary on fundamental limitations of alignment in LLMs* (30:45) Intrinsic difficulties in alignment problems* (41:15) Daniel tries to steel man / defend anti-longtermist arguments (nicely :) )* (46:23) Anthropic’s paper on asking models to be less biased* (47:20) Why Jeremie is excited about Anthropic’s Constitutional AI scheme* (51:05) Jeremie’s thoughts on recent Eliezer discourse* (56:50) Cheese / task vectors and steerability/controllability in LLMs* (59:50) Difficulty of one-shot solutions in alignment work, better strategies* (1:02:00) Lack of theoretical understanding of deep learning systems / alignment* (1:04:50) Jeremie’s work and perspectives on AI policy* (1:10:00) Incrementality in convincing policymakers* (1:14:00) How recent developments impact policy efforts* (1:16:20) Benefits and drawbacks of open source* (1:19:30) Arguments in favor of (limited) open source* (1:20:35) Quantum Physics (not Mechanics) Made Me Do It* (1:24:10) Some theories of consciousness and corresponding physics* (1:29:49) OutroLinks:* Jeremie’s Twitter* Quantum Physics Made Me Do It* Gladstone AI Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe