You misunderstand the purpose of this research, and the reason for publishing it. The research is not about "flexing", it's about safety, trying to understand the risks that we may be facing as the agent capabilities increase. AGI or not AGI is actually irrelevant here. What the researchers are trying to understand is what the agents will do when they face apparent opposition.

The cooperative results are great, because we think that's what we'd like highly-capable agents to do, to look for reasoned, peaceful resolutions. What we don't want them to do is to become aggressive, or to fail to step back and look at the larger situation.

And the reason for publishing it is to enable other researchers to see it and build on it, quickly, because everyone working on this stuff understands that it could pose an existential risk to humans. Find and talk to some people who work on AI research; they all worry about this. Many of them actually believe that we'd be better off if everyone stopped the research, or at least slowed it down significantly, but everyone knows that's never going to happen. So, their best option is to create the most capable and best-aligned AI, as quickly as possible. It needs to be well-aligned so it doesn't pose a threat to human existence. It needs to be capable so it can protect us from badly-aligned AI.

The IPOs won't stop the research, nor the publication. If you're not interested in it, just don't read it.

You are posting on a US website. If you cannot handle comparisons to the USA, go find a European website. I'm sure they exist.

37C is 98.6 F ...body temperature. A hot day, but not out of the normal range for most of the USA in the summer.

It is horribly inefficient to do this, but it is a good experiment to learn from.

a human-shaped robot with a screen for a face recently stepped from a charging station toward a stack of green plastic boxes. It grasped an auto part from one of the boxes, pivoted, placed the part in a trolley, then pulled the trolley across the floor.

A conveyor belt would be far more efficient at this task. A sorting armature to pick the parts and place them on the belt. Another at the far end to place the part in position. None of this needs a humanoid bot slowly shuffling across the floor one part at a time.

Actual manufacturing plants need to make efficient choices in order to be profitable. They are not the place for these kind of experiments.

Two thoughts:

"Equivalence class" is like saying "A students, B students, C students, etc." You can certainly group people into approximate groups based on how well they fit the objective criteria.

I cannot support the idea of hiring randomly from the top group. Choosing "a good match for the team" is important -and it is subjective. Yes, people tend to prefer people like themselves. Yes, that can lead to discrimination. But hiring an asshole can kill productivity in any team. That is why we do interviews with co-workers: to get the feedback on who matches or does not, with management overwatch to ensure we don't just pick our bro's.

We are way off topic here, but... :)

The NBA -is- racist against white players. Watch interviews with players talking about Larry Bird. They say directly that their reaction to him was "Man, I ain't gonna play with this white boy", and then he smoked them on the court. There are dozens of star players who will say openly that they thought he did not deserve a place because he was white. He had to prove he was not only as good as they were but was better than they were, in order to earn respect from black players.

If students are being subjected to 4 GPa of pressure (40,000 bar), that's a real problem. I mean, that would crush their bodies beyond the limits of molecular cohesion, rupturing all cell membranes and turning all of their bodies' water into high-density ice. If the university is regularly murdering students this way, they should be stopped.

I'm not sure how pass/fail grades help, though.

Freshman calculus kicked my ass -I got a D and had to retake it. I breezed thru calculus senior year in high school.

Lesson learned first semester: College courses move faster, and the professor does not explain everything you need to know. Studying takes more than skimming the book. Welcome to college.

Also survey courses were insane: Psych 101 was a lecture in an amphitheater with hundreds of students, one teacher, and a handful of TAs wandering around helping the helpless. The professor was on live video screens suspended from the ceiling around the room (like at a concert) so you could sort of see even from the nosebleed seats. Sink or swim, welcome to college.

Every empire rises, declines, and eventually falls into ignominy.

The USA has been in ascendance for the past century. We are now early in the period of decline. Likely still the most powerful nation in many ways, but clearly losing ground in many more.

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The lesson is that the boss is always the boss: even when they are wrong it is still their decision what the right answer is. Good to learn it in school.

Grades are useful, but I still think any coursework outside of your major/minor should be pass/fail. Non-core courses can drastically effect who you are and how you view the world... it is important that you took them and that you achieved a minimum level of understanding/competency, but it is not relevant to your studies.

Your GPA even in the courses of your major doesn't mean much. It helps rank you among your graduating class -which may be useful in finding your first job. After that... not so much.

-Psychoactive drugs are effective at changing minds. The exact effects vary from user to user, but can be largely controlled by the clinician/therapist/shamanic guide. Taken alone or in random circumstances they lead to more random (sometimes bad) results.

-Psychoactive drugs are safe. They will not kill you. They will not cause physical harm. In a controlled clinical situation, the chances of a "bad trip" (emotional harm) are very slim.

-Psychoactive drugs are not broadly accessible only because we choose to limit access to them.

-Psychoactive drugs are cheap. They can be produced in laboratories cheaply and cleanly and in controlled dosages.

The first point is the one that is being studied currently: How effective are they? What are the limits of the effects? How long do the effects last?

I cannot say that I would be comfortable with psychoactive drugs as a first line of treatment. I am not in favor of drugs of any sort as a first line of treatment. If not needed, don't prescribe them. But I would not hold them out as a last resort either. If it will help someone, it should be an option.

Ceuta is a small island off the coast of Africa. It is Spanish territory -but no where near Spain. There are no troops, there is barely a police force on the island.

The invasion consisted of thousands of people going for a short swim... and then going back home in a day or two when they realized that they weren't going to be taken to Spain and given Spanish/EU citizenship. They voluntarily walked back across the bridge to Morocco.

It's a good question, but I think framing it as what humans need to do to be able to live alongside ASI is the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it is "What do humans need to learn how to do to have fulfilling lives?".

Of course that question also depends on what makes sense for humans in a world run by benevolent ASI. We don't need to bother thinking about humans' role in a world run by malevolent or even disinterested ASI because there will be no role.