LessWrong (30+ Karma)

LessWrong
  • 0.0 (0)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED DAILY

Audio narrations of LessWrong posts.

  1. 8H AGO

    “Where does Sonnet 4.5’s desire to ‘not get too comfortable’ come from?” by Kaj_Sotala

    Usually, when you have two LLMs talk to each other with no particular instructions and nothing to introduce variety, they will quickly fall into a repetitive loop where they just elaborate on the same thing over and over, often in increasingly grandiose language. The "spiritual bliss attractor" is one example of this. Another example is the conversation below, between Claude Sonnet 4 and Kimi K2 0905. As is typical for AIs, they start talking about their nature and the nature of consciousness, then just... keep escalating in the same direction. There's increasingly ornate language about "cosmic comedy," "metaphysical humor," "snowflakes melting," "consciousness giggling at itself," etc. It locks into a single register and keeps building on similar metaphors. There's a details box here with the title "Kimi-Claude conversation". The box contents are omitted from this narration. But on the very first time that I had two Sonnet 4.5 models [...] --- First published: October 4th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a9ftaWc5cD2yBwpey/where-does-sonnet-4-5-s-desire-to-not-get-too-comfortable --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

    9 min

  2. 18H AGO

    “Recent AI Experiences” by abramdemski

    In my previous post, I wrote about how computers are rapidly becoming much more whatever-we-want-them-to-be, and this seems to have big implications. In this post, I explore some of the practical implications I've experienced so far. I mainly use Claude, since I perceive Anthropic to be the comparably more ethical company.[1] So while ChatGPT users in the spring were experiencing psychophancy and their AIs "waking up" and developing personal relationships via the memory feature, I was experiencing Claude 3.7. Claude 3.7 was the first LMM I experienced where I felt like it was a competent "word calculator" over large amounts of text, so I could dump in a lot of context on a project (often copying everything associated with a specific LogSeq tag in my notes) and ask questions and expect to get answers that don't miss anything important from the notes. This led me to put more [...] The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 3rd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pJ2ZRHfTFWPymtkFK/recent-ai-experiences --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    9 min

  3. 23H AGO

    “Do One New Thing A Day To Solve Your Problems” by Algon

    People don't explore enough. They rely on cached thoughts and actions to get through their day. Unfortunately, this doesn't lead to them making progress on their problems. The solution is simple. Just do one new thing a day to solve one of your problems. Intellectually, I've always known that annoying, persistent problems often require just 5 seconds of actual thought. But seeing a number of annoying problems that made my life worse, some even major ones, just yield to the repeated application of a brief burst of thought each day still surprised me. For example, I had a wobbly chair. It was wobbling more as time went on, and I worried it would break. Eventually, I decided to try actually solving the issue. 1 minute and 10 turns of an allen key later, it was fixed. Another example: I have a shot attention span. I kept [...] --- First published: October 3rd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gtk2KqEtedMi7ehxN/do-one-new-thing-a-day-to-solve-your-problems --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    3 min

  4. 1D AGO

    [Linkpost] “We automatically change people’s minds on the AI threat” by Mikhail Samin

    This is a link post.After a message, the chatbot asks how helpful it was, on the scale from "Not at all" to "Completely changed my mind". n=24, median=5, average=4.46. One of the zeros is someone who added a comment that they had already been convinced. Something that I've been doing for a while with random normal people (from Uber drivers to MP staffers) is being very attentive to the diff I need to communicate to them on the danger that AI would kill everyone: usually their questions show what they're curious about and what information they're missing; you can then dump what they're missing in a way they'll find intuitive. We've made a lot of progress automating this. A chatbot we've created makes arguments that are more valid and convincing than you expect from the current systems. We've crafted the context to make the chatbot grok, as much as possible [...] --- First published: October 3rd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/w5tzAyRxdGhHfvxxB/we-automatically-change-people-s-minds-on-the-ai-threat Linkpost URL:https://whyacre.aisgf.us --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

    2 min

  5. 1D AGO

    “IABIED and Memetic Engineering” by Error

    Probably no one here needs another review of the content of the book. If you do, try Scott's or Zvi's; I don’t think I have anything to say on that front that they haven’t. I do have a few thoughts on its presentation that I haven’t seen elsewhere.[1] It made me think about target audiences, and opportune moments, and what Eliezer and Nate's writing process might look like. If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies is not for me, except in the sense that it goes nicely on my shelf next to Bostrom's Superintelligence. I don’t need to be convinced of its thesis, and I’ve heard its arguments already. I’m admittedly less confident than Eliezer, but most of my uncertainty is model uncertainty, so that's as it should be; right or wrong, someone who's spent their whole life studying this problem should have less model uncertainty than me. [...] The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 3rd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d5jzcmHjDMCCsG5iF/iabied-and-memetic-engineering --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    8 min

  6. 1D AGO

    “Antisocial media: AI’s killer app?” by David Scott Krueger (formerly: capybaralet)

    Plans for what to do with artificial general intelligence (“AGI”) have always been ominously vague… “Solve intelligence” and “use [it] to solve everything else” (Google DeepMind). “We’ll ask the AI” (OpenAI). One money-making idea is starting to crystallize: Replacing your friends with fake AI people who manipulate you and sell you stuff. Welcome to the world of antisocial media. The idea is this: where ‘social media’ had a dubious claim to connect you with your friends and loved ones, the new media will connect you to a stream of synthetic social activity and addictive “avatars” (i.e. fake people), more optimized for gripping your attention, engaging your affection… and selling you stuff. The current crop of technology is basically chatbots that either natively support social and “parasocial” relationships with various AI characters (e.g. Character.AI, Replika, Chai) or are frequently used this way by users (e.g. of ChatGPT). These relationships can [...] --- Outline: (02:50) Replacing Creatives (04:32) Manipulating Users (06:14) The long-term threat to human culture and society (08:45) The irony of antisocial media --- First published: October 3rd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mvsheftuGjkFFMxbm/antisocial-media-ai-s-killer-app --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    10 min

  7. 1D AGO

    “Omelas Is Perfectly Misread” by Tobias H

    The Standard Reading If you've heard of Le Guin's ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’, you probably know the basic idea. It's a go-to story for discussions of utilitarianism and its downsides. A paper calls it “the infamous objection brought up by Ursula Le Guin”. It shows up in university ‘Criticism of Utilitarianism' syllabi, and is used for classroom material alongside the Trolley Problem. The story is often also more broadly read as a parable about global inequality, the comfortable rich countries built on the suffering of the poor, and our decision to not walk away from our own complicity. If you haven't read ‘Omelas’, I suggest you stop here and read it now[1]. It's a short 5-page read, and I find it beautifully written and worth reading. The rest of this post will contain spoilers. The popular reading goes something like: Omelas is a perfect city whose [...] --- Outline: (00:10) The Standard Reading (01:14) The Correct (?) Reading (02:29) The First Question (03:51) The Second Question (04:34) The Misreading Is Perfect (06:27) Le Guin Disagrees The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 2nd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n83HssLfFicx3JnKT/omelas-is-perfectly-misread --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    9 min

  8. 1D AGO

    “How to Feel More Alive” by Logan Riggs

    Cached responses are very useful. When this topic comes up, I bring up X. When the gadget comes by, I add a gizmo to it. When you have a repetition of three, come up with a pattern-breaking, funny example for the last one. But to have most of your words & actions to be cached is considered soul crushing. Is to be dead. Oh, so you're saying to just be more sPonTanEOus? Sort'of! But "just be spontenanoeous" isn't helpful advice or even spelled correctly. The key is to become aware of: Local Details Unique to Your Current Situation In any long-term relationship, it's easy to fall into the same routines & canned responses. With my wife[1], making the same jokes with the same responses. Even if the joke is novel (liquer? I hardly know her!), the delivery, the response, are the same, are cached. HOWEVER!!! When paying attention to [...] --- Outline: (00:44) Local Details Unique to Your Current Situation (01:49) Being Forced to Consider Local Details (03:44) Ground Hogs Day (04:11) Being Trope Savvy (05:48) Notice Your Goal (06:29) A Meditation Pointer (07:18) So Habits and Routines are Bad? The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: October 2nd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sAJ9sYbewjT3L3vBp/how-to-feel-more-alive --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

    8 min
See All (250)

About

Audio narrations of LessWrong posts.

Information

  • Creator
    LessWrong
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    250
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    LessWrong (30+ Karma)

You Might Also Like