Toby Ord Profile picture
Sep 14, 2020 6 tweets 2 min read Read on X
A group of astronomers have found phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, which is hard to explain other than by the presence of life. This is not at all conclusive, but should prompt further investigation.

nature.com/articles/s4155…

How might it matter, if there was life? 1/6
The scientists don’t suggest intelligent life; we are probably talking about microbes. But this could still be a big deal. It would mean life either started independently there or was transported between bodies in our Solar System. Let’s focus on the former. 2/6
The possibility that it is extremely hard and rare for life to begin is currently the best explanation for why we don’t see signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos, despite the presence of so many stars in our galaxy and galaxies in the observable universe. 3/6
It is thus often seen as a downer. But many of the alternative explanations for the silence in the skies are worse. One prominent alternative is that technological civilisations inevitably destroy themselves. 4/6
If we did find independent life on other planets it would shift our credences away from the hypothesis that life is hard to start and towards the hypothesis that it is all too easy to end. This would be bad news for our prospects. 5/6
If you want all the details, I’ve written a paper on this with @anderssandberg and @KEricDrexler. 6/6
arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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More from @tobyordoxford

Sep 15
DISSECTING A BLACK HOLE
I’ve designed a new kind of diagram for understanding black holes — and made a beautiful poster to show it off.
The key idea is to show the many different layers of a black hole, each with their own unique properties.
Let's dive in!
1/🧵 Image
I call this a ‘record diagram’.
By slicing through all of these spheres, we see the black hole laid out like a record on a turntable, displaying all its different tracks — both the classic hits that may have blurred together in lower fidelity diagrams and some deep cuts.
2/
Distances near black holes are best measured in units of M — a key distance based on the black hole’s mass. For a black hole the mass of our sun, M = 1.5 km. For a mass of a million suns, M = 1.5 million km.
Most interesting things happen when you pass integer multiples of M.
3/ Image
Read 34 tweets
Sep 10
I’ve just released a new paper. The idea arose from a conversation with @DAcemogluMIT about the limitations of today’s generative AI systems.
🧵 1/
They are good at interpolating between different examples in their training data and perhaps even extrapolating further in a direction they’ve seen.
But they appear to be unable to head off in novel directions — to break free of the subspace where all their training data lies.
2/
The ability to find new locations in the space of paintings, poetry, music, or ideas that transcend what has come before is a key part of creativity.
Can we understand what is lacking in AI creativity today as an inability to move beyond the subspace of the training data?
3/
Read 16 tweets
Jun 30
The James Webb Space Telescope has started capturing images of galaxies so far away that they are causally disconnected from the Earth — nothing done here or there could ever interact. 🧵
1/ Image
The latest of these, JADES-GS-z14-0, was discovered at the end of May this year. It is located 34 billion light years away — almost three quarters of the way to the edge of the observable universe.
2/
The light we are capturing was released by the galaxy about 13.5 billion years ago — just 0.3 billion years after the Big Bang. So we are seeing a snapshot of how it looked in the early days of the universe.
3/
Read 20 tweets
May 16
Since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been a lot of loose talk about AI having passed the Turing Test (or even 'blown past' it). But this was premature and probably incorrect.
A new paper tests whether GPT-4 passes the Turing test, with mixed results. Let's explore:
1/n
First, let's be clear on a few things about the Turing Test.
1) Pretty much everyone agrees it doesn't constitute a definition or a necessary or sufficient condition for intelligence.
2/n
2) But that doesn't mean it isn't an interesting benchmark. e.g. it was very interesting to know when AI beat humans at Chess and at Go, even though no-one thinks they are definitive of intelligence.
3/n
Read 13 tweets
Nov 19, 2023
Most coverage of the firing of Sam Altman from OpenAI is treating it as a corporate board firing a high-performing CEO at the peak of their success. The reaction is shock and disbelief.
But this misunderstands the nature of the board and their legal duties.
1/n
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit. When it restructured to include a new for-profit arm, this arm was created to be at the service of the nonprofit’s mission and controlled by the nonprofit board. This is very unusual, but the upshots are laid out clearly on OpenAI’s website:
2/n Image
As this says, the nonprofit board has no duty to ensure that the for-profit makes money. Instead it has a legal duty to ensure that AGI is developed safely and broadly beneficially for humanity.
So why might they have fired the CEO of the for-profit, Sam Altman?
3/n
Read 11 tweets
Aug 23, 2023
New paper: The Lindy Effect

One book has been in print for 3 years; another for 300. Which should we expect to go out of print first? 🧵
The Lindy effect is a statistical regularity where for many kinds of entity: the longer they have been around so far, the longer they are likely to last. It was first clearly posed by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1982: Image
The idea was developed by Nassim Taleb in his book, Antifragile. The book focused on things which aren’t weakened by exposure to shocks and stresses, but instead become stronger and more robust.
He describes the Lindy effect in those terms: Image
Read 18 tweets

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