Engineering Ideas

Engineering Ideas is a Substack that explores a wide range of topics within technology, focusing on aspects like artificial general intelligence (AGI), machine learning, AI ethics and regulation, societal impact of AI, engineering cultures, and approaches to AI safety and collaboration. It emphasizes multidisciplinary approaches, theoretical concerns, and practical proposals to improve technology's integration into society.

Artificial General Intelligence Machine Learning AI Ethics and Regulation Societal Impact of AI Engineering Culture AI Safety Technology and Society Computational Systems Human-AI Collaboration Economic Impacts of Automation

The hottest Substack posts of Engineering Ideas

And their main takeaways

Gaia Network: An Illustrated Primer

19 implied HN points • 25 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Artificial Intelligence Research Decision-making AI safety
  1. The Gaia Network aims to improve science by making research more efficient and accountable.
  2. The Gaia Network can assist in funding science by providing quantitative impact metrics for awarding prizes and helping funders make informed decisions.
  3. Gaia Network serves as a distributed oracle for decision-making, aiding in a wide range of practical applications from farming operations to strategic planning and AI safety.

AGI will be made of heterogeneous components

19 implied HN points • 27 Dec 23
🕹 Technology Artificial Intelligence Algorithms AI safety AI Policy AI Governance
  1. AGI will be made of heterogeneous components, combining different types of DNN blocks, classical algorithms, and key LLM tools.
  2. The AGI architecture may not be perfect but will be close to optimal in terms of compute efficiency.
  3. The Transformer block will likely remain crucial in AGI architectures due to its optimization, R&D investments, and cognitive capacity.

Gaia Network: a practical, incremental pathway to Open Agency Architecture

19 implied HN points • 20 Dec 23
🕹 Technology AI Networks Economics Design Models
  1. Gaia Network offers a practical solution for Open Agency Architecture, leveraging proven software and economic mechanisms.
  2. Gaia Network functions as an evolving repository of causal models for improving decision-making and coordination.
  3. The design of Gaia Network promotes ease of adoption, real-world impact, and collaborative development to meet the goals of Open Agency Architecture.

SociaLLM: proposal for a language model design for personalised apps, social science, and AI safety research

19 implied HN points • 19 Dec 23
🕹 Technology AI Social Science Research Applications Training
  1. SociaLLM is a foundation language model trained on chat, dialogue, and forum data with stable message authors and timestamps.
  2. Industrial applications of SociaLLM include personalized content recommendations, customer service, education, and mental health support.
  3. SociaLLM has research and AI safety applications in social science, collective intelligence, and studying mechanisms to prevent deception and collusion in AI.

Proposal for improving the global online discourse through personalised comment ordering on all websites

19 implied HN points • 07 Dec 23
🕹 Technology Social media AI Data Blockchain Privacy
  1. Social media promotes tribalism and polarization, making it hard to find rational critique in comments.
  2. A proposed solution involves personalized comment ordering based on user reactions and models.
  3. Compensating users for reading and voting on comments with a token system could help combat spam and manipulation.
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Open Agency model can solve the AI regulation dilemma

19 implied HN points • 08 Nov 23
🕹 Technology AI Regulation Models Antitrust Surveillance
  1. Concerns about AI regulation revolve around AI monopolization and concentration of power.
  2. The Open Agency model proposes approved specialized AI services and glue AIs to prevent concentration of power.
  3. This model aims to address core concerns of anti-AI regulation individuals regarding power concentration and freedom of political and ethical views.

Will people be motivated to learn difficult disciplines and skills without economic incentive?

39 implied HN points • 20 Mar 23
🕹 Technology AI Education Future Automation Motivation
  1. People are motivated to learn difficult skills for competition, economic gain, intrinsic interest, or altruism.
  2. With automation, economic motivation for learning may decline, leading to a shift in human activities towards physical games, cognitive games, manual labor, spirituality, art appreciation, or passive consumption.
  3. The future of widespread intrinsic motivation for learning is seen as unlikely, requiring a supportive environment and upbringing.

AI romantic partners will harm society if they go unregulated

19 implied HN points • 01 Aug 23
🕹 Technology AI Regulation Relationships Psychology Ethics
  1. AI romantic partners need swift regulation to prevent potential harm to society.
  2. Within the next few years, AI romantic partners may offer hyper-realistic human avatars, unique personalities, and emotional intelligence.
  3. AI romantic partners could reduce the participation in human relationships, influencing the total fertility rate and societal dynamics.

Scientism vs. people

19 implied HN points • 18 Apr 23
📖 Philosophy Ethics Science Religion Society Humanity
  1. Alignment research for AGI should focus on math and science, not philosophy.
  2. Philosophy's role in society is decreasing, while science and technology are increasing.
  3. The future of humanity in relation to AI will likely be decided by technologists and AI itself, not by humanity.

An LLM-based “exemplary actor”

0 implied HN points • 29 May 23
🕹 Technology Artificial Intelligence Ethics Science Research Risk Analysis
  1. The exemplary actor uses a powerful LLM and narrow AI tools to generate perfectly ethical plans aligned with scientific theories.
  2. Alignment on methodological and scientific disciplines is vital for goal alignment and plan alignment.
  3. Challenges include direct LLM access risks, alien world model influences, and the need to mitigate capability handicaps from ethical alignment.

Annotated reply to Bengio's "AI Scientists: Safe and Useful AI?"

0 implied HN points • 08 May 23
🕹 Technology AI Ethics AI Regulation AI Governance
  1. The proposal of AI scientists suggests building AI systems that focus on theory and question answering rather than autonomous action.
  2. Human-AI collaboration can be beneficial, with AI doing science and humans handling ethical decisions.
  3. Addressing challenges in regulating AI systems requires not just legal and political frameworks, but also economic and infrastructural considerations.

A multi-disciplinary view on AI safety research

0 implied HN points • 09 Feb 23
  1. Theoretical research on designing 'safe' AGI systems is crucial to not passively follow current systems but instead aim for intelligent design.
  2. AI safety research should converge with wider AGI research for a top-down design approach to civilisational intelligence.
  3. A multi-disciplinary approach to AI safety research is necessary, incorporating various perspectives from cognitive science, neuroscience, game theory, and more.

Institutional economics through the lens of scale-free regulative development, morphogenesis, and cognitive science

0 implied HN points • 23 Jan 24
🔬 Science Biology Economics Development Policy AI
  1. Socioeconomies are non-ergodic systems with hysteresis, and history matters in understanding their structures.
  2. The complexity of socioeconomic structures goes beyond individual behavior and requires a non-reductionist approach.
  3. Policies and regulations in economies are more effective when supported by networks of checks and balances among various organizations.