EA - Misha Yagudin and Ozzie Gooen Discuss LLMs and Effective Altruism by Ozzie Gooen

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Misha Yagudin and Ozzie Gooen Discuss LLMs and Effective Altruism, published by Ozzie Gooen on January 6, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Misha and I recently recorded a short discussion about large language models and their uses for effective altruists.This was mostly a regular Zoom meeting, but we added some editing and text transcription. After we wrote up the transcript, both Misha and myself edited our respective sections.I think the final transcript is clearer and contains more information than the original discussion. I might even suggest using text-to-speech on the transcript rather than listening to the original audio. This back-and-forth might seem to ruin the point of presenting the video and audio, but I think it might be straightforwardly more pragmatic.TranscriptSectionsOpeningIntroductionHow do we use LLMs already?Could EAs contributing to applied LLMs be harmful?Potential LLM Application: Management and Emotional AssistancePotential LLM Application: Communication, BroadlyAside: Human-AI-Human CommunicationPotential LLM Application: Decision AutomationPotential LLM Application: EA Forum ImprovementsPotential LLM Application: EvaluationsLLM user interfacesWhat should EAs do with LLMs?OpeningOzzie: Hello. I just did a recording with my friend Misha, an EA researcher at ARB Research. This was a pretty short meeting about large language models and their use by effective altruists. The two of us are pretty excited about the potential for large language models to be used by effective altruists for different kinds of infrastructure.This is an experiment with us presenting videos publicly. Normally, our videos are just Zoom meetings. If anything, the Zoom meetings would be unedited. I found that to be quite a pain. These Zoom meetings typically don't look that great on their own, and they don't sound too terrific. So we've been experimenting with some methods to try to make that a little bit better.I am really curious about what people are going to think about this and am looking forward to what you say. Let's get right into it.IntroductionOzzie: For those watching us, this is Misha and me just having a meeting about large language models and their use for effective altruism.Obviously, large language models have been a very big deal very recently, and now there's a big question about how we could best apply them to EA purposes and what EAs could do best about it. So this is going to be a very quick meeting. We only have about half an hour.Right now, we have about seven topics. The main topic, though, is just the LLM applications.How do we use LLMs already?Ozzie: So, how do we use LLMs already?Misha: I think I use them for roughly 10 minutes on average per day.Sometimes I just ask questions or ask queries like, "Hey, I have these ingredients. What cocktails can I make?" Sometimes I try to converse with them about stuff. Sometimes I just use it (e.g., text-davinci-003) as a source of knowledge. I think it's more suitable for areas where verifiable expertise is rare.Take non-critical medicine, like skincare. I had a chat with it and got some recommendations in this domain, and I think it turned out really well. I previously tried to search for recommendations and asked a few people, but it didn't work.I also use it as an amplification for journaling whenever I'm doing any emotional or self-coaching work. Writing is great. I personally find it much easier to write “as if” I'm writing a message to someone—having ChatGPT obviously helps with that.Having a conversation partner activates some sort of social infrastructure in my brain. Humans solve math problems better when they are framed socially. And yeah, doing it with language models is straightforward and really good. Further, sometimes models give you hints or insights that yo...