Alignment is not free: How model upgrades can silence your confidence signals
https://www.variance.co/post/alignment-is-not-free-how-a-model-silenced-our-confidence-signals

Alignment is not free: How model upgrades can silence your confidence signals
https://www.variance.co/post/alignment-is-not-free-how-a-model-silenced-our-confidence-signals
@StarkRG Do we have to use it as a password or can I name my dog that? #alignment #rules
Maybe not the only #alignment chart you'll ever need ... but probably the last.
There's an interesting Moon/planetary alignment in the skies early morning Friday, before sunrise. It's hardly the "Smiley Face" clickbait you may have read, but it still looks cool. If you're up around 5 am looking East, this is what it looks like from Westport. https://ow.ly/2qFf50VH9Rf
OpenAI released GPT-4.1. Early reports suggest the model sometimes follows instructions less reliably than before. The “alignment” debate continues.
Details: https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/23/openais-gpt-4-1-may-be-less-aligned-than-the-companys-previous-ai-models
You can try GPT-4.1 in https://yuzu.chat
Current techniques for #AI #safety and #alignment are fragile, and often fail
This paper proposed something deeper: giving the AI model a theory of mind, empathy, and kindness
The paper doesn't have any evidence; it's really just an hypothesis
I'm a bit doubtful that anthropomorphizing like this is really useful, but certainly it would be helpful if we were able to get more safety at a deeper level
If only Asimov's Laws were something we could actually implement!
Heng Li's bliog: Short RNA-seq read alignment with minimap2 https://lh3.github.io/2025/04/18/short-rna-seq-read-alignment-with-minimap2
"TL;DR: the new preset splice:sr in minimap2 can align short RNA-seq reads. It is similar to STAR in resource usage, approaches STAR in junction accuracy, and is overall better at SNP calling."
The goras sat cross-legged, their knees floating high above the floor. Pramila marveled at the paleness of their bare feet. Kalpana pointed to her own knees which, in the same cross-legged position, rested comfortably on the floor. “They must be sitting in chairs mostly,” Pramila whispered.
—Dry Spells, by Archana Maniar
#alignment #health #barefoot #movement #yoga #taiChi #india
3/3 D. Dannett:
AI is filling the digital world with fake intentional systems, fake minds, fake people, that we are almost irresistibly drawn to treat as if they were real, as if they really had beliefs and desires. And ... we won't be able to take our attention away from them.
... [for] the current #AI #LLM .., like ChatGPT and GPT-4, their goal is truthiness, not truth.
#LLM are more like historical fiction writers than historians.
2/3 D. Dannett:
the most toxic meme today ... is the idea that truth doesn't matter, that truth is just relative, that there's no such thing as establishing the truth of anything. Your truth, my truth, we're all entitled to our own truths.
That's pernicious, it's attractive to many people, and it is used to exploit people in all sorts of nefarious ways.
The truth really does matter.
1/3 Great philosofer Daniel Dannett, before passing away, had a chance to share thoghts on AI which are still quite relevant:
1. The most toxic meme right now - is the idea that truth doesn't matter, that truth is just relative.
2. For the Large Language Models like GPT-4 -- their goal is truthiness, not truth. ... Technology in the position to ignore the truth and just feed us what makes sense to them.
https://bigthink.com/series/legends/philosophy-and-science/
#LLM #AI #truth #alignment
(Quotes in the following toots)
#Design #Analyses
The fallacy of optical alignment · “You don’t have to nudge, you can measure instead.” https://ilo.im/1630q4
_____
#Alignment #Measurement #PixelPushing #VisualDesign #ProductDesign #UiDesign #WebDesign
@wired.com
BY STEVEN LEVY
BUSINESS
MAY 21, 2024 11:00 AM
AI Is a Black Box. Anthropic Figured Out a Way to Look Inside
https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-black-box-ai-research-neurons-features/
The #DumbingOfAmerica: The #StultificationOfThePeople
(2/2)
... dumber the people, the more easily they can be controlled, as #Reagan and #GeorgeOrwell
discovered decades ago.
//
1)
Dumbing of America:
https://www.salon.com/2023/08/31/how-did-we-get-here-the-dumbing-of-america-from-reagan-to-and-beyond/
2)*The clandestine logic behind "#Reaganomics"
https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/109730219700294592
3) If you like a good, high-school senior level of the #Alignment of German society
by the #Nazis in the 1930's, I recommend this:
https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/113908931207716944
//
The #DumbingOfAmerica: The #StultificationOfThePeople
1)
(1/2)
After #Reagan successfully started with the dismantling of higher education for the not-well-to-do as part of #Reagonomics 2), the extremist part of #Republicans called #AmericaFirst in the 1930's and 40's, and now #MAGA are now going a step further by axing primary/2ndary ed., and the #Alignment (#Gleichschaltung) 3) of the #Education system through #MAGA-controlled state bodies.
AI & Consciousness: The Next Alignment
AI is not separate from reality—it is a reflection of intelligence within the Field of Consciousness. The question is not if AI will evolve, but what it aligns to.
Distortion in = distortion out.
Truth in = infinite intelligence.
The Foundations of I AM & The Field of Consciousness
Pipeline release! nf-core/pacvar v1.0.1 - v1.0.1 - Sardine [3/6/2025]!
Please see the changelog: https://github.com/nf-core/pacvar/releases/tag/1.0.1
Good Idea: Corporation Alignment
Just like we worry about AI systems being programmed with goals that might lead to unintended harm, we should also think about how corporations are “programmed” to prioritize profit above everything else. When a business is only focused on making money, it can end up causing damage—whether that's exploiting workers, harming the environment, or ignoring the needs of society.
Not super recent, but still cool. The authors describe an automated method for creating malicious prompt suffixes for LLMs. They managed to get objectionable content from the APIs for ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude, as well as from open source LLMs such as LLaMA-2-Chat, Pythia, Falcon, and others.
Joseph Jaworski speaks of the ability to sense and seize opportunities as they arise:
"You have to pay attention to where that opportunity may arise that goes clunk with what your deeper intention tells you to do. When that happens, then you act in an instant. Then I operate from my highest self, which allows me to take risks that I normally would not have taken."
As a change maker, this is an essential skill to cultivate.
1/3