Leading Indicators of AI Danger: Owain Evans on Situational Awareness & Out-of-Context Reasoning, from The Inside View

In this special crossover episode of The Cognitive Revolution, Nathan introduces a conversation from The Inside View featuring Owain Evans, AI alignment researcher at UC Berkeley's Center for Human Compatible AI. Evans and host Michael Trazzi delve into critical AI safety topics, including situational awareness and out-of-context reasoning. Discover Evans' groundbreaking work on the reversal curse and connecting the dots, exploring how large language models process and infer information. This timely discussion highlights the importance of situational awareness in AI systems, particularly in light of recent advancements in AI capabilities. Don't miss this insightful exploration of the evolving relationship between human and artificial intelligence. Check out "The Inside View" Podcast here: https://theinsideview.ai/ Apply to join over 400 Founders and Execs in the Turpentine Network: https://www.turpentinenetwork.co/ SPONSORS: Weights & Biases RAG++: Advanced training for building production-ready RAG applications. Learn from experts to overcome LLM challenges, evaluate systematically, and integrate advanced features. Includes free Cohere credits. Visit https://wandb.me/cr to start the RAG++ course today. Shopify: Shopify is the world's leading e-commerce platform, offering a market-leading checkout system and exclusive AI apps like Quikly. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. Get a $1 per month trial at https://shopify.com/cognitive. LMNT: LMNT is a zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix that's redefining hydration and performance. Ideal for those who fast or anyone looking to optimize their electrolyte intake. Support the show and get a free sample pack with any purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/tcr. Notion: Notion offers powerful workflow and automation templates, perfect for streamlining processes and laying the groundwork for AI-driven automation. With Notion AI, you can search across thousands of documents from various platforms, generating highly relevant analysis and content tailored just for you - try it for free at https://notion.com/cognitiverevolution Oracle: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds; offers one consistent price, and nobody does data better than Oracle. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive of OCI at https://oracle.com/cognitive CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) About the Show (00:00:22) Sponsors: Weights & Biases RAG++ (00:01:28) About the Episode (00:04:10) Intro (00:05:09) Owain Evans' Research (00:06:36) Situational Awareness (00:09:07) Measuring Situational Awareness (00:14:29) Claude's Situational Awareness (00:19:06) Sponsors: Shopify | LMNT (00:22:01) Needle in a Haystack (00:26:26) Concrete Examples of Tasks (00:34:51) Sponsors: Notion | Oracle (00:37:29) Anti-Imitation Tasks (00:50:03) GPT-4 Base Model Results (01:01:48) Benchmark Saturation (01:07:23) Future Research Directions (01:12:01) Out-of-Context Reasoning (01:27:29) Safety Implications (01:36:24) Scaling and Reasoning (01:44:28) Mixture of Functions (01:54:12) Research Style and Taste (02:08:51) Capabilities and Downsides (02:18:56) Reception and Impact (02:25:30) Outro SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk