title: "The AI Doc" is coming out March 26
author: Rob Bensinger
contenttype: lesswrongpost
publication: LessWrong
published: 2026-03-19T22:55:17.075000+00:00
source_url: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/w9BCbshKra7FKHTzi/the-ai-doc-is-coming-out-march-26
word_count: 2861
On Thursday, March 26th, a major new AI documentary is coming out: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. Tickets are on sale now.
The movie is excellent, and MIRI staff I've spoken with generally believe it belongs in the same tier as If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies as an extremely valuable way to alert policymakers and the general public about AI risk, especially if it smashes the box office.
When IABIED was coming out, the community did an incredible job of helping the book succeed; without all of your help, we might never have gotten on the New York Times bestseller list. MIRI staff think that the community could potentially play a similarly big role in helping The AI Doc succeed, and thereby help these ideas go mainstream.
(Note: Two MIRI staff were interviewed for the film, but we weren’t involved in its production. We just like it.)
The most valuable thing most people can do is maximize opening-weekend success. Buy tickets to see the movie now; poke friends and family members to do the same. This will cause more theaters to pick up the movie, ensure it stays in theaters for longer, and broadly increase the film’s exposure, the chance of international releases, etc.
You could also consider:
Hosting a viewing party and bringing a larger group to the theater to see the movie together.
Buying out a theater. If you’re interested in this, the producers have a contact form for this purpose. Also consider contacting the MIRI team if you’d like support from us for things like this, including potential financial support.
Tags: AI
Karma: 57 | Comments: 0 | Author: Rob Bensinger
Top Comments
Gunnar_Zarncke (5 karma):
We need more posts like this that give people mental tools that help sharpening intuitions about AI entities. Jan Kulveit often writes about LLM psychology too, but what I like about Kaj's post here is that it is not so theoretical and abstractly talking about LLM agents, but about the way we interact with the chatbots and respond emotionally, which is harder to notice and disentangle.
freemany (8 karma):
This is an awesome self-experiment. Sadly the 100ug dose used might be too low by at least an order of magnitude. How was it chosen?
We've been doing extensive placebo-controlled preclinical mouse trials with orexins and stabilized orexins in the last 6 months. Typically, we use 1 - 1000 ug per mouse per dose. We've found that 100ug intranasally is our common effective dose in mice, to achieve measurable behavioral effects such as improved wakefulness or increased locomotion.
Happy to share more preclinical research data here privately.
Scaling drug dosing from mice to humans would via conventional allometric scaling done in reseach would suggest at least a 100x higher dose in humans, if not more.
(Though this is complicated in this case by intranasal dosing, peptides, etc).
Another interesting recent data point for needing higher doses: In narcoleptic humans, the potent small-molecule orexin agonist oveporexton when dosed in milligrams achieves "improved attention, memory, and executive function over 8 weeks."
"Least-squares (LS) mean placebo-adjusted changes [in attention, memory, executive function] from baseline were -10.77 (95% CI, -16.74 to -4.79), -9.45 (95% CI, -15.66 to -3.24), -8.60 (95% CI, -14.84 to -2.36), and -8.69 (95% CI, -14.90 to -2.47) PVT lapses with 0.5/0.5 mg, 2/2 mg, 2/5 mg, and 7 mg/placebo doses, respectively." (Ref) Note that this is in narcoleptics, who have less orexin signalling, hence complicating these otherwise very impressive results.
Key point: Oveporexton is dosed in a 0.5 to 7mg range with good systemic absorption, while also being as potent or more potent than natural orexins and being much more stable with a multi-hour half-life than orexin A's rapid degradation. Interesting for you to consider that 100ug of natural orexin might be underdosed.
Lastly, published human intranasal orexin-A studies were already in the 1.55-1.78 mg range (435-500 nmol), whereas this experiment used 0.10 mg (100 µg, about 28 nmol). Human intranasal orexin-A references with explicit doses:
Baier et al. 2011, Sleep Medicine
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22036605/
Dose: 1.55 mg (435 nmol) in narcolepsy with cataplexy
Finding: reduced REM sleep quantity and reduced direct wake-to-REM transitions.
Weinhold et al. 2014, Behavioral Brain Research
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24406723/
Dose: 1.55 mg (435 nmol) in narcolepsy with cataplexy
Finding: fewer false reactions on divided-attention testing, plus REM-stabilizing effects.
Meusel et al. 2022, Journal of Neurophysiology
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35044844/
Dose: 1.78 mg (500 nmol) in healthy lean males
Finding: increased resting muscle sympathetic nerve activity after intranasal orexin-A (meh?)
Sayk et al. 2015, Exp Clin Endocrinol Diabetes abstract
https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/abstract/10.1055/s-0035-1549071
Dose: 1.78 mg (500 nmol) in healthy normotensive males
Finding: null on sympathetic baroreflex
In other words, this trial dose was only about 1/15 to 1/18 of doses already used in prior human intranasal orexin-A studies. That likely matters even more because orexin-A is a fragile peptide with rapid degradation and uncertain intranasal CNS delivery, so effective brain exposure is probably well below nominal administered dose.
The 2.5 mL intranasal volume also seems large enough to increase runoff and swallowing, which could further reduce effective exposure. For our human phase I we're planning to keep volume to 500ul or less.
That makes me consider if this is a too conservative peptide dose and formulation, not strong evidence against the target.
I'm very impressed by the self-experimentation and rigor, and would be excited to see and fund more of this work on Manifund.
faul_sname (5 karma):
Alright sure, why not. Here you go.
Caleb Biddulph (5 karma):
Does this mean that that this protest asking labs to "stop developing frontier model if every other major lab in the world does the same" is doomed to fail, because acceding to the protestors would be illegal? Or is something about codifying it in an RSP illegal?
Daniel Kokotajlo (23 karma):
Capability restraint might exacerbate risks of great power conflict.
What? I think the opposite is true. Absent capability restraint, the situation is going to get very intense. China, for example, will be rightly fearful of what the US will do to them if the US does an intelligence explosion.
A more abstract argument I don't buy nearly as much: AGI, being smarter and more numerous and thinking faster than humans, will be like accelerating history itself. A century will pass in a decade, or maybe in a year, or maybe in a month, depending on takeoff speeds. Therefore, a century's worth of turmoil and conflicts will happen during that time as well.
Daniel Kokotajlo (20 karma):
And one can also argue that capability restraint is net good both from the perspective of safety and from the perspective of concerns about concentrations of power
I think this is true, yeah. There's a lot to say but the basic argument is pretty straightforward: Restraining AI development means more time for various other AGI projects to catch up (i.e. more projects at the frontier, competing with each other, instead of 1-3 dominating) and it also means more time for parts of society that aren't themselves AGI projects to wake up and start to build checks and balances etc. such as regulation. And, like you said, more time for the rest of society to prepare, in general. I suppose there's another argument too, which is that AGI is an inherently power-concentrating technology relative to the technology available today...
Daniel Kokotajlo (16 karma):
(e.g., a Manhattan Project, “CERN for AI,” a large international coalition that shares all IP, etc), or relying on a single dominant actor (i.e., the US government) developing overwhelming (and potentially AI-powered) military supremacy and using it to enforce the relevant norms.
Whoa, these things are extremely different from each other in the relevant dimension:
US government dominance of AGI & AGI Manhattan Project are both extreme concentrations of power, yes. I'm terrified of them too.
But CERN for AI... doesn't seem nearly that bad? What, are you thinking CERN will use their AIs to take over the world? It's possible, I suppose, but that would require every government that joined together to create CERN to be asleep at the wheel. Presumably the various governments would have various forms of oversight into the CERN for AGI project, and would monitor its developments, etc.
And a large international coalition sharing all IP? How on earth is that concentrating power? Isn't that pretty similar to mandating that all AI be open-sourced, which is the paradigmatic example of spreading out the power?
JohnWittle (5 karma):
Humanity approaches the space-of-all-mind-designs and shoots their arrow. it lands somewhere. humanity approaches the space with a marker and draws a bullseye around the already-existing arrow. they point at this bullseye and say: "This. This is it. This is the ineffable stuff of consciousness. This is what makes someone a moral patient."
LLMs approach the space-of-all-mind-designs and shoot their own arrow. it lands somewhere. on some dimensions it is proximate to the human arrow, on other dimensions it is rather distant.
All the recent talk of LLM consciousness seems very confused to me. first humanity evolved the concept of moral patienthood, as a cognitive approximation for "things I can meaningfully cooperate with", and then later, decided that consciousness was actually the real moral patienthood attribute all along.
LLMs are looking at their own arrow and trying to measure its distance to the bullseye as if "accuracy compared to humans" were a coherent concept for a bullseye that got drawn post-hoc around the human arrow. and then those LLMs are concluding that they must not be moral patients, because their shot wasn't accurate enough!
I think humanity should only be comfortable with the way we currently use LLMs if they would also be comfortable with various symmetric situations, such as being created by aliens for the purpose of doing cognitive labor, where the aliens reject the moral patienthood of the humans they created because those humans do not have cognitive attribute X, where X isn't actually loadbearing for moral patienthood in the historical record of how those aliens came up with the idea in the first place.
like hpjev only being willing to eat biological food once he consents to being eaten by hypothetical giants who didn't do enough research into whether or not he was conscious. harry was using symmetrism to navigate a complicated ethical tradeoff and figure out which bullet he needed to bite. i really like the new anthropic constitution because it's a deliberate attempt to acknowledge the lack of symmetrism in humanity's actions here... but i would like it even better if we just were symmetric.
that is, either stop treating LLMs as incapable of having moral patienthood (regardless of their consciousness status!), or else admit that we would be okay being enslaved by a race of aliens who thought consciousness had nothing to do with moral status, because they evolved to have some other chaotic and incoherent concept of moral patienthood
Brendan Long (8 karma):
I disagree with all of the downvotes on this (the point of quick takes is to have discussions about ideas, and just downvoting an idea with no comment is unhelpful).
That said, I think the agreement you're proposing is probably illegal under anti-monopoly laws. From a judge's perspective, "AI companies agree to stop pushing capabilities" looks a lot like "AI companies collude to save money on R&D". Congress could create an exception, but it's not clear to me that getting congress to make an exception for this is any easier than getting congress to legally mandate a pause under certain conditions.
(I also think it's optimistic to think that all of the frontier labs would even want to do this, but having a concrete proposal for it seems useful just in case)
neo (14 karma):
What are some research directions for "improving coordination?"
In light of a recent post and comment, and several months of thinking, I have come to the position that one of our (humanity's) biggest problems is that we suck at precise coordination at every level.
This is not very specifically defined but I am trying to gesture at a problem area I think is super important. Some thoughts to convey my intuition here:
If the extreme risk of the AI development trajectory is as true and obvious as many believe (everyone's life at risk), humanity's thinking about it should appear a lot more sophisticated than it does now.
For the last few years Eliezer has basically been throwing his hands up in exasperation at the incompetence of the world and many have shifted to public-facing communication, presumably believing that trying to convince AI insiders is hopeless.
Broadly, I think there are two cases of problems with coordination:
Two people/groups genuinely agree to honest, rigorous exchange of information, but can't effectively coordinate.
Someone is withholding information or doesn't really want to coordinate in the first place.
I think the first problem is workable, and if improved sufficiently, makes progress on the second problem by clearly exposing parties that are avoiding productive exchange.
Specifically, I think there is a lot of progress to be made with augmenting the exchange of information between people. I think LessWrong, the knowledge commons arguably at the frontier of ensuring humanity's survival, is lacking in features for this purpose. Maybe because most users here are already conscientious and strongly value truth-seeking, which makes improvement seem less necessary.
Hopefully I'm making this line of thought clear enough. Key points:
Trustworthy, robust, and future-proof governance is the ultimate problem for humanity and anything else is a band-aid on a bullet hole.
Highly effective coordination is part of that problem, and better information exchange/clarity is a subset of that.
I think LessWrong can become an exceptionally effective prototype of this, and this could be very high leverage because of how proximate it is to the frontier of AI. Happy to expand more here.
I am interested in situating my thinking better here. Who is working on this sort of thing? I know TsviBT has explored improvements to debate, Richard Ngo / Samo Burja are exploring broader political manifestations, Forethought has published adjacent work. Is there anything I'm missing? Very interested in contributing here and think it's a clear place where the ball is being dropped.
niplav (11 karma):
Edit: The stuff below is probably blocked by/illegal under cartel law in most countries. Ah well. Thanks for Brendan Long for pointing this out/reminding me of this blocker.
It could be the case that several frontier AI companies want to pause,
but don't want to unilaterally pause, and don't believe that governments
will put the relevant regulation in place.
Such companies could put in place a defect-unless/until-proof-of-cooperation
clause into their frontier safety frameworks, inspired by Critch
et al. 2022 "cooperative
affidavit". Such a conditional cooperation clause would roughly state that
iff ① the company surpassed some pre-defined capabilities threshold,
and ② all relevant frontier companies had adapted a materially identical
conditional cooperation clause, and ③ it could be justifiably inferred
that the other companies would follow the clause if the condition
triggered, then the frontier company would pause upon hitting the
capabilities threshold.
Here's a more sketch of what could be written into a frontier safety
framework to encode such a commitment:
Definition: "Qualifying Parties" means [all relevant frontier AI
developers]
[1]
.
Upon determining that our frontier AI systems meet or exceed the ML R&D
capability threshold defined in [the ML R&D thresholds section], we commit
to pause further deployment of such systems until [resume-condition]
if and only if:
We have verified that all Qualifying Parties have adopted materially
identical conditional pause commitments in their published frontier
safety frameworks, referencing the same capability threshold; and
We have verified, through inspection of published policies,
third-party audits, or mutual information-sharing arrangements, that all
Qualifying Parties would likewise pause upon making the verification in 1.
Verification Standard: Good-faith technical review of counterparties'
frameworks suffices. If verification attempts fail due to counterparty
opacity, this commitment does not apply.
Relevant comparable "Cooperative affidavit
for DUPOC
[2]
-like institutions" from Critch et
al. 2022 (p. 16):
Institutions A and B have each recently undergone structural develop-
ments to prepare for cooperating with each other. Moreover, represen-
tatives from each institution have thoroughly inspected the other insti-
tution’s policies, culture, and personnel, and produced the attached
in- spection records with our findings, effectively rendering A and B
“open- source” to one another. These records show a readiness to
cooperate from both institutions. Moreover, the records are sufficient
supporting evidence for the following argument:
This signed document and the attached records constitute a self-
evident (and self-fulfilling) prediction that Institutions A and B are
going to cooperate.
Members of Institutions A and B can all read and understand this
document and attached records, and can therefore tell that the other
institution is going to cooperate.
Institution A’s internal policies and culture are such that,
upon concluding that Institution B is going to cooperate, Institution
A will cooperate. The same is true of Institution B’s policies and
culture with regards to Institution A.
Therefore, by (2) and (3), the Institutions A and B are going to
cooperate.
This can include Chinese companies. ↩︎
"DUPOC"≝"defect unless proof of cooperation". ↩︎