Shannon Vallor

@shannonvallor.bsky.social

18K followers 2.2K following 3.4K posts

Philosopher/AI Ethicist at Univ of Edinburgh, FRSE. Co-Director @technomoralfutures.bsky.social and BRAID @braiduk.bsky.social, author of Technology and the Virtues (2016) and The AI Mirror (2024). Views my own. Humble servant to Carol and Puffin. She/her. .. more

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Shannon Vallor is an American philosopher of technology. She is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She previously taught at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California where she was the Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor of Philosophy and William J. Rewak, S.J. Professor at SCU. .. more

Neuroscience 30%

Computer science 22%

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 6h

she loves us but she loves adventures more

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 6h

Our neighbor took Puffin to the beach on Friday and now she is randomly jumping into the cars of anyone in his driveway

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 6h

no see, that's how I learned the lesson. I didn't ask, because I naively still assume that reporters write their own stories...

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 6h

Also, a different lesson learned this week from another media outlet--if a reporter says they want to talk to you about the ideas in your book, so you get on the phone but in fact all they actually want to talk about is the ideas of Will MacAskill and Amanda Askell, drop the phone like a hot potato

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 6h

Have just learned a lesson, so for the benefit of others: if you are contacted by a reporter for a media outlet, before you respond to their questions, ask whether they will be writing the piece themselves or whether their AI assistant will be writing it (if that matters to you).

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 6h

Reposted by Shannon Vallor

Natasha Devon @natashadevon.bsky.social · 1d

The same people who said ‘all lives matter’ in response to BLM are now arguing that refugees should be left to drown in the Channel.

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 1d

@zelny.bsky.social

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 1d

This is a very useful thread for bleary-eyed PhD students trying to write a dozen job applications while also completing/preparing to defend a dissertation

noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 1d

sometimes i give people feedback on job market materials, and thought it might be useful to do a thread of some common feedback i find myself giving. just one guy's opinion (and one thing that can be frustrating about producing and getting feedback on these documents is that informed people *will*

Reposted by Shannon Vallor

Luke Ontario @coolhand.bsky.social · 1d

There is a latent human anxiety about being kicked off the top of the food chain that seems to be stronger than the anxiety that we might destroy ourselves directly. So now we have abject terror about AI for the wrong reasons alongside complacency about the damage caused by humans.

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 1d

honestly impressed!

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Brian Weatherson

noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 1d

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 1d

They are not reasoning from evidence to conclusions. They are starting from a conclusion (AI dwarfs all other dangers, priorities and moral duties) and working the evidence and numbers until they point there, and only there.

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 1d

omg I just now realised this! Now I want to throw it a party

(happy almost birthday to you too!)

Reposted by Shannon Vallor

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 1d

So the model acted in pursuit of goals imposed on it, which spawned sub-goals: that is how agents work. But did OpenAI know how they work? If so, why deploy this in the way they did? Why build a system that *does this* at all? Perhaps to ask: why build a gun that can go off at random?

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 1d

No, see, you don’t understand. Climate change may kill billions, but it will still leave enough rich people alive to seed the cosmos with AI. That is the only outcome that matters. (i am not kidding, this is their actual rationale)

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 1d

I choked on my coffee at that point

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 1d

This is going around as essential reading and for very good reason. Honestly the most incisive and full summary of the longtermism/x-risk pathology I have seen.

Every stanza is a gem, and the closing is genius, but my personal favorite, because I have had this exact conversation almost verbatim:

[nitter.app post excerpt from banteg]

>someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from
> expert judgement
>which expert
>us
>how calibrated
> extremely thoughtfully

›reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative
›still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude
›epistemic robustness achieved

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 1d

Of course not. I was responding to the suggestion that service is and was always inherently undesirable and degrading and that ‘no one on Earth’ could enjoy it. This is false; but it indicates how far we have gone in socially devaluing any work that involves helping others meet their needs

Reposted by Shannon Vallor

Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 1d

I promise you there would be no AI alignment problem if the CEOs of AI companies faced jail time if their AI killed anyone.

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Ben H. Ansell, Melissa Terras , and 3 more Shannon Vallor, Ben H. Ansell, Melissa Terras, Lesley A. Hall, Rebecca Sear, Paul Nightingale

Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 2d

When I tell you this is one of the most riveting, concise and accurate depictions of the catastrophically defective thought processes behind Effective Altruism and the larger Broligarch Epistemic Universe...

Run, don't walk, to read the whole thing (link below), which concludes thus:

Example of the problematic thinking behind Effective Altruism.

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

Anger is the personal vice I choose to fight and my soul’s nemesis but as God is my witness I’ll stop fighting it and die shrieking like the Furies if we all gotta relive some The Day After shit because assholes from my own hometown wanted to sleep with an immortal computer

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

in heaven judging all our asses rn

Stanislaw Petrow in der Küche seiner Wohnung in Frjasino, 03.07.2016
CC BY-SA 4.0

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

*stares in Stanislav Petrov*

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 2d

Sources: the US "almost started a war" after an AI-assisted report hallucinated that a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear weapons components in the Middle East (CNN)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Reposted by Shannon Vallor

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 2d

Sources: the US "almost started a war" after an AI-assisted report hallucinated that a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear weapons components in the Middle East (CNN)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

Your assumption that helping other people meet their needs, which is the large share of retail work, requires ‘little or no skill’ is WILD. Of course if the job has been reduced to rote reading of a sales script, then yes. But that’s just turning people into machines before you replace them with one

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

love to read a post that sums up some 13,000 article you just wrote in 67 characters

K.B. Spangler @kbspangler.com · 2d

*smashes bottle against table*

STOP STEALING OUR GOOGLY EYES AND USING THEM TO PRETEND YOU MADE GOD

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

Believe it or not yes. My family knew Lesley (our local grocery checker/bagger) as well as they knew me. My parents chatted with her almost every day. Sometimes she stopped by. She loved her job, she got to talk to people and know them, but not be stuck behind a desk. She had respect.

Reposted by Shannon Vallor

K.B. Spangler @kbspangler.com · 2d

*smashes bottle against table*

STOP STEALING OUR GOOGLY EYES AND USING THEM TO PRETEND YOU MADE GOD

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

I believe you, but it remains the case that no one put kiosks in a McDonalds or CVS in order to help introverts, and also that they are in broad effect bad for society

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

Yes that is why they can’t bring themselves to say it! Their owners would be displeased

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