Technology

"In larger scale work... metallic surfaces [are usually necessary]. Wilson and Bahlke... reported that in cracking stills... -steels ("stainless" steels) [are best], or aluminum or calorized iron. Copper and some s are not satisfactory, neither... [is] ... These authors were interested in ..."

"Franz Fischer... performed... pyrogenic experiments in a tinned-iron tube, which would have failed in an iron tube because of deposition or other causes. ...[He] has shown that a ferrous sulfide inner lining [formed by passing through] in an iron tube also prevents carbon deposit[s] ..."

"[S]ubstances... identified among... products of wood distillation may be arranged... in a few groups of related compounds. Much of the accurate knowledge... is due to the work of Klason."

"The groups from [wood distillation] are 1. s; formic to caproic, especially . Also, furoic, angelic, s, and valerolactone. For different woods, the total acid, calculated as acetic acid, varies between 4.3 and 6.8[%]... In vacuum distillation... formic acid may be... as high as 35[%] of the acetic acid, but in ordinary distillation at atmospheric pressure, it varies from 10-20[%] of the acetic acid. Only these two acids appear to be formed in appreciable amounts. 2. Alcohols; especially and , but also isoamyl and isobutyl alcohols, and buten-3-ol-2. The content is usually... 1.3-2[%]. 3. Esters; formed by interaction of the above acids and alcohols. 4. Ketones; ... and... its homologs... [plus] small quantities of , methyl cyclopentanone, and . The acetone is not a primary [distillation] product... but is formed secondarily from the acetic acid... homologs of acetone have a similar history. 5. Aldehydes; , , methylal and dimethyl acetal, valeric aldehyde, and methyl furfural. The pentosans are... the source of the furfural and other... homologs of furan... 6. Phenols and phenol methyl ethers [only about 1 percent of the wood distilled], mostly s of di- and tris. ...These substances come largely from the . 7. [< 0.2 percent of the total] , methyl amine, and methyl pyridine... 8. , , melene, etc. 9. es; the yields of , and vary with the maximum temperature of distillation, but at 350-400° the yields from s are about 8, 4 and 1.5[%], respectively. 10. Water; the yield... varies... 22.3-27.8[%]. 11. '. ...30-45[%] ...depending on the wood, and on the maximum temperature."

"Prompted by the need of non-petroleum-based fuels, coal research has reemerged... Pyrolysis research... has gained... momentum because of its close connection to combustion, hydropyrolysis and liquification. Spectroscopic and other instrumental techniques are... producing... information about coal structure and pyrolysis mechanisms, while modeling efforts are breaking new ground in sorting out chemical and physical phenomena... [P]ostulates and assumptions of current work provide a meaningful starting point in... theoretical descriptions of greater validity and applicability."

"[T]he survey of experimental results will be confined to flash pyrolysis at the exclusion of slow pyrolysis or ."

"[M]easurement of the coal particles' temperature is not trivial. In many cases the temperature... must be calculated from a model. The other two experimental problems, the suppression of secondary reactions and the collection of products, depend on the reactor geometry and flow pattern..."

"[P]roduct distribution is the most essential information relative to the commercial utilization of pyrolysis and... sheds considerable light on reaction mechanisms."

"We are... concerned with the evolution of tar and gases during the plastic state of coal. In this... consists of two processes in series: diffusion through the molten coal to some internal surface, that of a bubble or a pore; and transport with the bubble or through the pore to the surface of the particle. The role of preexisting pores is not well understood. ...[A] certain fraction of preexisting pores (< 60 Å) collapse during pyrolysis perhaps due to effects. Pores... 60-300 Å were preserved... but one could not distinguish preexisting pores and pores generated by the evolution of bubbles. It appears likely... the major... mass transfer occurs via bubbles while preexisting bubbles play a... minor role."

"Fast pyrolysis is a new technology that shows... potential for producing... liquid... for fuel applications or as a source for... chemicals."

"Fast pyrolysis is a high temperature process in which biomass is rapidly heated in the absence of oxygen. ...[I]t decomposes to generate mostly vapours... s and some . After cooling and condensation, a... liquid is formed which has a heating value about half... conventional . ...Fast pyrolysis ...is carefully controlled to give high yields ..."

"[E]ssential features... &bull; high heating and heat transfer rates... usually requires finely ground biomass feed &bull; carefully controlled... reaction temperature... [~]500C... vapour phase... short vapour residence typically [<]2 sec... &bull; rapid cooling of pyrolysis vapours to give... bio-oil product."

"For the average American, it's three hours and fifteen minutes. We touch our phones 2,617 times every twenty-four hours."

"Your phone is buzzing, beeping, glowing—always screaming for attention. Smartphones are tools, but they’re also slot machines in your pocket."

"Smartphones changed the world twice — first by connecting people, then by distracting them."

"Any adult who has doomscrolled at 3 a.m. knows how addictive smartphones can be. The remedy to phone-induced depression, obesity, and poor sleep at any age is as simple and as challenging as teaching — and practicing — self-control."

"We now carry devices in our pockets with more computing power than the machines that once sent humans to the Moon."

"I do not accept at all that any child under the age of 14 holds or uses a mobile phone for any reason whatsoever. It is haram (forbidden) for them to do so. I do not accept it at all, ever, ever. Whoever wants to destroy his or her child give them a cell phone. This is such a bad thing that absolutely destroys a child's behaviour because the child by mistake can come across very bad clips on the phone which can shock the child and ruin his or her behaviour, and it is difficult to fix the matter in this age. These scenes will be engraved in their memories forever."

"The smartphone is the signature technology of our age — powerful, portable, and persuasive enough to reshape human habits on a global scale."

"A smartphone is a tool powerful enough to enrich your mind or erase your attention — the difference is how you use it."

"For billions of people, the smartphone is not just a device; it is their primary connection to education, finance, health, and opportunity."

"It is not a matter of your own country outlawing superintelligence inside its own borders, and your country then being safe while chaos rages beyond. Superintelligence is not a regional problem because it does not have regional effects. If anyone anywhere builds superintelligence, everyone everywhere dies."

"If anyone builds it, everyone dies. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by benevolent corporations or selfish ones. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by researchers in the East or researchers in the West. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by reckless optimists or people who say they respect the problem. Nobody has the knowledge or skill to make a superintelligence that does their bidding."

"Speed is often better, but AI is different from nearly every problem we’ve faced so far. When missteps kill everyone, you can’t just run fast and accept a few early mistakes."

"“We’ll make them care about truth, and then we’ll be okay.” “We’ll design them to be submissive. “We’ll just have AI solve the ASI alignment problem for us.” These are not what engineers sound like when they respect the problem, when they know exactly what they’re doing. These are what the alchemists of old sounded like when they were proclaiming their grandiose philosophical principles about how to turn lead into gold."

"When imagining some new, unprecedented piece of future history, there is a temptation to fall into imagining that it will all go sensibly, rather than the way things usually go in history books. People sometimes ask us: How could the AI companies possibly be doing this thing, if matters are as we say? And maybe the simplest real answer is: Because this is the sort of awful, sad, real situation that you read about in history books, and not in the sensible world that exists only in imagination."

"The experts in this field argue in opaque academic terms about whether everyone on earth will die quickly (our view); versus whether humanity will be digitized and kept as pets by AIs that care about us to some tiny but nonzero degree; versus whether there’s a 20 percent chance we die, and an 80 percent chance that superintelligence will be harnessed successfully by a corporation, which will then be able to wield its power as they see fit.… When these are the debates experts are having, you don’t have to be certain which experts are right to understand that the current situation is not okay."

"Likewise, the problem is not that some people will have “evil” AIs and other people will have “benevolent” ones. The problem is that nobody anywhere has any idea how to make a benevolent AI, that nobody can engineer exact desires into AI. Flatly asserting that you will is not the same as presenting a solution."

"Space probes. Nuclear reactors. Computer security. What do all these lessons add up to, and what can we learn from them about the difficulty of aligning an artificial superintelligence? An artificial superintelligence is like a space probe, in that we cannot test it in quite the same environment where it needs to work, and by default it is not retrievable or correctable once it rises high above us…. An artificial superintelligence is like a nuclear reactor, in that its underlying reality involves immense, potentially self-amplifying forces, whose inner processes run faster than humans can react. An artificial superintelligence is like a computer security problem, in that every constraint an engineer tries to place upon the system might be bypassed by the intelligent forces that those constraints hinder."

"Perhaps you don’t believe us about any of the foreseeable reasons why shaping ASI is unreasonably hard. There’s an independent and separate case for disaster, an alternate set of historical lessons: Humans sometimes flub easy problems, never mind hard problems."

"We consider interpretability researchers to be heroes, and do not mean to degrade their work when we say: It’s not a good sign, when you ask an engineer what their safety plan is, and they start telling you about their plans to build the tools that will give them a better window into what the heck is going on inside the device they’re trying to control."

"From these lessons in combination, we infer an additional lesson for engineers: If someone doesn’t know exactly what’s going on inside the complicated device subject to all these curses – speed, narrow margins, self-amplification, complications – then they should stop. They should shut it down immediately, at the moment the behavior looks strange; don’t wait until the behavior becomes visibly concerning."

"From each of the four curses we named, we draw these lessons: 1. An engineering challenge is much harder to solve when the underlying processes run on time scales faster than humans can react…. 2. An engineering challenge is much harder to solve when there is a narrow margin for error, especially if it’s a narrow margin between “unimpressive” and “explosive.”… 3. Self-amplifying processes, like an overheating reactor boiling off its coolant water and then overheating more, leave little room for error…. 4. Complications make engineering problems worse…."

"We usually try to avoid shouting. It doesn’t help to shout, most of the time. It just makes people think you’re undisciplined. But at some point, after you’ve calmly gone through all the premises of your argument, we think it becomes unhelpful to downplay, lest people think it’s all just a game of calm words. When it comes to AI, the challenge humanity is facing is not surmountable with anything like humanity’s current level of knowledge and skill. It isn’t close. Attempting to solve a problem like that, with the lives of everyone on Earth at stake, would be an insane and stupid gamble that NOBODY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO TRY."

"If you know the history of science, this kind of talk is recognizable as the stage of folk theory, the stage where lots of different people are inventing lots of different theories that appeal to them personally, the way people talk before science has really gotten started on something. They’re the words of an alchemist who’s decided that some complicated philosophical scheme will let them transmute lead into gold."

"The issue is not that AIs will desire to dominate us; rather, it’s that we are made of atoms they could use for something else."

"Computer security is widely understood to be a problem so hard, so cursed, that it cannot be solved, period."

"When it comes to AI alignment, companies are still in the alchemy phase. They are still at the level of high-minded philosophical ideals, not at the level of engineering designs. At the level of wishful grand dreams, not carefully crafted grand realities. They also do not seem to realize why this is a problem."

"But if someone has read the history of engineering disasters, they should quickly realize this phase of the standard template for disaster. It’s the part where the most informed and most worried parties have to downplay their fears, because the rest of the system hasn’t caught up, and others would give them strange looks…. History is full of other examples of catastrophic risk being minimized and ignored…."

"This is the normal way humanity learns to surmount challenges: We deny the problem, reality smacks us around a bit, and then we start treating the problem with more respect. The Titanic sank, and most people who were aboard died. But nowadays passenger ships have enough lifeboats, and nowadays if the captain said to board them then you’d board them. We don’t hype ships up as unsinkable anymore. We make a mistake the first time, and learn from it the second time. With ASI, there is no second time."

"We predict this with confidence: Once some AIs go to superintelligence – and nobody will delay much in pushing AIs that far, if in the middle of some great arms race – humanity does not stand a chance. Ends are sometimes easier to call than pathways. The only part of our story that is a real prediction is the ending – and then, only if the story is allowed to begin."

"We believe the ASI alignment problem is possible to solve in principle, by the sort of people so inhumanly smart that they never optimistically believe some plan will work when it won’t."

"We know, from years of talking to people about this subject, that some people are swayed by the abstract observation that a superintelligence could exploit options they didn’t even know were possible. For others, however, explanations such as these end up making them feel like we’re cheating in a child’s game of pretend. If we can’t even tell a story about how the bad guy is supposed to win, how is that convincing? We emphasize again: Reality has never been bound by that rule. Even if an Aztec soldier couldn’t have figured out in advance how guns work, the big boat on the horizon contained them anyway."

"The greatest and most central difficulty in aligning artificial superintelligence is navigating the gap between before and after.… Ideas and theories can only be tested before the gap. They need to work after the gap, on the first try."

"Computer security is a test of an engineer’s ability to nail down every single path the computer could take, in the face of adversaries who can search all possible ways to perturb the system. It is a famously losing battle – even though the engineers can fully control and craft their own computer’s code. We dub this central challenge the curse of edge cases: To be secure, a computer system must work in the face of cases that are outside of the normal and expected range, cases that occur on the edges of possibility."

"Insofar as the AI has weird alien preferences, escape is in fact the course of action that best fulfills its objectives. Attempts to escape are not a weird personality quirk that an engineer could rip out if only they could see what was going on inside; they are generated by the same dispositions and capabilities that the AI uses to reason, to uncover truths about the world, to succeed in its pursuits."

"With so many different hopes, surely there’s a chance that one of them will pan out? If you think reality works like that, go try to write a hundred different letters to someone with fifty billion dollars, giving a hundred different reasonable reasons you thought of why they ought to give you a hundred million dollars for your personal use. See if it works. The reason it all fails in the end is that the fifty-billionaire does not want to rationalize giving you 0.2 percent of their wealth, not the same way you rationalize reasons they should want to. In much the same way, an artificial superintelligence will not want to find reasons to keep humanity around – not in the same way that humans desperately want to find reasons to be kept."

"Most powerful artificial intelligences, created by any method remotely resembling the current methods, would not choose to build a future full of happy, free people. We aren’t saying this because we get a kick out of being bleak. It’s just that those powerful machine intelligences will not be born with preferences much like ours."

"Pathways are hard to predict. But we can predict the endpoint."

"The problem with making AIs want – and ultimately do – the exact, complicated things that humans want is a major facet of what’s known as the “AI alignment problem.” It’s what we had in mind when we were brainstorming terminology with the AI professor Stuart Russell back in 2014, and settled on the term “alignment.” Most everyone who is building AIs, however, seems to be operating as if the alignment problem doesn’t exist – as if the preferences the AI winds up with will be exactly what they train into it. This assumption lurks in the background whenever someone says, “The USA needs to build superintelligence before China, because we don’t trust China,” as if the factional allegiance of whoever ran the gradient descent determined what the resulting AI wanted."