A satirical collection of fictional saint stories about rationalists taking rationalist principles to extreme lengths, written in the style of religious hagiography. Longer summary

A humorous fictional piece written in the style of religious hagiography (stories of saints), telling tales of imagined 'rationalist saints' who exemplify rationalist virtues and concepts. Each story is a short vignette featuring a different saint demonstrating extreme dedication to rationalist principles, from perfect calibration of probabilities to political neutrality to changing minds when evidence demands it. The stories are written with clear satirical intent, playfully incorporating rationalist concepts, figures, and organizations into the traditional format of saint stories. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander plays chess against GPT-2, an AI language model, and discusses the broader implications of AI's ability to perform diverse tasks without specific training. Longer summary

Scott Alexander describes a chess game he played against GPT-2, an AI language model not designed for chess. Despite neither player performing well, GPT-2 managed to play a decent game without any understanding of chess or spatial concepts. The post then discusses the work of Gwern Branwen and Shawn Presser in training GPT-2 to play chess, showing its ability to learn opening theory and play reasonably well for several moves. Scott reflects on the implications of an AI designed for text prediction being able to perform tasks like writing poetry, composing music, and playing chess without being specifically designed for them. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander examines AI-generated poetry produced by Gwern's GPT-2 model trained on classical poetry, highlighting its strengths and limitations. Longer summary

Scott Alexander reviews Gwern's experiment in training GPT-2 on poetry. The AI-generated poetry shows impressive command of meter and occasionally rhyme, though it tends to degrade in quality after the first few lines. Scott provides numerous examples of the AI's output, ranging from competent imitations of classical styles to more experimental forms. He notes that while the AI sometimes produces nonsensical content, it can also generate surprisingly beautiful and coherent lines. The post concludes with a reflection on how our perceptions of poetry might be influenced by knowing whether it's human or AI-generated. Shorter summary