So they think consciousness is entirely in the brain 🫠

Imagine it like this: a baby version of yourself with only enough of a brain structure to be alive in case you ever need a new kidney or liver.

Or, alternatively, he has speculated, you might one day get your brain placed into a younger clone. That could be a way to gain a second lifespan through a still hypothetical procedure known as a body transplant.

The fuller context of R3’s proposals, as well as activities of another stealth startup with related goals, have not previously been reported. They’ve been kept secret by a circle of extreme life-extension proponents who fear that their plans for immortality could be derailed by clickbait headlines and public backlash.

And that’s because the idea can sound like something straight from a creepy science fiction film. One person who heard R3’s clone presentation, and spoke on the condition of anonymity, was left reeling by its implications and shaken by Schloendorn’s enthusiastic delivery. The briefing, this person said, was like a “close encounter of the third kind” with “Dr. Strangelove.”

A key inspiration for Schloendorn is a birth defect in which children are born missing most of their cortical hemispheres; he’s shown people medical scans of these kids’ nearly empty skulls as evidence that a body can live without much of a brain.

And he’s talked about how to grow a clone. Since artificial wombs don’t exist yet, brainless bodies can’t be grown in a lab. So he’s said the first batch of brainless clones would have to be carried by women paid to do the job. In the future, though, one brainless clone could give birth to another.

Last Monday, the same day it announced itself to the world in Wired, R3 sent us a sweeping disavowal of our findings. It said Schloendorn “never made any statement regarding hypothetical ‘non-sentient human clones’ [that] would be carried by surrogates.” The most overarching of these challenges was its insistence that “any allegations of intent or conspiracy to create human clones or humans with brain damage are categorically false.”

My 'no conspiracy to create humans with brain damage' shirt is making people ask a lot of questions

Doesn't work because aging affects the brain as well and many deadly diseases originate in brain: insults (sic!), Alzheimer and brain cancers. Add risks of the transfer itself and the uncertainty when it should be done: too early for healthy aged person and and too late for one with cancer of any type (risks of metastases). All together it gives less than 10 years increase of of medium life expectancy.

back to the "upload smooth pristine brain onto the computer" drawing board we go!

https://xcancel.com/herasight/status/2057888072092856823

MIT Technology Review found no evidence that R3 has cloned anyone, or even any animal bigger than a rodent. What we did find were documents, additional meeting agendas, and other sources outlining a technical road map for what R3 called “body replacement cloning” in a 2023 letter to supporters. That road map involved improvements to the cloning process and genetic wiring diagrams for how to create animals without complete brains.

Please don't let this be the next bubble.

i guess that immortal oligarch class is a 100% ethical thing for them

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oL2ABPZx6ZLBFzB7H/brain-transfers-might-be-the-easiest-path-to-life-extension

please enjoy picking apart this idea, b/c so far the LW commentariat aren't interested

But if you want to see some actual apocalyptic conspiracy against "AI", as in it is literally the manifestation of the body of the Beast and the voice of demons etc., check out Paul Kingsnorth's substack. This is a burned-out environmental activist who radicalised anti-immigration with Brexit, started pushing a narrative of hobbit pastoralism as a justification for racism, and converted to Christianity with that fervour you only find in converts.

I distilled it so you don't have to.

Of these vulnerabilities, 6,202 have been classified as high- or critical-severity flaws impacting more than 1,000 open-source projects.

That 10,000 count didn't even survive until paragraph 3.

Subsequent analysis of these [6202] vulnerability candidates has identified that 1,726 are valid true positives.

Ah fuck. 1726. But wait, a bad infographic has entered the ring!

23,019 potential vulnerability candidates

Ok now we're talking.

1,900 Reviewed by external security firms

Wait, what? Why those? Why only those?

1726 confirmed positive

You couldn't even cherry pick the valid ones?

467 reported to maintainers

Where did the other 1259 go? Maybe this other part of the flowchart will go better...

1,129 reported direct to maintainers by Anthropic, at their request (May contain false positives)

1129 + 467 = 1596 total reported to maintainers

Most of them just spammed at open source maintainers. Right. Maybe Anthropic's media release has the goods!

1,752 of those high- or critical-rated vulnerabilities have now been carefully assessed by one of six independent security research firms, or in a small number of cases by ourselves

Slightly lower than the 1900, but ok, whatever.

Of these, 90.6% (1,587) have proved to be valid true positives, and 62.4% (1,094) were confirmed as either high- or critical-severity

1587 is lower than the infographic's 1726 confirmed positives.... But 10% of 10000 high sev is still something, right?

On maintainers’ request, we sometimes disclose bugs directly, without further assessment. We’ve now reported 1,129 such unvetted bugs, of which Mythos Preview estimated that 175 were high- or critical-severity.

I'm sure those maintainers enjoyed that 16% high+ sec rate based on Mythos' own estimations. But wasn't that 1129 the bulk of your reports?

We estimate that we’ve disclosed 530 high- or critical-severity bugs to maintainers so far. There are a further 827 confirmed vulnerabilities (estimated as high- or critical-severity in the same manner) that we’re aiming to disclose as quickly as possible.

530 is only a third of the reports you made to maintainers...

65 of those have been given public advisories

The infographic says 88.

I'd ask if they were massaging their financials like they massaged 65 advisories, but we know they are.

23,019 potential vulnerability candidates of all severities, 65 advisories. If you printed the code out and drunkenly threw darts at it you'd probably hit the same level of accuracy.