Daniel Murfet

> TLDR: We made substantial progress in 2024: > > * We published a series of papers that verify key predictions of Singular Learning Theory (SLT) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. > * We scaled key SLT-derived techniques to models with billions of parameters, eliminating our main concerns around...

TLDR: We’re hiring two research assistants to work on advancing developmental interpretability and other applications of singular learning theory to alignment. About Us Timaeus’s mission is to empower humanity by making breakthrough scientific progress on alignment. Our research focuses on applications of singular learning theory to foundational problems within alignment,...

> TLDR: This post accompanies The Developmental Landscape of In-Context Learning by Jesse Hoogland, George Wang, Matthew Farrugia-Roberts, Liam Carroll, Susan Wei and Daniel Murfet (2024), which shows that in-context learning emerges in discrete, interpretable developmental stages, and that these stages can be discovered in a model- and data-agnostic way...

> TLDR: The simplicity bias in Bayesian statistics is not just a bias towards short description length. The folklore relating the simplicity bias in Bayesian statistics to description length is incomplete: while it is true that the fewer parameters you use the better, the true complexity measure which appears in...

Timaeus was announced in late October 2023, with the mission of making fundamental breakthroughs in technical AI alignment using deep ideas from mathematics and the sciences. This is our first progress update. In service of the mission, our first priority has been to support and contribute to ongoing work in...

Timaeus is a new AI safety research organization dedicated to making fundamental breakthroughs in technical AI alignment using deep ideas from mathematics and the sciences. Currently, we are working on singular learning theory and developmental interpretability. Over time we expect to work on a broader research agenda, and to create...

Developmental interpretability is a research agenda that has grown out of a meeting of the Singular Learning Theory (SLT) and AI alignment communities. To mark the completion of the first SLT & AI alignment summit we have prepared this document as an outline of the key ideas. As the name...