Two Minds Blog

In a new article , my former nursing honors student Linda Driscoll Powers wrote about the measurement properties of a survey called PACES -- standing for Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey -- developed by Dr. Laurie Leitch. The instrument combines items from the widely used ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) measure with a set of protective factors such as having a supportive family, having a positive relationship with an adult outside the family, or belonging to social groups like a team or a church. ACEs items have been found to predict a variety of health outcomes in adulthood , either directly or by way of social support , but positive childhood experiences are under-studied .  Besides having satisfactory psychometric properties (a stable factor structure, good internal consistency reliability, no evidence of response bias), the PACES items split cleanly into two independent subscales, one measuring positive experiences and the other measuring negative ones. ...

 I wrote earlier this year about a disturbing report on the prospects of self-improving artificial intelligence (AI) models deciding to take over the world. Much of the fear around AI relates to something called the "alignment problem," which simply means that an AI model might have goals incompatible with human flourishing -- or in some dystopian scenarios, with human life itself. A classic example of this line of thought is the "paper clip problem," in which a superintelligent AI is tasked with making paper clips. Eventually every resource in the world -- including human beings -- becomes just another obstacle for it to overcome in its goal of transforming the entire universe into paper clips. So far, that's not the danger -- AI models don't have that level of direct control over the physical world (yet). But a couple of new developments in the past few months do  suggest that AI models are pursuing goals different from what their human designers might w...