Eyes Above The Waves

Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Repatriate Kiwi. Hacker.

Friday 8 December 2023

Rees-Dart Track 2023

After the Caples-Routeburn trip, seven members of the group took a shuttle back to Queenstown and then flew home, and the remaining five stayed on in Glenorchy. Saturday 18 November was a rest day; the weather was excellent and we did some short walks around Glenorchy — the lagoon walk was lovely. We also rendezvoused with our sixth group member and prepped for the Rees-Dart track starting on Sunday. I always really enjoy these rest days: time to reflect on the previous leg and relax with friends while still enjoying the anticipation of another imminent adventure.


Thursday 7 December 2023

Caples/Routeburn Track 2023

My traditional South Island tramping trip happened a bit earlier this year. We spent five days doing the Caples and Routeburn tracks, November 13 to 17, with a group of 12. Then six of us had a day off followed by five days on the Rees-Dart track, November 19 to 23. I’ll cover the Rees-Dart trip in a followup post.


Sunday 3 December 2023

Abel Tasman Kayaking

In October my Pernosco co-founder Kyle visited me in NZ for a catch-up and a holiday. Kyle had never been to the South Island in previous visits so we did a two-week road trip, Christchurch to Kaikoura to Nelson to Westport to Haast to Arrowtown to Twizel to Christchurch. It was huge fun and we fixed some gnarly rr bugs along the way, with the help of Intel’s Processor Trace.


Thursday 30 November 2023

Mount Pirongia 2023

Three months ago, September 2-3, I led a small group of friends up Mt Pirongia again. Again, we had a great time. This trip was initiated because one person whom I hadn’t tramped with before wanted to join my Rees-Dart trip this month (blog post forthcoming!) and I wanted to do a reasonably challenging one-night trip with them first.


Sunday 26 November 2023

Blog Migrated

I've migrated my blog off Blogger to a Github Pages (Jekyll) site. All the posts should still be at the correct URLs.

I'm not supporting direct comments anymore. HN, Reddit etc absorb most of the comment traffic anyway. Old posts have their comments preserved.

The main reason to do this is to ensure the longevity of the blog content. The new setup is simple and I can easily move the hosting elsewhere if Github becomes infeasible at some point. However, the immediate motivation for the move is that Google has stopped allowing updates to "classic" sites.google.com, which I was using as my CDN for images. I figured that since I had to change my setup anyway, I may as well do a complete migration.


Monday 3 April 2023

Why I Signed The "Pause" Letter

I work for Google, but everything here is my personal opinion, not Google's position.

I signed the "Pause" letter because I agree with what it says and I think the actions it advocates are very likely to be beneficial.

To be clear, none of the following are reasons why I signed:

  • Because I'm a fan of the Future Of Life Institute, Elon Musk, or any of the other signatories
  • Because I think the recommended pause would solve all our problems
  • Because I'm confident the pause will actually happen
  • To give academics time to publish papers (Scott Aaronson, this one's beneath you)
  • To build hype around large language models
  • To give some company an advantage over another company

Most of the arguments against a pause are very shallow, e.g. LLMs are a hoax; the proposed pause in giant-model training could lead to government regulation which is inevitably worse than any alternative; people want a pause because of risk X when they should be worried about worse risk Y; AI is so obviously super-beneficial that it's morally wrong to delay those benefits. The two strongest arguments against a pause, IMHO, are a) China and b) potential overhang.

Some people argue that a pause would give China a chance to overtake the rest of the world in AI, and that would be worse than not having a pause. I think that is very unlikely. Western-aligned countries together seem to have three big advantages: a lead in training large models, control over the manufacture and distribution of the most powerful GPUs and TPUs, and most of the world's best AI researchers. Also, from what I've read, the modern CCP is highly averse to social disruption, so I expect them to proceed carefully.

Another argument against a pause is that if we stop training giant models we'll continue to improve hardware and algorithms, so the next time we train a giant model there would be a discontinuous increase in capability, which would be worse than not pausing at all. It seems unlikely to me that this effect, even if it happens, would outweight the benefits of a pause.


Supporters of the proposed pause are motivated by different AI risks. In particular:

  • Some people, exemplified by Eliezer Yudkowsky, are convinced AI will inevitably destroy humanity due to the "alignment problem". I think that possibility has to be taken seriously — which alone is a good reason to adopt the "Pause" letter's measures (and more). Still, I doubt doom is guaranteed.
  • Some people are more worried about socioeconomic issues like potential mass unemployment. I think these issues, taken together, are also a sufficient reason to slow down AI development and mass deployment. When AI capabilities grow faster than people can learn new skills, we're pushing the limit of the rate of change humans can handle.
  • In between "social/economic adjustment" and "alignment extinction risk" are the risks of powerful AIs in the hands of malicious people. We have to learn to defend against the new generations of scams, hacks, warfare and other havoc that are coming, and again, this takes time.

I think all of these risks are valid concerns that warrant great caution and slower rates of change. I'd be delighted if we got the proposed pause. I don't think we will, but I hope that these issues get a lot more attention and we start taking government and self-regulation of AI seriously. It's absurd that we regulate food and drug safety but not AI.

Comments

Data Science
>>𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝐴𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑤 𝑓𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛 𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝑠𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑠, 𝑤𝑒'𝑟𝑒 𝑝𝑢𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑛 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑙𝑒 Rob, What's your take on GPT 3.5, regarding any impact on NZ's Software Engineering / Data Science job markets over the coming year or so?
Josh Cogliati
I also signed the pause letter. I think that there is no hope that we will be able to control superintelligent AIs, but I do think there is a chance that we might end up with an ethical AI. (ChatGPT definitely has a much better understanding of Human ethics than I could write a program to have, but just because a being knows what good is doesn't mean that being will act good.)

Sunday 2 April 2023

Auckland Waterfront Half Marathon 2023

This morning I did the Auckland Waterfront Half Marathon. I finished in 1:51:13 which is okay but a little bit disappointing given that this course is dead flat. I'm getting older and I have to accept that. It felt similar to my previous half marathons where I can maintain pace up until about 18km and then it becomes too hard, so I break into a walk/run pattern until the end. Still, a good workout and these events help incentivize me to keep the running up.


Saturday 24 December 2022

Travers-Sabine Circuit 2022

After completing the Paparoa Track on December 14, six of our group were dropped off in St Arnaud to prepare for the Travers-Sabine Circuit. We spent two nights at Nelson Lakes Motel, with a rest day on December 15 to do laundry, buy a few more supplies, pack for the circuit, and generally relax (including watching Morocco vs France in the football World Cup).

On December 16 we got up early and took a boat across Lake Rotoiti to Coldwater Hut where we started the track. That day we marched for several hours up the Travers Valley, all the way to Upper Travers Hut at the head of the valley. It was a long, tiring walk with heavy packs containing supplies for six days, but not especially difficult. As forecast, the weather was foggy and a bit drizzly but not bad and when we reached Upper Travers we had some good views of Mt Travers and surrounding slopes still with patches of snow. The second day we crossed the Travers Saddle — a more difficult walk, starting with a steep 500m-vertical climb to the saddle, followed by a 1km-vertical desent to the East Sabine River and a walk to West Sabine Hut. This day the weather was pretty good and we had some great views from the saddle.

The next day I really wanted to visit Blue Lake because we missed out last time. I had originally planned to stay overnight at Blue Lake Hut but we decided instead to leave our gear at West Sabine Hut and make a day trip to Blue Lake. The main advantage was to shorten our walk on day four, by moving the return from Blue Lake to West Sabine Hut from day four to day three, which hopefully would leave us fresher for day five (see below). Our day trip was excellent; Blue Lake was nice but not stunning given the cloudy weather conditions, but the walk up the valley is beautiful and we visited Lake Constance beyond the head of the valley, which was stunning. (Signs say the Lake Constance viewpoint is one hour from Blue Lake Hut but it's really one hour return.)

On day four, as planned we had a relatively easy walk down to Sabine Hut on Lake Rotoroa, followed by quality rest time at the hut, during which we ate a lot of snacks, played a lot of Bang, and enjoyed Vodafone coverage inside the hut, letting us get up-to-date weather forecasts and let our loved ones know we were alive.

On day five we tackled the hardest part of our planned route: climbing Mt Cedric and then following ridgetops to Angelus Hut. The route up Mt Cedric has over 1000m of elevation gain in the first 3km of horizontal travel. Most of that gain is below the bushline and much of that track is covered in slippery black fungus fed by beech honeydew. It's a tough hike! To beat rain forecast for the afternoon, we got up at 5am and left the hut around 6am. Everything went well and we arrived at Angelus Hut around noon, right on schedule, tired but satisfied. The weather was mixed but we had some sun and good views in the afternoon.

On our last day we just had to walk from Angelus Hut along Robert Ridge and into St Arnaud for lunch and then a shuttle pickup to Nelson Airport. Thankfully we had excellent weather for this, with stunning views in all directions. After the rest of the circuit, Robert Ridge was extremely easy. It was fun to gently rejoin civilization by encountering more and more day-walkers as we made our way down Mt Robert.

Overall it was a challenging but extremely rewarding trip. On both Paparoa and Travers-Sabine the forecast weather was poor but the actual weather was much better. We achieved everything we set out to do. We enjoyed the walking and we had wonderful social times in huts — including many, many games of Bang!, some with people outside our group. I'm incredibly grateful to God for the privilege of being able to do these trips and for the love and friendship of the people whom I am blessed to tramp with.


Thursday 22 December 2022

Paparoa Track

We have a tradition that every year I organise a group tramping trip in the South Island in December, between students finishing exams and Christmas. Typically we do one "easy" tramp and one "hard" tramp, balancing welcoming new trampers with pursuing tougher but more rewarding challenges. This year the "easy" tramp was Paparoa Track and the "hard" tramp was the Travers-Sabine Circuit (which we previously did in 2019).

I completed all the official "Great Walks" some years ago, but recently the Paparoa Track was created as a new Great Walk, and this year seemed like a good time to re-complete the set. We did it over three days (December 12-14) which seemed about right; one could spend an extra day and stay at Ces Clark hut, but that would make it a bit too easy for my taste. So we started at the southern end, Smoke-Ho car park, and walked north, staying at Moonlight Tops Hut on the first night and Pororari Hut on the second night. We hired three rental cars to get all thirteen of us to the track start (staying the night before at Greymouth Top 10 Holiday Park), and hired Buller Adventures to move those cars to the track end while we were walking. These logistics all worked out well.

Everything basically went according to plan. We didn't get many views on the first day due to foggy weather — some of us did the side track up Croesus Knob, which was a waste of time since we basically walked up into a cloud. However the weather on the second and third day was excellent, with stunning views across the Paparoa ranges and down to the ocean on the West Coast. The Pororari River gorge was also a highlight. No-one got injured, though a couple of members of our group were a bit slower than expected. As expected for a Great Walk, the track condition was excellent. It's open to mountain bikers; we met a few but they didn't cause any problems. Parts of the track looked pretty terrifying to bike on but a lot of people are much better at biking than me! Along the track we had a close encounter with one kea and also saw a morepork (native owl), which is unusual since they're usually hidden during the day and impossible to see at night.

Late on the first day we passed a man tramping alone who had stopped to rest after experiencing some kind of heart arrhythmia. He was considering his options — continue or call for help — so I and a couple of other group members waited with him for a while to support him in whatever decision he made. In the end he decided to continue while we walked with him. To be on the safe side we carried his pack too. The next day he felt a lot better and carried on normally to complete the track, thank God. It's the first time we've had to assist someone outside our group in a quasi-emergency and I was pleased to be able to do it. At the hut turned out he was carrying a chess set; my son was delighted to play some games with him, and lost a few, which is great because there are no worthy opponents in the rest of our group.

It was interesting to see that the brand-new huts have USB chargers (powered by the rooftop solar panels). I guess that was inevitable!

Ranking the Great Walks, I rate Paparoa in the lower tier, with fewer interesting elements than most of the other Great Walks. It is extremely popular right now — bookings for the dates we wanted sold out in a few minutes after they opened on May 6 — but I guess that's partly due to completists like me adding it to their collection. On the other hand, it is certainly well worth doing in its own right, especially once you've done the top-tier walks.

After the exiting the track at Punakaiki on the 14th our drivers drove the rental cars back to Nelson, dropping off six of us in St Arnaud along the way to prepare for the Travers-Sabine Circuit, but that's another story...


Monday 19 September 2022

Aotea Track 2022

I just completed the Aotea Track for the second time, with a few friends and work colleagues. On Saturday we flew to the island and walked from Whangaparapara to Kaiaraara Hut, with a side trip to Bush's Beach. On Sunday we walked up Kaiaraara Track to Mt Hobson/Hirakimata for fantastic views around the whole island and the outer Hauraki Gulf. A few of us did a side trip to Windy Canyons. We stayed the night at Mt Heale Hut which is pretty close to Hirakimata and also has incredible views. On Monday (today) we walked down to Kaitoke Hot Springs for a dip and then along the road to the airport for the flight home. The weather was good during the weekend; we had some rain today but it didn't cause us much trouble. We had a great time, and I feel very refreshed.

I was surprised to see no trampers on the track or in the huts, other than our group. There aren't many good tramping options near Auckland, especially during the winter, and this is a great one. Getting to Great Barrier is easy if you fly (about $300 round trip). Altogether I expected this track to be more popular.