CAIS Cocktail Chatter: Active Recall 🍸🗣️🧠

Welcome! Hi! Hello!

Below you'll have a chance to beta-test a "game" intended to help you learn and remember material from the AI Safety, Ethics, and Society textbook. Basically, you'll be presented with an anecdote from a chapter of the book and you'll select which section of the book it came from. Once you've established that relationship, your job is to recall how that anecdote, story, or whatever supports the point of that section. That's vague, I know! Just check out the example -- it's worth a thousand words!

How to Play: A Walkthrough

1. You'll see an anecdote:

"1902 Hanoi officials paying for rat tails, leading people to breed rats for their tails."

2. You'll then see 2, 3, or 4 options for the section from which it came. You should think of these options roughly as the point that the anecdote or example was serving. Select the correct answer (or, don't select the incorrect answer(s) 🙃)

3. After you select the correct option, you'll be prompted to recall the connection. This is the most important part! Take a moment to recall how this anecdote relates to its section, and don't be lazy about it! Visualize, vocalize, or even write down your answer. Really give it some welly!

4. Finally, you'll see the explanation to check your understanding:

"A classic non-AI example of proxy gaming, showing how optimizing for a proxy (rat tails) instead of the real goal (fewer rats) can lead to counterproductive outcomes."

This game helps you learn concepts more effectively than passive review (e.g., rereading the text or skimming over your notes). By first having you match the anecdote to its core point (which serves as a reminder) and then forcing you to explicitly relate the two, you give a rich semantic encoding to the anecdote that will redound to your long-term memory's benefit.

From now on, at every cocktail party you attend, you'll be the most interesting person in attendance 😉

Ready?