Help The Unjournal prioritize AI economics and governance research

The Unjournal is prioritizing research on AI economics, governance, social and economic impacts, and risks from increasingly capable AI. (NB: We're not covering technical/CS/ML/AI-safety research.). We want to commission expert public evaluations and help synthesize, disseminate, and curate this work.

Much of this research seems 1) important/impactful/influential, (2) involves considerable 'firepower' from prominent researchers and practitioners, (3) not 'obviously true', and (4) time-sensitive: relevant for funding, policy, and research-steering now, but not after the "six months to six years" required for the traditional (economics) journal process

Our preliminary shortlist page includes paper summaries, AI-generated audio walkthroughs, and an interface for giving feedback. We also invite suggestions fr other research (please check the broader list/interface to avoid duplication).

Especially looking for your input on:

• Usefulness and accuracy: Is this useful? How could we improve it? What have we got wrong?
• Impact: Which research do you use, or think others use or should use?
• Scrutiny: What claims and approaches need careful experts and practitioners critique? What sorts of experts? If you're that expert, please dm and join our pool.
• Participation: Who should be part of this discussion (nominate and nudge)?
• Gaps: What's missing (research, claims, etc.)?

Timing and next steps (our plan)

• Finalize an initial shortlist of at least three research outputs before the end of October, with more depending on interest and funding.
• Commission rapid, public, impact-focused evaluations/reviews by experts and practitioners, aiming for a first public evaluation within about two weeks of commissioning.
• Over the following two to four weeks, invite author and stakeholder responses and follow-ups, and facilitate private and public discussion

If it this works well, we hope to scale up and continue in the following months.

Alongside the evaluations, we want to help people find and use this research, and to help shape its direction. I hope the prioritization itself will be useful to students, researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders. (NB: the "prioritization" here is mainly about "potential for impact and value for evaluation"; assessing the research credibility is for the evaluation part).

I wanted to share this quickly; planning a fuller post soon. (Feedback on this post itself is helpful too.)

Related: We’re also exploring sponsorship of evaluations/themes/questions. Looking for feedback: Would this be useful, would you sponsor or recommend others to do so? Would sponsorship affect your trust in the evaluations (given the rules and safeguards mentioned in the link)?

"But can AI jazz?"

A quick experiment: https://ai-jazz-tune-trial.netlify.app

Have a listen and vote: Which model's got more swing? #jazz #ai #benchmarking #music