Interesting perspective especially your comments on citations. Agreed with the diagrams/figures/tables being some of the most interesting parts of the paper, but I also try to find the problem that motivated the authors (which is frequently embedded better in the introduction imo than the abstract).
In this analogy, the trouble is, we do not know whether we're building tunnels in parallel (same direction) or the opposite, or zig zag. The reason for that is a lack of clarity about what will turn out to be a fundamentally important approach towards building a safe AGI. So, it seems to me that for now, exploration for different approaches might be a good thing and the next generation of researchers does less digging and is able to stack more on the existing work
I agree. It seems like striking a balance between exploration and exploitation. We're barely entering the 2nd generation of alignment researchers. It's important to generate new directions of approaching the problem especially at this stage, so that we have a better chance of covering more of the space of possible solutions before deciding to go in deeper. The barrier to entry also remains slightly lower in this case for new researchers. When some research directions "outcompete" other directions, we'll naturally see more interest in those promising directions and subsequently more exploitation, and researchers will be stacking.
The 2023 predictions seem to hold up really well, so far, especially the SDM in interactive environment one, image synthesis, passing the bar exam, legal NLP systems, enthusiasm of programmers, and Elon Musk re-entering the space of building AI systems.