Quadratic Reciprocity

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Is there an organisation that can hire independent alignment researchers who already have funding, in order to help with visas for a place that has other researchers, perhaps somewhere in the UK? Is there a need for such an organisation? 

What are the most promising plans for automating alignment research as mentioned in for example OpenAI's approach to alignment and by others?

I think there will probably be even more discussion of AI x-risk in the media in the near future. My own media consumption is quite filtered but for example, the last time I was in an Uber, the news channel on the radio mentioned Geoffrey Hinton thinking AI might kill us all. And it isn't a distant problem for my parents the way climate change is because they use Chat-GPT and are both impressed and concerned by it. They'll probably form thoughts on it anyway, and I'd prefer if I can be around to respond to their confusion and concerns. 

It also seems plausible that there is more AI panic and anxiety amongst some fraction of the general public in the near future. And I'd prefer the people I love are eased into it rather than feeling panicked and anxious all at once and not knowing how to deal with it. 

It's also useful for me to get a pulse on how people outside my social group (which is mostly heavily filtered as well) respond to AI x-risk arguments. For example, I didn't know before what ideas that seemed obvious to me (being more intelligent doesn't mean you have nice values, why humans care about the things we care about, that if something much smarter than us aims to take over it will succeed quickly etc) were completely new to my parents or friends who are not rationalist-adjacent(-adjacent). 

I also think being honest with people close to me is more compassionate and good but that by itself wouldn't compel me to actively discuss AI x-risk with them. 

I think it's plausible that too much effort is going to interp at the margin

What's the counterfactual? Do you think newer people interested in AI safety should be doing other things instead of for example attempting one of the 200+ MI problems suggested by Neel Nanda? What other things?

I'm curious about whether I should change my shortform posting behaviour in response to higher site quality standards. I currently perceive it to be an alright place to post things that are quick and not aiming to be well-written or particularly useful for others to read because it doesn't clutter up the website the way a post or comment on other people's posts would. 

Why is aliens wanting to put us in a zoo more plausible than the AI wanting to put us in a zoo itself? 

Edit: Ah, there are more aliens around so even if the average alien doesn't care about us, it's plausible that some of them would?

And the biggest question for me is not, is AI going to doom the world? Can I work on this in order to save the world? A lot of people expect that would be the question. That’s not at all the question. The question for me is, is there a concrete problem that I can make progress on? Because in science, it’s not sufficient for a problem to be enormously important. It has to be tractable. There has to be a way to make progress. And this was why I kept it at arm’s length for as long as I did.

I thought this was interesting. But it does feel like with this AI thing we need more people backchaining from the goal of saving humanity instead of only looking forward to see what tractable neat research questions present themselves. 

One way people can help is by stating their beliefs on AI and the confidence in those beliefs to their friends, family members, and acquaintances who they talk to.

Currently, a bunch of people are coming across things in the news talking about humanity going extinct if AI progress continues as it has and no more alignment research happens. I would expect many of them to not think seriously about it because it's really hard to shake out of the "business as usual" frame. Most of your friends and family members probably know you're a reasonable, thoughtful person and it seems helpful to make people feel comfortable engaging with the arguments in a serious way instead of filing it away in some part of their brain that doesn't affect their actions or predictions about the future in any way.

I have talked to my dad about how I feel very uncertain about making it to 40, that (with lots of uncertainty) I currently expect not to unless there's coordination to slow AI development or a lot more effort towards AI alignment. He is new to this so had a bunch of questions but said he didn't find it weird and now thinks it is scary. It was interesting noticing the inferential distance, since he initially had confusions like "If the AI gets consciousness, won't it want to help other conscious beings?" and "It feels weird to be so against change, humanity will adapt" but I think he gets it now. 

I think sharing sincerely the things you believe with more people is good.

Hopefully this isn't too rude to say, but: I am indeed confused how you could be confused

Fwiw, I was also confused and your comment makes a lot more sense now. I think it's just difficult to convert text into meaning sometimes. 

Thanks for posting this. It's insightful reading other people thinking through career/life planning of this type.

Am curious about how you feel about the general state of the alignment community going into the midgame. Are there things you hoped you/alignment community had more of / achievable things that could have been different by the time the early game ended that would have been nice?

"I have a crazy take that the kind of reasoning that is done in generative modeling has a bunch of things in common with the kind of reasoning that is valuable when developing algorithms for AI alignment"

Cool!!

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