tl:dr Eliezer played a very large role in the early funding of DeepMind, DeepMind led the field for a while and led to the creation of OpenAI (Musk started OpenAI because Google acquired DeepMind).
“Yudkowsky walked Legg and Hassabis over to meet Thiel. ‘These are some of the smartest guys in the whole field of AI and they’re starting a really ambitious company,’ Yukowsky said.”
…
“Hassabis explained his vision for a company that would build powerful AI, drawing on the latest insights from neuroscience and capitalizing on the explosion in computing power.
‘This might be a bit much,’ Thiel thought to himself. Still, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s endorsement meant a lot. Thiel had known Yudkowsky for half a dozen years, and DeepMind was the first company that he had recommended.”
source: The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence (Which in turn sourced this from interviews w/ Shane Legg and Peter Thiel)
Note: I am aware that this isn’t perfect evidence that w/o Eliezer DeepMind wouldn’t have started… but it is evidence that DeepMind would have been significantly less likely to get Thiel’s funding w/o Eliezer AND evidence they would be less likely to have gotten any funding at all w/o Eliezer (there were few viable funders). Generally I would say with good certainty in worlds where DeepMind is funded by Thiel at this time (versus worlds where it is not) AI progress is somewhat to significantly further along. I shared this bc I thought it was interesting and ironic; I didn’t share this because I think Yudkowsky made the wrong choice.
See also The Counterfactual Quiet AGI Timeline. The worst-case scenario without Yudkowsky and GDM is the utter lack of safety-oriented labs. However, I think that there was a way to rerail the timeline to the appearance of safety-oriented labs.
tl:dr Eliezer played a very large role in the early funding of DeepMind, DeepMind led the field for a while and led to the creation of OpenAI (Musk started OpenAI because Google acquired DeepMind).
“Yudkowsky walked Legg and Hassabis over to meet Thiel. ‘These are some of the smartest guys in the whole field of AI and they’re starting a really ambitious company,’ Yukowsky said.”
…
“Hassabis explained his vision for a company that would build powerful AI, drawing on the latest insights from neuroscience and capitalizing on the explosion in computing power.
‘This might be a bit much,’ Thiel thought to himself. Still, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s endorsement meant a lot. Thiel had known Yudkowsky for half a dozen years, and DeepMind was the first company that he had recommended.”
source: The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence (Which in turn sourced this from interviews w/ Shane Legg and Peter Thiel)
Note: I am aware that this isn’t perfect evidence that w/o Eliezer DeepMind wouldn’t have started… but it is evidence that DeepMind would have been significantly less likely to get Thiel’s funding w/o Eliezer AND evidence they would be less likely to have gotten any funding at all w/o Eliezer (there were few viable funders). Generally I would say with good certainty in worlds where DeepMind is funded by Thiel at this time (versus worlds where it is not) AI progress is somewhat to significantly further along. I shared this bc I thought it was interesting and ironic; I didn’t share this because I think Yudkowsky made the wrong choice.
See also The Counterfactual Quiet AGI Timeline. The worst-case scenario without Yudkowsky and GDM is the utter lack of safety-oriented labs. However, I think that there was a way to rerail the timeline to the appearance of safety-oriented labs.