1. Individual future AI systems can be thought of about as points in some abstract “space of intelligent systems”
II. Notice different types of questions: a. What properties some individual existing, experimentally accessible, points in this space has? b. Where in this space we will end up in future? c. What will be the properties of these points? d. What’s going on in generalizations/extrapolations from existing points to other parts of the space? e. Are there some “effective theories” governing parts of the space? What are their domains of validity? f. Are there some “fundamental theories” governing the space? What are their domains of validity? g. What are the properties of the space? E.g., is it continuous? h. What’s the high-level evolutionary dynamic of our movement in this space?
III. Use the metaphors from physics, history of science, econ,… to understand how these look in other domains, and what the relations between the questions are (e.g. relations betrween construction of heat engines, thermodynamics, stat physics, engineering, related markets, maths...)
IV. Having something like “science of intelligent systems” seems plausible decisive factor for the ability to robustly solve the problem.
Conceptual metaphors from other fields are often good prompts for thinking about how this may look, or what to search for
My usual framing/explanation (in conversations)
1. Individual future AI systems can be thought of about as points in some abstract “space of intelligent systems”
II. Notice different types of questions:
a. What properties some individual existing, experimentally accessible, points in this space has?
b. Where in this space we will end up in future?
c. What will be the properties of these points?
d. What’s going on in generalizations/extrapolations from existing points to other parts of the space?
e. Are there some “effective theories” governing parts of the space? What are their domains of validity?
f. Are there some “fundamental theories” governing the space? What are their domains of validity?
g. What are the properties of the space? E.g., is it continuous?
h. What’s the high-level evolutionary dynamic of our movement in this space?
III.
Use the metaphors from physics, history of science, econ,… to understand how these look in other domains, and what the relations between the questions are (e.g. relations betrween construction of heat engines, thermodynamics, stat physics, engineering, related markets, maths...)
IV.
Having something like “science of intelligent systems” seems plausible decisive factor for the ability to robustly solve the problem.
Conceptual metaphors from other fields are often good prompts for thinking about how this may look, or what to search for