Thanks for this dialogue. I find Nate and Oliver’s “here’s what I think will actually happen” thoughts useful.
I also think I’d find it useful for Nate to spell out “conditional on good things happening, here’s what I think the steps look like, and here’s the kind of work that I think people should be doing right now. To be clear, I think this is all doomed, and I’m only saying this being Akash directly asked me to condition on worlds where things go well, so here’s my best shot.”
To be clear, I think some people do too much “play to your outs” reasoning. In the excess, this can lead to people just being like “well maybe all we need to do is beat China” or “maybe alignment will be way easier than we feared” or “maybe we just need to bet on worlds where we get a fire alarm for AGI.”
I’m particularly curious to see what happens if Nate tries to reason in this frame, especially since I expect his “play to your outs” reasoning/conclusions might look fairly different from that of others in the community.
Some examples of questions for Nate (and others who have written more about what they actually expect to happen and less about what happens if we condition on things going well):
Condition on the worlds in which we see substantial progress in the next 6 months. What are some things that have happened in those worlds? What does progress look like?
Condition on worlds in which the actions of the AIS community end up having a strong positive influence in the next 6 months. What are some wins that the AIS community (or specific actors within it) achieve?
Suppose for the sake of this conversation that you are fully adopting a “play to your outs” mentality. What outs do you see? Regardless of the absolute probabilities you assign, which of these outs seem most likely and most promising?
All things considered, what do you currently see as the most impactful ways you can spend your time?
All things considered, what do you currently see as the most impactful ways that “highly talented comms/governance/policy people can be spending their time?” (can divide into more specific subgroups if useful).
I’ll also note that I’d be open to having a dialogue about this with Nate (and possibly other “doomy” people who have not written up their “play to your outs” thoughts).
Thanks for this dialogue. I find Nate and Oliver’s “here’s what I think will actually happen” thoughts useful.
I also think I’d find it useful for Nate to spell out “conditional on good things happening, here’s what I think the steps look like, and here’s the kind of work that I think people should be doing right now. To be clear, I think this is all doomed, and I’m only saying this being Akash directly asked me to condition on worlds where things go well, so here’s my best shot.”
To be clear, I think some people do too much “play to your outs” reasoning. In the excess, this can lead to people just being like “well maybe all we need to do is beat China” or “maybe alignment will be way easier than we feared” or “maybe we just need to bet on worlds where we get a fire alarm for AGI.”
I’m particularly curious to see what happens if Nate tries to reason in this frame, especially since I expect his “play to your outs” reasoning/conclusions might look fairly different from that of others in the community.
Some examples of questions for Nate (and others who have written more about what they actually expect to happen and less about what happens if we condition on things going well):
Condition on the worlds in which we see substantial progress in the next 6 months. What are some things that have happened in those worlds? What does progress look like?
Condition on worlds in which the actions of the AIS community end up having a strong positive influence in the next 6 months. What are some wins that the AIS community (or specific actors within it) achieve?
Suppose for the sake of this conversation that you are fully adopting a “play to your outs” mentality. What outs do you see? Regardless of the absolute probabilities you assign, which of these outs seem most likely and most promising?
All things considered, what do you currently see as the most impactful ways you can spend your time?
All things considered, what do you currently see as the most impactful ways that “highly talented comms/governance/policy people can be spending their time?” (can divide into more specific subgroups if useful).
I’ll also note that I’d be open to having a dialogue about this with Nate (and possibly other “doomy” people who have not written up their “play to your outs” thoughts).