Yes, that’s right. I managed/grew the comms team for about a year and a half, and then I supported Eliezer through the process of writing, editing, and launching If Anyone Builds It. When the book launch was over I found myself wildly underutilized and wishing for much more to do. As a technical and autistic nerd, I was always better suited to working on mathy problems than on communicating with neurotypicals anyway. It’s good to be back on the tech side of things.
Huh, I always got the feeling from MIRI that “alignment is really hard, we have to do a pause to have any chance of succeeding”. I’m kind of surprised to see that MIRI is investing effort into doing technical alignment research.
1) MIRI never stopped doing technical alignment research, actually! It’s just a much smaller part of the portfolio than it used to be. The majority of the focus is now on comms and policy. We do still need both, though; we don’t want to halt AI research forever, so we’re going to need a technical alignment solution.
2) I no longer work at MIRI at all, I left (amicably!) near the beginning of the year. I’m independent, and eagerly awaiting word on my SFF application.
What prompted you to pivot? If I recall correctly you were working on comms for MIRI before this.
Yes, that’s right. I managed/grew the comms team for about a year and a half, and then I supported Eliezer through the process of writing, editing, and launching If Anyone Builds It. When the book launch was over I found myself wildly underutilized and wishing for much more to do. As a technical and autistic nerd, I was always better suited to working on mathy problems than on communicating with neurotypicals anyway. It’s good to be back on the tech side of things.
Huh, I always got the feeling from MIRI that “alignment is really hard, we have to do a pause to have any chance of succeeding”. I’m kind of surprised to see that MIRI is investing effort into doing technical alignment research.
1) MIRI never stopped doing technical alignment research, actually! It’s just a much smaller part of the portfolio than it used to be. The majority of the focus is now on comms and policy. We do still need both, though; we don’t want to halt AI research forever, so we’re going to need a technical alignment solution.
2) I no longer work at MIRI at all, I left (amicably!) near the beginning of the year. I’m independent, and eagerly awaiting word on my SFF application.
What’s your estimate of technical alignment research FTEs at MIRI at the time of your departure?
That’s not for me to answer, sorry.