“Even if understanding completely something like agency would basically solve the problem, how long will it take (if it is ever reached)? Historical examples in both natural sciences and computer science show that the original paradigm of a field isn’t usually adapted to tackle questions deemed fundamental by later paradigms. And this progress of paradigms takes decades in the best of cases, and centuries in the worst! With the risk of short timelines, we can’t reasonably decide that this is the only basket to put our research eggs.”
Yeah, this is one of the core problems that we need to solve. AI safety would seem much more tractable if we had more time to iterate through a series of paradigms.
“Even if understanding completely something like agency would basically solve the problem, how long will it take (if it is ever reached)? Historical examples in both natural sciences and computer science show that the original paradigm of a field isn’t usually adapted to tackle questions deemed fundamental by later paradigms. And this progress of paradigms takes decades in the best of cases, and centuries in the worst! With the risk of short timelines, we can’t reasonably decide that this is the only basket to put our research eggs.”
Yeah, this is one of the core problems that we need to solve. AI safety would seem much more tractable if we had more time to iterate through a series of paradigms.