I think this is based on a misunderstanding of the state of the field. I think the majority of the people working full-time on the AGI safety problem are already between the doomers and the boomers.
I think it’s easy to get the impression of two polarized camps by looking at the public reporting of the field, instead of the field itself. Which is a problem. The way media currently works is to present the most extreme positions from each side. Those excite the people that agree, and irritate the people that don’t. Both garner views and engagement.
The truth of this and other issues are that a lot more people are somewhere in the middle. Some of them are even having nuanced discussions.
In this case, it’s pretty easy to get an overview of the field by skimming the Alignment Forum site. That’s where the professionals are writing.
I have skimmed the Alignment Forum side and read most of MIRI’s work before 2015. While it’s hard to know about the “majority of people,” it does seem that the public reporting is around two polarized camps. However in this particular case, I don’t think it’s just the media. The public figures for both sides (EY and Yann Lecunn) seem pretty consistent with their messaging and talking past each other.
Also if the majority of people in the field agree with the above, that’s great news and also means that reasonable centrism needs to be more prominently signal-boosted.
On a more object level, as I linked in the post, I think the Alignment forum is pretty confused about value learning and the general promise of IRL to solve it.
The public figures are drawn from the most extreme positions. And Yudkowsky founded this field, so he’s also legitimately the most desired speaker. But things have changed a lot since 2015.
Check out Paul Christiano, Alex Turner, and Steve Byrnes for different views that are neither doomer nor foomer.
I don’t have a survey result handy, but the ones I vaguely remember put the p(doom) estimates from within the field at vastly lower than MIRI’s 90%+.
I am also familiar with Paul Christiano, I think his arguments for slower, more continous take off are broadly on the right track as well.
Given that the extreme positions have strong stake-outs on twitter, I am once again claiming that there needs to be a strong stake-out of the more reasonable centrism. This isn’t the first post in this direction, there were ones before and there will be ones after.
twitter is a toxicity machine and as a result I suspect that people who are much at all +reasonableness are avoiding it—certainly that’s why I don’t post much and try to avoid reading from my main feed, despite abstractly agreeing with you. that said, here’s me, if it helps at all: https://twitter.com/lauren07102
I think this is based on a misunderstanding of the state of the field. I think the majority of the people working full-time on the AGI safety problem are already between the doomers and the boomers.
I think it’s easy to get the impression of two polarized camps by looking at the public reporting of the field, instead of the field itself. Which is a problem. The way media currently works is to present the most extreme positions from each side. Those excite the people that agree, and irritate the people that don’t. Both garner views and engagement.
The truth of this and other issues are that a lot more people are somewhere in the middle. Some of them are even having nuanced discussions.
In this case, it’s pretty easy to get an overview of the field by skimming the Alignment Forum site. That’s where the professionals are writing.
I have skimmed the Alignment Forum side and read most of MIRI’s work before 2015. While it’s hard to know about the “majority of people,” it does seem that the public reporting is around two polarized camps. However in this particular case, I don’t think it’s just the media. The public figures for both sides (EY and Yann Lecunn) seem pretty consistent with their messaging and talking past each other.
Also if the majority of people in the field agree with the above, that’s great news and also means that reasonable centrism needs to be more prominently signal-boosted.
On a more object level, as I linked in the post, I think the Alignment forum is pretty confused about value learning and the general promise of IRL to solve it.
this seems like a major concern in and of itself.
The public figures are drawn from the most extreme positions. And Yudkowsky founded this field, so he’s also legitimately the most desired speaker. But things have changed a lot since 2015.
Check out Paul Christiano, Alex Turner, and Steve Byrnes for different views that are neither doomer nor foomer.
I don’t have a survey result handy, but the ones I vaguely remember put the p(doom) estimates from within the field at vastly lower than MIRI’s 90%+.
I am also familiar with Paul Christiano, I think his arguments for slower, more continous take off are broadly on the right track as well.
Given that the extreme positions have strong stake-outs on twitter, I am once again claiming that there needs to be a strong stake-out of the more reasonable centrism. This isn’t the first post in this direction, there were ones before and there will be ones after.
Just trying to keep this particular ball rolling.
twitter is a toxicity machine and as a result I suspect that people who are much at all +reasonableness are avoiding it—certainly that’s why I don’t post much and try to avoid reading from my main feed, despite abstractly agreeing with you. that said, here’s me, if it helps at all: https://twitter.com/lauren07102
Yes, I agree. I have ideas how to fix it as well, but I seriously doubt they will gain much traction