I have a (probably stupid) question. I have been following Less Wrong for a little over a month, and I’ve learned a great deal about rationality in the meantime. My main interest, however, is not rationality, it is in creating FAI. I see that the SIAI has an outline of a research program, described here: http://www.singinst.org/research/researchareas.
Is there an online community that is dedicated solely to discussing friendly AI research topics? If not, is the creation of one being planned? If not, why not? I realize that the purpose of these SIAI fellowships is to foster such research, but I’d imagine that a discussion community focused on relevant topics in evolutionary psych, cogsci, math, CS, etc. would provide a great deal more stimulation for FAI research than would the likely limited number of fellowships available.
A second benefit would be that it would provide a support group to people (like me) who want to do FAI research but who do not know enough about cogsci, math, CS, etc. to be of much use to SIAI at the moment. I have started combing through SIAI’s reading list, which has been invaluable in narrowing down what I need to be reading, but at the end of the day, it’s only a reading list. What would be ideal is an active community full of bright and similarly-motivated people who could help to clarify misconceptions and point out novel connections in the material.
Is there an online community that is dedicated solely to discussing friendly AI research topics?
None that would be active and of a high quality. SL4 is probably the closest, but these days it’s kinda quiet and the discussions aren’t very good. Part of the problem seems to be that a community dedicated purely to FAI draws too many cranks. Now, even if you had active moderation, it’s often pretty hard for people in general to come up with good, original questions and topics of FAI. SL4 is dead partly because the people there are tired of basically rehashing the same topics over and over. It seems like having FAI discussion on the side of an established rationalist community is a good idea, both to drive out the cranks and to have other kinds of discussion going on that isn’t directly relevant to FAI might still contribute to an understanding of the topic indirectly.
This forum is as close as there is to a FAI discussion group. SL4 is very much (brain-)dead at the moment. There aren’t even a lot of people who are known to be specifically attacking the FAI problem—one can name Yudkowsky, Herreshoff, maybe Rayhawk, others keep quiet. Drop me a mail, I may have some suggestions on what to study.
I have a (probably stupid) question. I have been following Less Wrong for a little over a month, and I’ve learned a great deal about rationality in the meantime. My main interest, however, is not rationality, it is in creating FAI. I see that the SIAI has an outline of a research program, described here: http://www.singinst.org/research/researchareas.
Is there an online community that is dedicated solely to discussing friendly AI research topics? If not, is the creation of one being planned? If not, why not? I realize that the purpose of these SIAI fellowships is to foster such research, but I’d imagine that a discussion community focused on relevant topics in evolutionary psych, cogsci, math, CS, etc. would provide a great deal more stimulation for FAI research than would the likely limited number of fellowships available.
A second benefit would be that it would provide a support group to people (like me) who want to do FAI research but who do not know enough about cogsci, math, CS, etc. to be of much use to SIAI at the moment. I have started combing through SIAI’s reading list, which has been invaluable in narrowing down what I need to be reading, but at the end of the day, it’s only a reading list. What would be ideal is an active community full of bright and similarly-motivated people who could help to clarify misconceptions and point out novel connections in the material.
I apologize if this comment is off-topic.
None that would be active and of a high quality. SL4 is probably the closest, but these days it’s kinda quiet and the discussions aren’t very good. Part of the problem seems to be that a community dedicated purely to FAI draws too many cranks. Now, even if you had active moderation, it’s often pretty hard for people in general to come up with good, original questions and topics of FAI. SL4 is dead partly because the people there are tired of basically rehashing the same topics over and over. It seems like having FAI discussion on the side of an established rationalist community is a good idea, both to drive out the cranks and to have other kinds of discussion going on that isn’t directly relevant to FAI might still contribute to an understanding of the topic indirectly.
This forum is as close as there is to a FAI discussion group. SL4 is very much (brain-)dead at the moment. There aren’t even a lot of people who are known to be specifically attacking the FAI problem—one can name Yudkowsky, Herreshoff, maybe Rayhawk, others keep quiet. Drop me a mail, I may have some suggestions on what to study.
Also Peter de Blanc
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2009/12/new-siai-paper-on-utility-theory-by-peter-de-blanc/
Whatever happened to Nick Hay, wasn’t he doing some kind of FAI related research?
He is at Berkeley working under Stuart Russell (of AI: A Modern Approach, among other things).