We mostly just post more informal stuff directly to LessWrong / Alignment Forum (see e.g. our interp updates).
Having a separate website doesn’t seem that useful to readers. I generally see the value proposition of a separate website as attaching the company’s branding to the post, which helps the company build a better reputation. It can also help boost the reach of an individual piece of research, but this is a symmetric weapon, and so applying it to informal research seems like a cost to me, not a benefit. Is there some other value you see?
(Incidentally, I would not say that our blog is targeted towards laypeople. I would say that it’s targeted towards researchers in the safety community who have a small amount of time to spend and so aren’t going to read a full paper. E.g. this post spends a single sentence explaining what scheming is and then goes on to discuss research about it; that would absolutely not work in a piece targeting laypeople.)
Oh yep, I forgot about the interp updates and other informal posts from GDM researchers—these seem to occupy the same niche I was thinking the blog could have. The idea seemed worth suggesting, for the simple reason that Anthropic and OpenAI had both done it, but in retrospect I buy your argument that the main benefit of a blog is to the company rather than the readers, and I retract my suggestion.
My impression with the Medium blog is based pretty much entirely on the one paper I was involved with (MONA), where I remember hearing something like “we’re going to write a separate Medium post and a LessWrong post, and the Medium post will assume (relatively) less knowledge of the field.” I’m not sure if my impression was correct, or if things have changed since then.
Ah yeah, I think with that one the audiences were “researchers heavily involved in AGI Safety” (LessWrong) and “ML researchers with some interest in reward hacking / safety” (Medium blog)
We mostly just post more informal stuff directly to LessWrong / Alignment Forum (see e.g. our interp updates).
Having a separate website doesn’t seem that useful to readers. I generally see the value proposition of a separate website as attaching the company’s branding to the post, which helps the company build a better reputation. It can also help boost the reach of an individual piece of research, but this is a symmetric weapon, and so applying it to informal research seems like a cost to me, not a benefit. Is there some other value you see?
(Incidentally, I would not say that our blog is targeted towards laypeople. I would say that it’s targeted towards researchers in the safety community who have a small amount of time to spend and so aren’t going to read a full paper. E.g. this post spends a single sentence explaining what scheming is and then goes on to discuss research about it; that would absolutely not work in a piece targeting laypeople.)
Oh yep, I forgot about the interp updates and other informal posts from GDM researchers—these seem to occupy the same niche I was thinking the blog could have. The idea seemed worth suggesting, for the simple reason that Anthropic and OpenAI had both done it, but in retrospect I buy your argument that the main benefit of a blog is to the company rather than the readers, and I retract my suggestion.
My impression with the Medium blog is based pretty much entirely on the one paper I was involved with (MONA), where I remember hearing something like “we’re going to write a separate Medium post and a LessWrong post, and the Medium post will assume (relatively) less knowledge of the field.” I’m not sure if my impression was correct, or if things have changed since then.
Ah yeah, I think with that one the audiences were “researchers heavily involved in AGI Safety” (LessWrong) and “ML researchers with some interest in reward hacking / safety” (Medium blog)
@Naomi Bashkansky Would it make sense for OpenAI to crosspost their blog posts to LW/AF? I’d personally be more likely to see them if they did.
Sure! I’ll make sure they get cross-posted.