I’m interested in determining the growth rate of AI safety awareness to aid field-building strategy. Applications to MATS have been increasing by 70% per year. Do any other field-builders have statistics they can share?
Without the question at the end it would feel less ad-like, like it doesn’t to me feel like you are honestly asking that question.
It’s also that this correlates with applications opening for the next MATS, and your last post had a very similar statistic correlating with the same window, so my guess is there is indeed some ad-like motivation (I think it’s fine for MATS to advertise a bit on LW, though shortform is a kind of tricky medium for that because we don’t have a frontpage/personal distinction for shortform and I don’t want people to optimize around the lack of that distinction).
I don’t know, it feels to me like a relatively complicated aggregate of a lot of different things. Some messages that would have caused me to feel less advertised towards:
“FYI, applications to MATS have been increasing 70% a year: [graph]. ARENA has seen also quite high growth rates [graph or number]. We’ve also seen a lot of funding increase over the same period, my best guess something similar like X. I wonder whether ~70% or something is aggregate growth rate of the field.” (Of course one would have to check here, and I am not saying you have to do all of this work)
“MATS applications have been growing 70% a year. I think this correlates with AI Safety going mainstream a bunch. Also pretty clear from the applications that people are coming in with much less background context. We’ll see how this plays out.”
I also think on the margin having it be a more straightforward ad would be marginally better? Like, I think it would make me feel a bit less paranoid about stuff.
I’ve updated the OP to reflect my intention better. Also, thanks for reminding me re. advertising on LW; MATS actually hasn’t made an ad post yet and this seems like a big oversight!
I feel like there should be an indicator for posts that have been edited, like youtube comments pictured here. Its often important context for the content of a post or comment that it has been edited since original posting. Maybe even a way to see the dif history? (Though this would be a tougher ask for site devs)
There is an indicator! The indicator only shows up if you edit it more than half an hour after posting, to avoid lots of false-positives on typo checks or quick edits. In this case all the editing ended up happening within that window.
If you edit outside of that window it looks like this:
Ah somehow never noticed this thank you! 30 minute policy seems good, though it comes with the potential flaw of failing to notate an actual content update if its done quickly (as happened here). Still think diff history would be cool and would alleviate that problem, though its rather nitpicky/minor.
Yep, I think some diff history would be good, just haven’t gotten around to building the UI for it, and if we do add UI for it, I would want some ability for authors to remove information permanently, in a way that is admin-reviewed, and that requires a bunch of kind of complicated UI.
Also of interest: MATS mentor applications have been growing linearly at a rate of +70/year. We are now publicly advertising for mentor applications for the first time (previously, we sent out mass emails and advertised on Slack workspaces), which might explain the sub-exponential growth. Giving the exponential growth in applicants and linear growth in mentors, the latter seems to be the limiting constraint still.
I’m interested in determining the growth rate of AI safety awareness to aid field-building strategy. Applications to MATS have been increasing by 70% per year. Do any other field-builders have statistics they can share?
(This is a fun statistic but feels too ad-like for LW)
(Edit: The new version feels fine)
Any alternative framing/text you recommend? I think it’s a pretty useful statistic for AI safety field-building.
Without the question at the end it would feel less ad-like, like it doesn’t to me feel like you are honestly asking that question.
It’s also that this correlates with applications opening for the next MATS, and your last post had a very similar statistic correlating with the same window, so my guess is there is indeed some ad-like motivation (I think it’s fine for MATS to advertise a bit on LW, though shortform is a kind of tricky medium for that because we don’t have a frontpage/personal distinction for shortform and I don’t want people to optimize around the lack of that distinction).
I don’t know, it feels to me like a relatively complicated aggregate of a lot of different things. Some messages that would have caused me to feel less advertised towards:
“FYI, applications to MATS have been increasing 70% a year: [graph]. ARENA has seen also quite high growth rates [graph or number]. We’ve also seen a lot of funding increase over the same period, my best guess something similar like X. I wonder whether ~70% or something is aggregate growth rate of the field.” (Of course one would have to check here, and I am not saying you have to do all of this work)
“MATS applications have been growing 70% a year. I think this correlates with AI Safety going mainstream a bunch. Also pretty clear from the applications that people are coming in with much less background context. We’ll see how this plays out.”
I also think on the margin having it be a more straightforward ad would be marginally better? Like, I think it would make me feel a bit less paranoid about stuff.
I’ve updated the OP to reflect my intention better. Also, thanks for reminding me re. advertising on LW; MATS actually hasn’t made an ad post yet and this seems like a big oversight!
Agree! IMO seems like there should be one.
I feel like there should be an indicator for posts that have been edited, like youtube comments pictured here. Its often important context for the content of a post or comment that it has been edited since original posting. Maybe even a way to see the dif history? (Though this would be a tougher ask for site devs)
There is an indicator! The indicator only shows up if you edit it more than half an hour after posting, to avoid lots of false-positives on typo checks or quick edits. In this case all the editing ended up happening within that window.
If you edit outside of that window it looks like this:
Ah somehow never noticed this thank you! 30 minute policy seems good, though it comes with the potential flaw of failing to notate an actual content update if its done quickly (as happened here). Still think diff history would be cool and would alleviate that problem, though its rather nitpicky/minor.
Yep, I think some diff history would be good, just haven’t gotten around to building the UI for it, and if we do add UI for it, I would want some ability for authors to remove information permanently, in a way that is admin-reviewed, and that requires a bunch of kind of complicated UI.
Josh Landes shared that BlueDot Impact’s application rate has been increasing by 4.7x/year.
Also of interest: MATS mentor applications have been growing linearly at a rate of +70/year. We are now publicly advertising for mentor applications for the first time (previously, we sent out mass emails and advertised on Slack workspaces), which might explain the sub-exponential growth. Giving the exponential growth in applicants and linear growth in mentors, the latter seems to be the limiting constraint still.