I say “hopefully” for a reason. I am not under the illusion that everyone who completes any intro curriculum will learn AI safety basics. With that being said, I just skimmed the BlueDot technical AI safety curriculum and it seems fine. I think it was better when I did it a few years ago but its clear that they have optimized to make it more approachable even if it is less comprehensive and maybe this was the right call—I’m not sure.
Someone told me that the BlueDot team don’t believe in full AI X-risk
I would be pretty surprised if this was true, based on two people I know that have worked at BlueDot (both people who are very impressive + mission-aligned and I would hire if I could). I would want to know more details and in the meantime I don’t want to speculate because my prior is that the BlueDot staff do not feel this way and I generally trust BlueDot to make reasonable decisions.
But I’m leaning towards that the problem is that they never really leaned it, rather than that they learned it and forgot.
I hope you are wrong but unfortunately I think you could be right in some/many/most cases. I think what I describe in the original post still happens but the problem may be a lot larger (in which case we may want to rethink how we do intro fellowships).
I am also curious what you think a good solution looks like! If you have ideas I may try to make it happen.
I’m not surprised that you’ve found that lot’s of people don’t know the basics, but thinking about why I’m not surprised, it’s because I’ve heard this before several times. But I am confused. The basics is really not that hard. “If we build something smarter than us, the default outcome is that that thing, not us, is then in control”. There are also a few arguments why alignment is hard, but not that much.
Maybe part of the solution is for everyone to taka a day (or more) and just try to solve alignment? To really notice the difficulties themselves?
Possible the problem with alignment basics and the tree thing, is that the people asked are trying to remember the answer rather than derive the answer. Possibly because they think the answer is difficult.
I know that wood is mostly made out of air, specifically mostly made out of CO2 from the air. I know this because I know that (other than water) life is mostly made of carbon, and I know that trees get’s their carbon from the air, because that’s what photosynthesis is. It’s easy if you remember to think. (Additionally you can notice that large trees don’t create equally large holes in the ground, so it can’t mainly be soil they eat.) Someone who get’s this wrong probably don’t know less biochemistry than me, but are doing something else wrong.
I say “hopefully” for a reason. I am not under the illusion that everyone who completes any intro curriculum will learn AI safety basics. With that being said, I just skimmed the BlueDot technical AI safety curriculum and it seems fine. I think it was better when I did it a few years ago but its clear that they have optimized to make it more approachable even if it is less comprehensive and maybe this was the right call—I’m not sure.
I would be pretty surprised if this was true, based on two people I know that have worked at BlueDot (both people who are very impressive + mission-aligned and I would hire if I could). I would want to know more details and in the meantime I don’t want to speculate because my prior is that the BlueDot staff do not feel this way and I generally trust BlueDot to make reasonable decisions.
I hope you are wrong but unfortunately I think you could be right in some/many/most cases. I think what I describe in the original post still happens but the problem may be a lot larger (in which case we may want to rethink how we do intro fellowships).
I am also curious what you think a good solution looks like! If you have ideas I may try to make it happen.
I’m not sure what the solution is.
I’m not surprised that you’ve found that lot’s of people don’t know the basics, but thinking about why I’m not surprised, it’s because I’ve heard this before several times. But I am confused. The basics is really not that hard. “If we build something smarter than us, the default outcome is that that thing, not us, is then in control”. There are also a few arguments why alignment is hard, but not that much.
Maybe part of the solution is for everyone to taka a day (or more) and just try to solve alignment? To really notice the difficulties themselves?
Possible the problem with alignment basics and the tree thing, is that the people asked are trying to remember the answer rather than derive the answer. Possibly because they think the answer is difficult.
I know that wood is mostly made out of air, specifically mostly made out of CO2 from the air. I know this because I know that (other than water) life is mostly made of carbon, and I know that trees get’s their carbon from the air, because that’s what photosynthesis is. It’s easy if you remember to think. (Additionally you can notice that large trees don’t create equally large holes in the ground, so it can’t mainly be soil they eat.) Someone who get’s this wrong probably don’t know less biochemistry than me, but are doing something else wrong.