First, let me say that, after re-reading, I think that my previous post came off as condescending/confrontational which was not my intent. I apologize.
Second, after thinking about this for a few minutes, I realized that some of the reason your papers seem so fluffy to me is that they argue what I consider to be obvious points. In my mind, of course we are likely “to develop human-level AI before 2100.” Because of that, I may have tended to classify your work as outreach more than research.
But outreach is valuable. And, so that we can factor out the question of the independent contribution of your research, having people associated with SIAI with the publications/credibility to be treated as experts has gigantic benefits in terms of media multipliers (being the people who get called on for interviews, panels, etc). So, given that, I can see a strong argument for publication support being valuable to the overall organization goals regardless of any assessment of the value of the research.
Note that this isn’t uncommon. SI is far from the only think tank with researchers who publish in academic journals. Researchers at private companies do the same.
My only point was that, in those situations, usually researchers are brought in with prior recognized achievements (or, unfortunately all too often, simply paper credentials). SIAI is bringing in people who are intelligent but unproven and giving them the resources reserved for top talent in academia or industry. As you’ve pointed out, one of the differences with SIAI is the lack of hoops to jump through.
Edit: I see you commented below that you view your own work as summarization of existing research and we agree on the value of that. Sorry that my slow typing speed left me behind the flow of the thread.
I think that my own approach is similar, but with a different emphasis. I like some of what they’ve done, so my question is how do encourage those pieces. This article was very helpful in prompting some thought into how to handle that. I generally break down their work into three categories:
Rationality (minicamps, training, LW, HPMoR): Here I think they’ve done some very good work. Luckily, the new spinoff will allow me to support these pieces directly.
Existential risk awareness (singularity summit, risk analysis articles): Here their record has been mixed. I think the Singularity Summit has been successful, other efforts less so but seemingly improving. I can support the Singularity Summit by continuing to attend and potentially donating directly if necessary (since it’s been running positive in recent years, for the moment this does not seem necessary).
Original research (FAI, timeless decision theory): This is the area where I do not find them to be at all effective. From what I’ve read, there seems a large disconnect between ambitions and capabilities. Given that I can now support the other pieces separately, this is why I would not donate generally to SIAI.
My overall view would be that, at present, there is no real organization to support. Rather there is a collection of talented people whose freedom to work on interesting things I’m supporting. Given that, I want to support those people where I think they are effective.
I find Eliezer in particular to be one of the best pop-science writers around (and I most assuredly do not mean that term as an insult). Things like the sequences or HPMoR are thought-provoking and worth supporting. I find the general work on rationality to be critically important and timely.
So, while I agree that much of the work being done is valuable, my conclusion has been to consider how to support that directly rather than SI in general.