But the real problem we face is how to build or become a superintelligence that shares our values, and given that this seems very difficult, any progress that doesn’t contribute to the solution but brings forward the date by which we must solve it (or be stuck with something very suboptimal even if it doesn’t kill us), is bad.
Assume you manage to communicate this idea to the typical AI researcher. What do you expect him to do next? It’s absurd to think that the typical researcher will quit his field and work on strategies for mitigating intelligence explosion or on foundations of value. You might be able to convince him to work on some topic within AI instead of another. However, while some topics seem more likely to advance AI capabilities than others, this is difficult to tell in advance. More perniciously, what the field rewards are demonstrations of impressive capabilities. Researchers who avoid directions that lead to such demos will end up with less prestigious jobs, i.e., jobs where they are less able to influence the top students of the next generation of researchers. This isn’t what the typical AI researcher wants either. So, what’s he to do?
How are you going to address the perceived and actual lack of rigor associated with SIAI?
There are essentially no academics who believe that high-quality research is happening at the Singularity Institute. This is likely to pose problems for your plan to work with professors to find research candidates. It is also likely to be an indicator of little high-quality work happening at the Institute.
In his recent Summit presentation, Eliezer states that “most things you need to know to build Friendly AI are rigorous understanding of AGI rather than Friendly parts per se”. This suggests that researchers in AI and machine learning should be able to appreciate high-quality work done by SIAI. However, this is not happening, and the publications listed on the SIAI page—including TDT—are mostly high-level arguments that don’t meet this standard. How do you plan to change this?