If anyone wants to have a voice chat with me about a topic that I’m interested in (see my recent post/comment history to get a sense), please contact me via PM.
My main “claims to fame”:
Created the first general purpose open source cryptography programming library (Crypto++, 1995), motivated by AI risk and what’s now called “defensive acceleration”.
Published one of the first descriptions of a cryptocurrency based on a distributed public ledger (b-money, 1998), predating Bitcoin.
Proposed UDT, combining the ideas of updatelessness, policy selection, and evaluating consequences using logical conditionals.
First to argue for pausing AI development based on the technical difficulty of ensuring AI x-safety (SL4 2004, LW 2011).
Identified current and future philosophical difficulties as core AI x-safety bottlenecks, potentially insurmountable by human researchers, and advocated for research into metaphilosophy and AI philosophical competence as possible solutions.