[Disclaimer: I haven’t read the whole post in detail yet, or all the other comments, so apologies if this is mentioned elsewhere. I did see that the Partnerships section talks about something similar, but I’m not sure it’s exactly what I’m referring to here.]
For some of these products there already exists similar software, just that they’re meant for corporations and are really expensive. Just as an example from something I’m familiar with, for building on Guesstimate there’s already Analytica (https://lumina.com/). Now, does it doeverything that Guesstimate does and with all of Guesstimate’s features? Probably not. But on the other hand, a lot of these corporate software systems are meant to be customized for individual corporations’ needs. The companies who build these software platforms employ people whose job consists of customizing the software for particular needs, and there are often independent consultants who will do that for you as well. (My wife does independent customization for some software platforms as part of her general consulting business.)
So, what if we had some EA org buy corporate licenses to some of these platforms and hand them out to other EA orgs as needed? It’s usually (but not always) cheaper to buy and/or modify existing systems than to build your own from scratch, when possible.
Will it turn out cheaper to buy licenses and/or modify Analytica for general EA purposes instead of building on Guesstimate? I don’t know, and it will probably depend on the specifics. But I think it’s worth looking into.
I agree with (basically) all of this. I’ve been looking more into enterprise tools for QURI and have occasionally used some. As EA grows, enterprise tools make more sense for us.
I guess this seemed to me like a different topic, but I probably should have flagged this somewhere in this post.
On Guesstimate in particular, I’m very happy for other groups to use different tools (like Analytica, Causal and probabilistic programming languages. Normally when I talk to people about this, I wind up recommending other options. All that said, I think there are some areas where some smart programming efforts on our behalf could go a long way. I think the space of “monte carlo” tools is still quite small, and I’d like to see other efforts in it (like more startups).
One issue with what you mention is that I expect that managing a bunch of corporate licenses will be a pain. It wouldn’t be great if some smart people can’t see or work with the relevant information because their small team doesn’t have a license. So in some situations, it’s worth it, but if we can (cheaply) get/use open-source tools and standards, that can also be preferable.
[Disclaimer: I haven’t read the whole post in detail yet, or all the other comments, so apologies if this is mentioned elsewhere. I did see that the Partnerships section talks about something similar, but I’m not sure it’s exactly what I’m referring to here.]
For some of these products there already exists similar software, just that they’re meant for corporations and are really expensive. Just as an example from something I’m familiar with, for building on Guesstimate there’s already Analytica (https://lumina.com/). Now, does it doeverything that Guesstimate does and with all of Guesstimate’s features? Probably not. But on the other hand, a lot of these corporate software systems are meant to be customized for individual corporations’ needs. The companies who build these software platforms employ people whose job consists of customizing the software for particular needs, and there are often independent consultants who will do that for you as well. (My wife does independent customization for some software platforms as part of her general consulting business.)
So, what if we had some EA org buy corporate licenses to some of these platforms and hand them out to other EA orgs as needed? It’s usually (but not always) cheaper to buy and/or modify existing systems than to build your own from scratch, when possible.
Additionally, many of these organizations offer discounts for nonprofits, and some may even be interested in helping directly on their own if approached. For example, I have talked with the Analytica team and they are very interested in some of the AI forecasting work we’ve been doing (https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/qnA6paRwMky3Q6ktk/modelling-transformative-ai-risks-mtair-project-introduction), and with the whole EA/LW approach in general.
Will it turn out cheaper to buy licenses and/or modify Analytica for general EA purposes instead of building on Guesstimate? I don’t know, and it will probably depend on the specifics. But I think it’s worth looking into.
I agree with (basically) all of this. I’ve been looking more into enterprise tools for QURI and have occasionally used some. As EA grows, enterprise tools make more sense for us.
I guess this seemed to me like a different topic, but I probably should have flagged this somewhere in this post.
On Guesstimate in particular, I’m very happy for other groups to use different tools (like Analytica, Causal and probabilistic programming languages. Normally when I talk to people about this, I wind up recommending other options. All that said, I think there are some areas where some smart programming efforts on our behalf could go a long way. I think the space of “monte carlo” tools is still quite small, and I’d like to see other efforts in it (like more startups).
One issue with what you mention is that I expect that managing a bunch of corporate licenses will be a pain. It wouldn’t be great if some smart people can’t see or work with the relevant information because their small team doesn’t have a license. So in some situations, it’s worth it, but if we can (cheaply) get/use open-source tools and standards, that can also be preferable.