Yes, good points. I basically agree. I guess this could provide another argument in favor of Buck’s original view, namely that the AI alignment problem is young and so worth attacking directly. (Though there are differences between attacking a problem directly and having an end-to-end story for how to solve it, which may be worth paying attention to.)
I think your view is also born out by some examples from the history of maths. For example, the Weil conjectures were posed in 1949, and it took “only” a few decades to prove them. However, some of the key steps were known from the start, it just required a lot of work and innovation to complete them. And so I think it’s fair to characterize the process as a relatively direct, and ultimately successful, attempt to solve a big problem. (Indeed, this is an example of the effect where the targeted pursuit of a specific problem led to a lot of foundational/theoretical innovation, which has much wider uses.)
Yes, good points. I basically agree. I guess this could provide another argument in favor of Buck’s original view, namely that the AI alignment problem is young and so worth attacking directly. (Though there are differences between attacking a problem directly and having an end-to-end story for how to solve it, which may be worth paying attention to.)
I think your view is also born out by some examples from the history of maths. For example, the Weil conjectures were posed in 1949, and it took “only” a few decades to prove them. However, some of the key steps were known from the start, it just required a lot of work and innovation to complete them. And so I think it’s fair to characterize the process as a relatively direct, and ultimately successful, attempt to solve a big problem. (Indeed, this is an example of the effect where the targeted pursuit of a specific problem led to a lot of foundational/theoretical innovation, which has much wider uses.)