Which applications to focus on: I agree that epistemic tools and coordination-enabling tools will eventually have markets and so will get built at some point absent intervention. But this doesn’t feel like a very strong argument—the whole point is that we may care about accelerating applications even if it’s not by a long period. And I don’t think that these will obviously be among the most profitable applications people could make (especially if you can start specializing to the most high-leverage epistemic and coordination tools).
Also, we could make a similar argument that “automated safety” research won’t get dropped, since it’s so obviously in the interests of whoever’s winning the race.
Which applications to focus on: I agree that epistemic tools and coordination-enabling tools will eventually have markets and so will get built at some point absent intervention. But this doesn’t feel like a very strong argument—the whole point is that we may care about accelerating applications even if it’s not by a long period. And I don’t think that these will obviously be among the most profitable applications people could make (especially if you can start specializing to the most high-leverage epistemic and coordination tools).
Also, we could make a similar argument that “automated safety” research won’t get dropped, since it’s so obviously in the interests of whoever’s winning the race.