For those particularly concerned with counterfactual impact, this is an argument to work on problems or in fields that are just beginning or don’t exist yet in which many of the wins haven’t been realized; this is not a novel argument. I think the bigger update is that “ideas get harder to find” indicates that you may not need to have Beethoven’s creativity or Newton’s math skills in order to make progress on hard problems which are relatively new or have received little attention. In particular, AI Safety seems like a key place where this rings true, in my opinion.
For those particularly concerned with counterfactual impact, this is an argument to work on problems or in fields that are just beginning or don’t exist yet in which many of the wins haven’t been realized; this is not a novel argument. I think the bigger update is that “ideas get harder to find” indicates that you may not need to have Beethoven’s creativity or Newton’s math skills in order to make progress on hard problems which are relatively new or have received little attention. In particular, AI Safety seems like a key place where this rings true, in my opinion.