Naively, the main argument (imo) can be summed up as:
If I am capable of doing an average amount of alignment work ¯x per unit time, and I have n units of time available before the development of transformative AI, I will have contributed ¯x∗n work. But if I expect to delay transformative AI by m units of time if I focus on it, everyone will have that additional time to do alignment work, which means my impact is ¯x∗m∗p, where p is the number of people doing work. If m∗p>n, I should be focusing on buying time.[1]
This analysis further favours time-buying if the total amount of work per unit time accelerates, which is plausibly the case if e.g. the alignment community increases over time.
The first sentence points out that I am doing an average amount of alignment work, and that amount is x. I realise this is a little silly, but it makes the heuristic smaller. Updated the comment to ¯x instead. Thanks.
Naively, the main argument (imo) can be summed up as:
If I am capable of doing an average amount of alignment work ¯x per unit time, and I have n units of time available before the development of transformative AI, I will have contributed ¯x∗n work. But if I expect to delay transformative AI by m units of time if I focus on it, everyone will have that additional time to do alignment work, which means my impact is ¯x∗m∗p, where p is the number of people doing work. If m∗p>n, I should be focusing on buying time.[1]
This analysis further favours time-buying if the total amount of work per unit time accelerates, which is plausibly the case if e.g. the alignment community increases over time.
This assumes time-buying and direct alignment-work is independent, whereas I expect doing either will help with the other to some extent.
Your impact is x∗m∗p if each of the p alignment researchers contributes exactly x alignment work per unit of time.
The first sentence points out that I am doing an average amount of alignment work, and that amount is x. I realise this is a little silly, but it makes the heuristic smaller. Updated the comment to ¯x instead. Thanks.