Seems to me safety timeline estimation should be grounded by a cross-disciplinary, research timeline prior. Such a prior would be determined by identifying a class of research proposals similar to AI alignment in terms of how applied/conceptual/mathematical/funded/etc. they are and then collecting data on how long they took.
I’m not familiar with meta-science work, but this would probably involve doing something like finding an NSF (or DARPA) grant category where grants were made public historically and then tracking down what became of those lines of research. Grant-based timelines are likely more analogous to individual sub-questions of AI alignment than the field as a whole; e.g. the prospects for a DARPA project might be comparable to the prospects for working out the details of debate. Converting such data into a safety timelines prior would probably involve estimating how correlated progress is on grants within subfields.
Curating such data, and constructing such a prior would be useful both in terms of informing the above estimates, but also for identifying factors of variation which might be intervened on—e.g. how many research teams should be funded to work on the same project in theoretical areas? This timelines prior problem seems like a good fit for a prize, where entries would look like recent progress studies reports (c.f. here and here).
Very good suggestions. Funnily enough, our next report post will be very much along these lines (among other things). We’re also looking at inception-to-solution time for mathematics problems and for correlates of progress in other fields, e.g. solar cell efficiency <> amount of papers in photovoltaics research.
We’d also love to curate this data as you mention and make sure that everyone has easy access to priors that can help in deciding AI safety questions about research agenda, grant applications, and career path trajectory.
Seems to me safety timeline estimation should be grounded by a cross-disciplinary, research timeline prior. Such a prior would be determined by identifying a class of research proposals similar to AI alignment in terms of how applied/conceptual/mathematical/funded/etc. they are and then collecting data on how long they took.
I’m not familiar with meta-science work, but this would probably involve doing something like finding an NSF (or DARPA) grant category where grants were made public historically and then tracking down what became of those lines of research. Grant-based timelines are likely more analogous to individual sub-questions of AI alignment than the field as a whole; e.g. the prospects for a DARPA project might be comparable to the prospects for working out the details of debate. Converting such data into a safety timelines prior would probably involve estimating how correlated progress is on grants within subfields.
Curating such data, and constructing such a prior would be useful both in terms of informing the above estimates, but also for identifying factors of variation which might be intervened on—e.g. how many research teams should be funded to work on the same project in theoretical areas? This timelines prior problem seems like a good fit for a prize, where entries would look like recent progress studies reports (c.f. here and here).
Very good suggestions. Funnily enough, our next report post will be very much along these lines (among other things). We’re also looking at inception-to-solution time for mathematics problems and for correlates of progress in other fields, e.g. solar cell efficiency <> amount of papers in photovoltaics research.
We’d also love to curate this data as you mention and make sure that everyone has easy access to priors that can help in deciding AI safety questions about research agenda, grant applications, and career path trajectory.