Sam seemed to oversell the relationship with this acknowledgement, so I don’t think we should read much into the other names except literally “they were asked to review drafts”.
sigh… Part of me wants to spend a bunch of time trying to determine which of the following might apply here:
1. This is what Sam really believes. He wrote it himself. He pinged these people for advice. He continues to believe it. 2. This is something that Sam quickly said because he felt pressured by others. This could either be direct pressure (they asked for this), or indirect (he thought they would like him more if he did this) 3. Someone else wrote this, then Sam put his name on it, and barely noticed it.
But at the same time, given that Sam has, what seems to me, like a long track record of insincerity anyway, I don’t feel very optimistic about easily being able to judge this.
At the time I thought that Nate feeling the need to post and clarify about what actually happened was a pretty strong indication that Sam was using this opportunity to pretend they are on better terms with these folks. (Since I think he otherwise never talks to Nate/Eliezer/MIRI? I could be wrong.)
But yeah it could be that someone who still had influence thought this post was important to run by this set of people. (I consider this less likely.)
I don’t think Sam would have barely noticed. It sounds like he was the one who asked for feedback.
In any case this event seems like a minor thing, though imo a helpful part of the gestalt picture.
Fwiw the relationship with Nate seemed mostly that Sam asked for comments, Nate gave some, and there was no back and forth. See Nate’s post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uxnjXBwr79uxLkifG/comments-on-openai-s-planning-for-agi-and-beyond
Sam seemed to oversell the relationship with this acknowledgement, so I don’t think we should read much into the other names except literally “they were asked to review drafts”.
sigh… Part of me wants to spend a bunch of time trying to determine which of the following might apply here:
1. This is what Sam really believes. He wrote it himself. He pinged these people for advice. He continues to believe it.
2. This is something that Sam quickly said because he felt pressured by others. This could either be direct pressure (they asked for this), or indirect (he thought they would like him more if he did this)
3. Someone else wrote this, then Sam put his name on it, and barely noticed it.
But at the same time, given that Sam has, what seems to me, like a long track record of insincerity anyway, I don’t feel very optimistic about easily being able to judge this.
These are good points!
At the time I thought that Nate feeling the need to post and clarify about what actually happened was a pretty strong indication that Sam was using this opportunity to pretend they are on better terms with these folks. (Since I think he otherwise never talks to Nate/Eliezer/MIRI? I could be wrong.)
But yeah it could be that someone who still had influence thought this post was important to run by this set of people. (I consider this less likely.)
I don’t think Sam would have barely noticed. It sounds like he was the one who asked for feedback.
In any case this event seems like a minor thing, though imo a helpful part of the gestalt picture.