I think there might be something to an EA/ rationality game. Like something with a save-the-world but realistically plot and game mechanics built around useful skills like Fermi estimation. This is a random gut feeling I’ve had for a while not something well thought through, so could be obviously wrong.
A couple advantages over the typical static content like videos or written intro sequences:
games can be “stickier”
ppl seem to enjoy intricate, complex games even while avoiding complex static media for lack of time; this is true of many high-school aged ppl in my experience
games can tailor different angles into EA material depending on the user’s input
games can both educate and filter for/ identify people who are high aptitude, contra to written content or video
because games can collect info about user behavior, you might have a much richer sense of where people are dropping out to prototype/ AB test on
anecdotally, smart ppl I went to highschool with seemed to have their career aspirations shaped by videogames, primarily toward wanting to do computer science to be game developers. Maybe this could be channelled elsewhere?
A few downsides of games
limited to a particular demographic interested in videogames
a lot of rationality/ EA stuff seems maybe quite hard to gamify?
maybe a game makes EA stuff seem fantastical
maybe a game would degrade nuance/ epistemics of content
maybe games are quite expensive to make for what they are?
I have zero expertise or qualifications except occasionally playing games, but feel free to DM me anyway if you are interested in this :)
I thought Decision Problem: Paperclips introduced a subset of AI risk arguments fairly well in gamified form, but I’m not aware of anybody where the game made them become interested enough in AGI alignment/risk/safety enough to work on it. Does anybody else on this forum have data/anecdata?
Exciting!
This is probably not be the best place to post this but I’ve been learning recently about the success of hacking games in finding and training computer security people (https://youtu.be/6vj96QetfTg for a discussion, also this game I got excited about in high school: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301).
I think there might be something to an EA/ rationality game. Like something with a save-the-world but realistically plot and game mechanics built around useful skills like Fermi estimation. This is a random gut feeling I’ve had for a while not something well thought through, so could be obviously wrong.
A couple advantages over the typical static content like videos or written intro sequences:
games can be “stickier”
ppl seem to enjoy intricate, complex games even while avoiding complex static media for lack of time; this is true of many high-school aged ppl in my experience
games can tailor different angles into EA material depending on the user’s input
games can both educate and filter for/ identify people who are high aptitude, contra to written content or video
because games can collect info about user behavior, you might have a much richer sense of where people are dropping out to prototype/ AB test on
anecdotally, smart ppl I went to highschool with seemed to have their career aspirations shaped by videogames, primarily toward wanting to do computer science to be game developers. Maybe this could be channelled elsewhere?
A few downsides of games
limited to a particular demographic interested in videogames
a lot of rationality/ EA stuff seems maybe quite hard to gamify?
maybe a game makes EA stuff seem fantastical
maybe a game would degrade nuance/ epistemics of content
maybe games are quite expensive to make for what they are?
I have zero expertise or qualifications except occasionally playing games, but feel free to DM me anyway if you are interested in this :)
I thought Decision Problem: Paperclips introduced a subset of AI risk arguments fairly well in gamified form, but I’m not aware of anybody where the game made them become interested enough in AGI alignment/risk/safety enough to work on it. Does anybody else on this forum have data/anecdata?