In my current view, MIRI’s main contributions are (1) producing research on highly-capable aligned AI that won’t be produced by default by academia or industry; (2) helping steer academia and industry towards working on aligned AI; and (3) producing strategic knowledge of how to reduce existential risk from highly-capable AI. I think (1) and (3) are MIRI’s current strong suits. This is not easy to verify without technical background and domain knowledge, but at least for my own thinking I’m impressed enough with these points to find MIRI very worthwhile to work with.
If (1) were not strong, and (2) were no stronger than currently, I would trust (3) somewhat less, and I would give up on MIRI. If (1) became difficult or impossible because (2) was done, i.e. if academia and/or industry were already doing all the important safety research, I’d see MIRI as much less crucial, unless there was a pivot to remaining neglected tasks in reducing existential risk from AI. If (2) looked too difficult (though there is already significant success, in part due to MIRI, FHI, and FLI), and (1) were not proceeding fast enough, and my “time until game-changing AI” estimates were small enough, then I’d probably do something different.
In my current view, MIRI’s main contributions are (1) producing research on highly-capable aligned AI that won’t be produced by default by academia or industry; (2) helping steer academia and industry towards working on aligned AI; and (3) producing strategic knowledge of how to reduce existential risk from highly-capable AI. I think (1) and (3) are MIRI’s current strong suits. This is not easy to verify without technical background and domain knowledge, but at least for my own thinking I’m impressed enough with these points to find MIRI very worthwhile to work with.
If (1) were not strong, and (2) were no stronger than currently, I would trust (3) somewhat less, and I would give up on MIRI. If (1) became difficult or impossible because (2) was done, i.e. if academia and/or industry were already doing all the important safety research, I’d see MIRI as much less crucial, unless there was a pivot to remaining neglected tasks in reducing existential risk from AI. If (2) looked too difficult (though there is already significant success, in part due to MIRI, FHI, and FLI), and (1) were not proceeding fast enough, and my “time until game-changing AI” estimates were small enough, then I’d probably do something different.
By (3), do you mean the publications that are listed under “forecasting” on MIRI’s publications page?