their approaches are correlated with each other. They all relate to things like corrigibility, the current ML paradigm, IDA, and other approaches that e.g. Paul Christiano would be interested in.
You need to explain better how these approaches are correlated, and what an uncorrelated approach might look like. It seems to me that, for example, MIRI’s agent foundations and Anthropic’s prosaic interpretability approaches are wildly different!
By the time you get good enough to get a grant, you have to have spent a lot of time studying this stuff. Unpaid, mind you, and likely with another job/school/whatever taking up your brain cycles.
I think you are wildly underestimating how easy it is for broadly competent people with an interest in AI alignment but no experience to get funding to skill up. I’d go so far as to say it’s a strength of the field.
Point 1: I said “Different from MIRI but correlated with each other”. You’re right that I should’ve done a better job of explaining that. Basically, “Yudkowksy approaches (MIRI) vs Christiano approaches (my incomplete read of most of the non-MIRI orgs). I concede 60% of this point.
Point 2: !!! Big if true, thank you! I read most of johnswentworths’ guide to being an independent researcher, and the discussion of grants was promising. I’m getting a visceral sense of this from seeing (and entering) more contests, bounties, prizes, etc. for alignment work. I’m working towards the day when I can 100% concede this point. (And, based on other feedback and encouragement I’ve gotten, that day is coming soon.)
You need to explain better how these approaches are correlated, and what an uncorrelated approach might look like. It seems to me that, for example, MIRI’s agent foundations and Anthropic’s prosaic interpretability approaches are wildly different!
I think you are wildly underestimating how easy it is for broadly competent people with an interest in AI alignment but no experience to get funding to skill up. I’d go so far as to say it’s a strength of the field.
Point 1: I said “Different from MIRI but correlated with each other”. You’re right that I should’ve done a better job of explaining that. Basically, “Yudkowksy approaches (MIRI) vs Christiano approaches (my incomplete read of most of the non-MIRI orgs). I concede 60% of this point.
Point 2: !!! Big if true, thank you! I read most of johnswentworths’ guide to being an independent researcher, and the discussion of grants was promising. I’m getting a visceral sense of this from seeing (and entering) more contests, bounties, prizes, etc. for alignment work. I’m working towards the day when I can 100% concede this point. (And, based on other feedback and encouragement I’ve gotten, that day is coming soon.)