>anyone capable of significantly contributing wouldn’t need an on-ramp
That’s approximately why I was skeptical, although I want to frame it a bit differently. I expect that the most valuable contributions to AI safety will involve generating new paradigms, asking questions that nobody has yet thought to ask, or something like that. It’s hard to teach the skills that are valuable for that.
I got the impression that RAISE was mostly oriented toward producing people who become typical MIRI researchers. Even if MIRI’s paradigm is the right one, I expect that MIRI needs atypically good researchers, and would only get minor benefits from someone who is struggling to become a typical MIRI researcher.
RAISE was oriented toward producing people who become typical MIRI researchers… I expect that MIRI needs atypically good researchers.
Slightly odd phrasing here which I don’t really understand, since I think the typical MIRI researcher is very good at what they do, and that most of them are atypically good researchers compared with the general population of researchers.
Do you mean instead “RAISE was oriented toward producing people who would be typical for an AI researcher in general”? Or do you mean that there are only minor benefits from additional researchers who are about as good as current MIRI researchers?
I meant something like “good enough to look like a MIRI researcher, but unlikely to turn out to be more productive than the average MIRI researcher”. I guess when I wrote that I was feeling somewhat pessimistic about MIRI’s hiring process. Given optimistic assumptions about how well MIRI distinguishes good from bad job applicants, then I’d expect that MIRI wouldn’t hire RAISE graduates.
>anyone capable of significantly contributing wouldn’t need an on-ramp
That’s approximately why I was skeptical, although I want to frame it a bit differently. I expect that the most valuable contributions to AI safety will involve generating new paradigms, asking questions that nobody has yet thought to ask, or something like that. It’s hard to teach the skills that are valuable for that.
I got the impression that RAISE was mostly oriented toward producing people who become typical MIRI researchers. Even if MIRI’s paradigm is the right one, I expect that MIRI needs atypically good researchers, and would only get minor benefits from someone who is struggling to become a typical MIRI researcher.
Slightly odd phrasing here which I don’t really understand, since I think the typical MIRI researcher is very good at what they do, and that most of them are atypically good researchers compared with the general population of researchers.
Do you mean instead “RAISE was oriented toward producing people who would be typical for an AI researcher in general”? Or do you mean that there are only minor benefits from additional researchers who are about as good as current MIRI researchers?
I meant something like “good enough to look like a MIRI researcher, but unlikely to turn out to be more productive than the average MIRI researcher”. I guess when I wrote that I was feeling somewhat pessimistic about MIRI’s hiring process. Given optimistic assumptions about how well MIRI distinguishes good from bad job applicants, then I’d expect that MIRI wouldn’t hire RAISE graduates.