I share your sentiment: there must be some form of alignment work that is not speeding up capabilities, some form of longtermist work that isn’t risky… right?
Why are the examples so elusive? I think this is the core of the present forum post.
15 years ago, when GiveWell started, the search for good interventions was difficult. It required a lot of research, trials, reasoning etc. to find the current recommendations. We are at a similar point for work targeting the far future… except that we can’t do experiments, don’t have feedback, don’t have historical examples[1], etc. This makes the question a much harder one. It also means that “do research on good interventions” isn’t a good answer either, since this research is so intractable.
Thanks a lot for your responses!
I share your sentiment: there must be some form of alignment work that is not speeding up capabilities, some form of longtermist work that isn’t risky… right?
Why are the examples so elusive? I think this is the core of the present forum post.
15 years ago, when GiveWell started, the search for good interventions was difficult. It required a lot of research, trials, reasoning etc. to find the current recommendations. We are at a similar point for work targeting the far future… except that we can’t do experiments, don’t have feedback, don’t have historical examples[1], etc. This makes the question a much harder one. It also means that “do research on good interventions” isn’t a good answer either, since this research is so intractable.
Ian Morris in this podcast episode discusses to what degree history is contingent, i.e., past events have influenced the future for a long time.