This is a great point, thanks. Part of me thinks basically any work that increases AI capabilities probably accelerates AI timelines. But it seems plausible to me that advancing the frontier of research accelerates AI timelines much more than other work that merely increases AI capabilities, and that most of this frontier work is done at major AI labs.
If that’s the case, then I think you’re right that my using a prior for the average project to judge this specific project (as I did in the post) is not informative.
It would also mean we could tell a story about how this ML engineer hacking on their own side project rather than going to work at one of the main AI labs indeed would be a net positive due to the former accelerating AI timelines much less than the latter.
Whether it makes sense to look at the situation like this though might depend on whether that actually is the counterfactual, or whether the counterfactual is not increasing AI capabilities or the frontier of research or AI timelines at all.
This is a great point, thanks. Part of me thinks basically any work that increases AI capabilities probably accelerates AI timelines. But it seems plausible to me that advancing the frontier of research accelerates AI timelines much more than other work that merely increases AI capabilities, and that most of this frontier work is done at major AI labs.
If that’s the case, then I think you’re right that my using a prior for the average project to judge this specific project (as I did in the post) is not informative.
It would also mean we could tell a story about how this ML engineer hacking on their own side project rather than going to work at one of the main AI labs indeed would be a net positive due to the former accelerating AI timelines much less than the latter.
Whether it makes sense to look at the situation like this though might depend on whether that actually is the counterfactual, or whether the counterfactual is not increasing AI capabilities or the frontier of research or AI timelines at all.