Another thought: Given the nature of this problem, I wonder why the focus is on enabling EAs to discover AI strategy vs trying to gather ideas from experts who are outside the community. Most college professors have office hours you can go to and ask questions. Existing experts aren’t suffering from any of the issues that might put EAs in closed mode, and they already have the deep expertise it would take years for us to accumulate. I could imagine an event like the Asilomar AI conference, but for AI safety strategy, where you invite leading experts in every field that seems relevant, do the beer and whiteboards thing, and see what people come up with. (A gathering size much smaller than the Asilomar conference might be optimal for idea generation. I think it’d be interesting to sponsor independent teams where each team consists of one deep learning expert, one AI venture capitalist, one game theory person, one policy person, one historian, one EA/rationalist, etc. and then see if the teams end up agreeing about anything.)
Are there any best practices for getting academics interested in problems?
Another thought: Given the nature of this problem, I wonder why the focus is on enabling EAs to discover AI strategy vs trying to gather ideas from experts who are outside the community. Most college professors have office hours you can go to and ask questions. Existing experts aren’t suffering from any of the issues that might put EAs in closed mode, and they already have the deep expertise it would take years for us to accumulate. I could imagine an event like the Asilomar AI conference, but for AI safety strategy, where you invite leading experts in every field that seems relevant, do the beer and whiteboards thing, and see what people come up with. (A gathering size much smaller than the Asilomar conference might be optimal for idea generation. I think it’d be interesting to sponsor independent teams where each team consists of one deep learning expert, one AI venture capitalist, one game theory person, one policy person, one historian, one EA/rationalist, etc. and then see if the teams end up agreeing about anything.)
Are there any best practices for getting academics interested in problems?