Introduce important people* to the most important ideas by way of having seminars they are paid to attend. I recommend Holden Karnofsky’s Most Important Century series for this as it is highly engaging, very readable, and has many jumping off points to go into more depth; but otherthings are also very good. The format could be groups of 4, with a moderator (and optionally the authors of the pieces under discussion on the side lines to offer clarity / answer questions). It could be livestreamed for accountability (on variousplatformstodiversifyaudience). Or not livestreamed for people who care about anonymity, but under the condition that anonymised notes of the conversations are made publicly available. And it should be made clear that the fee is equivalent to a “speakers fee” and people shouldn’t feel obliged to “tow the party line”, but rather speak their opinions freely. The fee should be set at a level where it incentivises people to attend (this level could be different for different groups). In addition to (or in place of) the fee, there could be prestige incentives like having a celebrity (or someone highly respected/venerated by the particular group) on the panel or moderating, or hosting it at a famous/prestigious venue. Ideally, for maximum engagement with the ideas and ample time for discussion, the seminar should be split over multiple weeks (say one for each blog post), but I understand this might be impractical in some cases given the busy schedules important people tend to have.
*important people would include technical AI/ML experts, AI policy experts, policy makers in general, public intellectuals; those of which who haven’t significantly engaged with the ideas already.
Maybe if such a thing is successfully pulled off, it could be edited into a documentary TV series, say with clips from each week’s discussion taken from each of the groups, and an overarching narrative in interludes with music, graphics, stock footage (plane on runway) etc.
Introduce important people* to the most important ideas by way of having seminars they are paid to attend. I recommend Holden Karnofsky’s Most Important Century series for this as it is highly engaging, very readable, and has many jumping off points to go into more depth; but other things are also very good. The format could be groups of 4, with a moderator (and optionally the authors of the pieces under discussion on the side lines to offer clarity / answer questions). It could be livestreamed for accountability (on various platforms to diversify audience). Or not livestreamed for people who care about anonymity, but under the condition that anonymised notes of the conversations are made publicly available. And it should be made clear that the fee is equivalent to a “speakers fee” and people shouldn’t feel obliged to “tow the party line”, but rather speak their opinions freely. The fee should be set at a level where it incentivises people to attend (this level could be different for different groups). In addition to (or in place of) the fee, there could be prestige incentives like having a celebrity (or someone highly respected/venerated by the particular group) on the panel or moderating, or hosting it at a famous/prestigious venue. Ideally, for maximum engagement with the ideas and ample time for discussion, the seminar should be split over multiple weeks (say one for each blog post), but I understand this might be impractical in some cases given the busy schedules important people tend to have.
(Note that this is in a similar vein to another other one of my ideas, but at a much lower level.)
*important people would include technical AI/ML experts, AI policy experts, policy makers in general, public intellectuals; those of which who haven’t significantly engaged with the ideas already.
Maybe if such a thing is successfully pulled off, it could be edited into a documentary TV series, say with clips from each week’s discussion taken from each of the groups, and an overarching narrative in interludes with music, graphics, stock footage (plane on runway) etc.
(Sorry if some of my ideas are fairy big budget, but EA seems to have quite a big budget these days)
Note there have already been Most Important Century seminars hosted. I missed this one. Would be interested to hear how it went.
Are there any prior examples of this kind of thing? (I haven’t found any with a quick search.)