What are MIRI’s plans for publication over the next few years, whether peer-reviewed or arxiv-style publications?
More specifically, what are the a) long-term intentions and b) short-term actual plans for the publication of workshop results, and what kind of priority does that have?
Great question! The short version is, writing more & publishing more (and generally engaging with the academic mainstream more) are very high on my priority list.
Mainstream publications have historically been fairly difficult for us, as until last year, AI alignment research was seen as fairly kooky. (We’ve had a number of papers rejected from various journals due to the “weird AI motivation.”) Going forward, it looks like that will be less of an issue.
That said, writing capability is a huge bottleneck right now. Our researchers are currently trying to (a) run workshops, (b) engage with & evaluate promising potential researchers, (c) attend conferences, (d) produce new research, (e) write it up, and (f) get it published. That’s a lot of things for a three-person research team to juggle! Priority number 1 is to grow the research team (because otherwise nothing will ever be unblocked), and we’re aiming to hire a few new researchers before the year is through. After that, increasing our writing output is likely the next highest priority.
Expect our writing output this year to be similar to last year’s (i.e., a small handful of peer reviewed papers and a larger handful of technical reports that might make it onto the arXiv), and then hopefully we’ll have more & higher quality publications starting in 2016 (the publishing pipeline isn’t particularly fast).
What are MIRI’s plans for publication over the next few years, whether peer-reviewed or arxiv-style publications?
More specifically, what are the a) long-term intentions and b) short-term actual plans for the publication of workshop results, and what kind of priority does that have?
Great question! The short version is, writing more & publishing more (and generally engaging with the academic mainstream more) are very high on my priority list.
Mainstream publications have historically been fairly difficult for us, as until last year, AI alignment research was seen as fairly kooky. (We’ve had a number of papers rejected from various journals due to the “weird AI motivation.”) Going forward, it looks like that will be less of an issue.
That said, writing capability is a huge bottleneck right now. Our researchers are currently trying to (a) run workshops, (b) engage with & evaluate promising potential researchers, (c) attend conferences, (d) produce new research, (e) write it up, and (f) get it published. That’s a lot of things for a three-person research team to juggle! Priority number 1 is to grow the research team (because otherwise nothing will ever be unblocked), and we’re aiming to hire a few new researchers before the year is through. After that, increasing our writing output is likely the next highest priority.
Expect our writing output this year to be similar to last year’s (i.e., a small handful of peer reviewed papers and a larger handful of technical reports that might make it onto the arXiv), and then hopefully we’ll have more & higher quality publications starting in 2016 (the publishing pipeline isn’t particularly fast).