Last question for now: In the early 70s, there was an academic Technology Assessment movement. They wanted to do detailed analysis of incoming technologies, and figure out how technological development could be planned, developed in a better order, and at a better rate. This is relevant not only to EAs who care about tech risks, but also to anyone who cares about tech and its impacts in general. Should we be reviving the idea of analysing emerging tech? Will GPP analyse how we should prioritise technological research?
This is a really important topic that we aren’t discussing enough in the EA community. At the moment, Owen is working on a paper on modelling the marginal value of different research topics. It seems very likely that we will build on that paper by estimating the marginal value of a range of promising technology areas to compare against each other (a DCP for technology, as it were). This work wouldn’t address sequencing issues, and those are really important and something we should address as a society. Owen has some preliminary ideas in this direction and GPP may investigate this further. This work is, however, part of a very full pipeline of other work.
This highlights another important point—we aren’t the first to face these issues. People have been dealing with, and making predictions about, radical future-changing technologies for centuries. GPP has already applied for funding to hire a researcher to investigate the historical track record of such predictions, and predictions of mitigation strategies, to make us smarter about estimating which sorts of ex-risks and future challenges we are best placed to act to mitigate. We’ve also had interest from some donors to part-fund such activities. If anyone is interested in matching that contribution we may be able to speed up that hire.
Last question for now: In the early 70s, there was an academic Technology Assessment movement. They wanted to do detailed analysis of incoming technologies, and figure out how technological development could be planned, developed in a better order, and at a better rate. This is relevant not only to EAs who care about tech risks, but also to anyone who cares about tech and its impacts in general. Should we be reviving the idea of analysing emerging tech? Will GPP analyse how we should prioritise technological research?
This is a really important topic that we aren’t discussing enough in the EA community. At the moment, Owen is working on a paper on modelling the marginal value of different research topics. It seems very likely that we will build on that paper by estimating the marginal value of a range of promising technology areas to compare against each other (a DCP for technology, as it were). This work wouldn’t address sequencing issues, and those are really important and something we should address as a society. Owen has some preliminary ideas in this direction and GPP may investigate this further. This work is, however, part of a very full pipeline of other work.
This highlights another important point—we aren’t the first to face these issues. People have been dealing with, and making predictions about, radical future-changing technologies for centuries. GPP has already applied for funding to hire a researcher to investigate the historical track record of such predictions, and predictions of mitigation strategies, to make us smarter about estimating which sorts of ex-risks and future challenges we are best placed to act to mitigate. We’ve also had interest from some donors to part-fund such activities. If anyone is interested in matching that contribution we may be able to speed up that hire.