Akash—very nice post, and helpful for (relative) AI alignment newbies like me.
I would add that many AI alignment experts (and many EAs, actually) seem to assume that everyone getting interested in alignment is in their early 20s and doesn’t know much about anything, with no expertise in any other domain.
This might often be true, but there are also some people who get interested in alignment who have already had successful careers in other fields, and who can bring new interdisciplinary perspectives that alignment research might lack. Such people might be a lot less likely to fall into traps 3, 4, 5, and 6 that you mention. But they might fall into other kinds of traps that you don’t mention, such as thinking ‘If only these alignment kids understood my pet field X as well as I do, most of their misconceptions would evaporate and alignment research would progress 5x faster....’ (I’ve been guilty of this on occasion).
Akash—very nice post, and helpful for (relative) AI alignment newbies like me.
I would add that many AI alignment experts (and many EAs, actually) seem to assume that everyone getting interested in alignment is in their early 20s and doesn’t know much about anything, with no expertise in any other domain.
This might often be true, but there are also some people who get interested in alignment who have already had successful careers in other fields, and who can bring new interdisciplinary perspectives that alignment research might lack. Such people might be a lot less likely to fall into traps 3, 4, 5, and 6 that you mention. But they might fall into other kinds of traps that you don’t mention, such as thinking ‘If only these alignment kids understood my pet field X as well as I do, most of their misconceptions would evaporate and alignment research would progress 5x faster....’ (I’ve been guilty of this on occasion).