I don’t feel I have a great answer here. I think in part there’s just not that many philosophers in the world, and most of them are already wrapped up in existing research projects. Of those that are EA-aligned, I think the field of global priorities research probably tends to seem to them like a better fit with their skills than AI alignment. It also might be (this is a guess, based on maybe one or two very brief impressions) that philosophers in general aren’t that convinced of the value of the ‘agent foundations’ approach to AI safety, and feel that they’d need to spend a year getting to grips with machine learning before they could contribute to AI technical safety research.
Of your problems list, quite a number are more-or-less mainstream philosophical topics: standard debates in decision theory; infinite ethics; fair distribution of benefits; paternalism; metaphilosophy; nature of normativity. So philosophers are already working on those at least.
I really like your ‘metaethical policing’ bullet points, and wish there was more work from philosophers there.
On a related note, I feel like encouraging EA people with philosophy background to go into journalism or tech policy (as you did in the recent 80,000 Hours career review)
Arden Koehler wrote that part of the post (and is the main author of that post), so I’ll leave that to her. But quite a number of people who leave philosophy do so because they no longer want to keep doing philosophy research, so it seems good to list other options outside of that.
Of your problems list, quite a number are more-or-less mainstream philosophical topics
Sure. To clarify, I think it would be helpful for philosophers to think about those problems specifically in the context of AI alignment. For example many mainstream decision theorists seem to think mostly in terms of what kind of decision theory best fit with our intuitions about how humans should make decisions, whereas for AI alignment it’s likely more productive to think about what would actually happen if an AI were to follow a certain decision theory and whether we would prefer that to what would happen if it were to follow a different decision theory. Another thing that would be really helpful is to act as a bridge from mainstream philosophy research to AI alignment research, e.g., pointing out relevant results from mainstream philosophy when appropriate.
Arden Koehler wrote that part of the post (and is the main author of that post), so I’ll leave that to her. But quite a number of people who leave philosophy do so because they no longer want to keep doing philosophy research, so it seems good to list other options outside of that.
Ah ok. Any chance you could discuss this issue with her and perhaps suggest adding working on technical AI safety as an option that EA-aligned philosophers or people with philosophy backgrounds should strongly consider? (One EA person with a philosophy PhD already contacted me privately to say that they didn’t realize that their background might be helpful for AI alignment and to ask for more details on how they can help, so it seems like raising awareness here is at least part of the solution.)
I think it would be helpful for philosophers to think about those problems specifically in the context of AI alignment.
That makes sense; agree there’s lots of work to do there.
Any chance you could discuss this issue with her and perhaps suggest adding working on technical AI safety as an option that EA-aligned philosophers or people with philosophy backgrounds should strongly consider?
I don’t feel I have a great answer here. I think in part there’s just not that many philosophers in the world, and most of them are already wrapped up in existing research projects. Of those that are EA-aligned, I think the field of global priorities research probably tends to seem to them like a better fit with their skills than AI alignment. It also might be (this is a guess, based on maybe one or two very brief impressions) that philosophers in general aren’t that convinced of the value of the ‘agent foundations’ approach to AI safety, and feel that they’d need to spend a year getting to grips with machine learning before they could contribute to AI technical safety research.
Of your problems list, quite a number are more-or-less mainstream philosophical topics: standard debates in decision theory; infinite ethics; fair distribution of benefits; paternalism; metaphilosophy; nature of normativity. So philosophers are already working on those at least.
I really like your ‘metaethical policing’ bullet points, and wish there was more work from philosophers there.
Arden Koehler wrote that part of the post (and is the main author of that post), so I’ll leave that to her. But quite a number of people who leave philosophy do so because they no longer want to keep doing philosophy research, so it seems good to list other options outside of that.
Sure. To clarify, I think it would be helpful for philosophers to think about those problems specifically in the context of AI alignment. For example many mainstream decision theorists seem to think mostly in terms of what kind of decision theory best fit with our intuitions about how humans should make decisions, whereas for AI alignment it’s likely more productive to think about what would actually happen if an AI were to follow a certain decision theory and whether we would prefer that to what would happen if it were to follow a different decision theory. Another thing that would be really helpful is to act as a bridge from mainstream philosophy research to AI alignment research, e.g., pointing out relevant results from mainstream philosophy when appropriate.
Ah ok. Any chance you could discuss this issue with her and perhaps suggest adding working on technical AI safety as an option that EA-aligned philosophers or people with philosophy backgrounds should strongly consider? (One EA person with a philosophy PhD already contacted me privately to say that they didn’t realize that their background might be helpful for AI alignment and to ask for more details on how they can help, so it seems like raising awareness here is at least part of the solution.)
That makes sense; agree there’s lots of work to do there.
Have sent an email! :)