Oh but you are confusing conference presentations with conference publications. Check the links you’ve just sent me: they discuss the latter, nor the former. You cannot cite conference presentation (or that’s not what’s usually understood under “citations”, and definitely not in the links from your post), but only a publication. Conference publications in the field of AI are usually indeed peer-reviewed and yes, indeed, they are often even more relevant than journal publications, at least if published in prestigious conference proceedings (as I stated above).
Now, on MIRI’s publication page there are no conference publications in 2017, and for 2016 there are mainly technical reports, which is fine, but should again not be confused with regular (conference) publications, at least according to the information provided by the publisher. Note that this doesn’t mean technical reports are of no value! To the contrary. I am just making an overall analysis of the state of the art of MIRI’s publications, and trying to figure out what they’ve published, and then how this compares with a publication record of similarly sized research groups in a similar domain. If I am wrong in any of these points, I’ll be happy to revise my opinion!
Sure :) I saw that one on their website as well. But a few papers over the course of 2-3 years isn’t very representative for an effective research group, is it? If you look at groups by scholars who do get (way smaller) grants in the field of AI, their output is way more effective. But even if we don’t count publications, but speak in terms of effectiveness of a few publications, I am not seeing anything. If you are, maybe you can explain it to me?
I regret I don’t have much insight to offer on the general point. When I was looking into the bibliometrics myself, very broad comparison to (e.g.) Norwegian computer scientists gave figures like ‘~0.5 to 1 paper per person year’, which MIRI’s track record seemed about on par if we look at peer reviewed technical work. I wouldn’t be surprised to find better performing research groups (in terms of papers/highly cited papers), but slightly moreso if these groups were doing AI safety work.
Oh but you are confusing conference presentations with conference publications. Check the links you’ve just sent me: they discuss the latter, nor the former. You cannot cite conference presentation (or that’s not what’s usually understood under “citations”, and definitely not in the links from your post), but only a publication. Conference publications in the field of AI are usually indeed peer-reviewed and yes, indeed, they are often even more relevant than journal publications, at least if published in prestigious conference proceedings (as I stated above).
Now, on MIRI’s publication page there are no conference publications in 2017, and for 2016 there are mainly technical reports, which is fine, but should again not be confused with regular (conference) publications, at least according to the information provided by the publisher. Note that this doesn’t mean technical reports are of no value! To the contrary. I am just making an overall analysis of the state of the art of MIRI’s publications, and trying to figure out what they’ve published, and then how this compares with a publication record of similarly sized research groups in a similar domain. If I am wrong in any of these points, I’ll be happy to revise my opinion!
This paper was in 2016, and is included in the proceedings of the UAI conference that year. Does this not count?
Sure :) I saw that one on their website as well. But a few papers over the course of 2-3 years isn’t very representative for an effective research group, is it? If you look at groups by scholars who do get (way smaller) grants in the field of AI, their output is way more effective. But even if we don’t count publications, but speak in terms of effectiveness of a few publications, I am not seeing anything. If you are, maybe you can explain it to me?
I regret I don’t have much insight to offer on the general point. When I was looking into the bibliometrics myself, very broad comparison to (e.g.) Norwegian computer scientists gave figures like ‘~0.5 to 1 paper per person year’, which MIRI’s track record seemed about on par if we look at peer reviewed technical work. I wouldn’t be surprised to find better performing research groups (in terms of papers/highly cited papers), but slightly moreso if these groups were doing AI safety work.