Just chatted with @Ozzie Gooen about this and will hopefully release audio soon. I probably overstated a few things / gave a false impression of confidence in the parent in a few places (e.g., my tone was probably a little too harsh on non-AI-specific projects); hopefully the audio convo will give a more nuanced sense of my views. I’m also very interested in criticisms of my views and others sharing competing viewpoints.
Also want to emphasize the clarifications from my reply to Ozzie:
While I think it’s valuable to share thoughts about the value of different types of work candidly, I am very appreciative of both people working on forecasting projects and grantmakers in the space for their work trying to make the world a better place (and am friendly with many of them). As I maybe should have made more obvious, I am myself affiliated with Samotsvety Forecasting, and Sage which has done several forecasting projects (and am for the most part more pessimistic about forecasting than others in these groups/orgs). And I’m also doing AI forecasting research atm, though not the type that would be covered under the grantmaking program.
I’m not trying to claim with significant confidence that this program shouldn’t exist. I am trying to share my current views on the value of previous forecasting grants and the areas that seem most promising to me going forward. I’m also open to changing my mind on lots of this!
Just chatted with @Ozzie Gooen about this and will hopefully release audio soon. I probably overstated a few things / gave a false impression of confidence in the parent in a few places (e.g., my tone was probably a little too harsh on non-AI-specific projects); hopefully the audio convo will give a more nuanced sense of my views. I’m also very interested in criticisms of my views and others sharing competing viewpoints.
Also want to emphasize the clarifications from my reply to Ozzie:
While I think it’s valuable to share thoughts about the value of different types of work candidly, I am very appreciative of both people working on forecasting projects and grantmakers in the space for their work trying to make the world a better place (and am friendly with many of them). As I maybe should have made more obvious, I am myself affiliated with Samotsvety Forecasting, and Sage which has done several forecasting projects (and am for the most part more pessimistic about forecasting than others in these groups/orgs). And I’m also doing AI forecasting research atm, though not the type that would be covered under the grantmaking program.
I’m not trying to claim with significant confidence that this program shouldn’t exist. I am trying to share my current views on the value of previous forecasting grants and the areas that seem most promising to me going forward. I’m also open to changing my mind on lots of this!
Audio/podcast is here:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fsnMDpLHr78XgfWE8/podcast-is-forecasting-a-promising-ea-cause-area