I’m an early career independent researcher who graduated in Economics at University of Cambridge in 2019. I’m part of Modeling Cooperation, a team of independent researchers who work to build computational models and software tools for understanding the consequences of competition in transformative AI. We’ve previously investigated the consequences of a Windfall Clause in a model of AI Existential Safety (under review, see preprint on arXiv at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.09404). My current work focuses on building a model to explore policies to promote more resources for AI Safety research.
In October I’m starting a PhD at Teeside University on “Understanding dynamics of AI Safety development through behavioural and network modelling”.
Beautifully made! I love the visuals and my first impressions are that it communicates x-risk in a more hopeful way. The app looks great on mobile too.
Some quick thoughts:
- I anticipated that clicking on a node would either give me a tooltip to explain what that particular node should represent or take me to another page/section of the site which explained these scenarios in more detail.
- I initially found it strange that all of the green nodes appear to link to the same prediction about population decline. I vaguely understood that this was a source of evidence for the number of green nodes, but the connection is not very clear. I think the app might benefit from a short explanation of why a user might want to click on these nodes. It might also help if hovering over one node highlighted all nodes which send you to the same place.
- I feel that the text on the graph is sufficient enough for me to understand the different clusters in the graph. Yet, I wonder if it might look better to use icons to represent these different clusters, and have the longer text appear on hover instead. Of course, I’d keep it as it is if user testing suggested that this change increased confusion.
- I will cast a vote for being able to input my own data. If I could input my own data, I also think it would be fun to share the resulting graphs.
- I don’t think I have any ideas for a better title. I do feel that another title should aim to be of a similar length.
- A few ideas for promoting the app to other EAs. It might be nice to give a talk about the web app, or for someone whose work is closely related to predictions for x-risk to show it off in a talk. Also, perhaps you could reach out to one of the university EA groups to see if they’d be interested in having a visual like this to show in some of their introductory talks.
Lastly, I’d like to congratulate you on launching the site. I’m sure you’ve put in a lot of work to get it to this point, and as a result it looks fantastic!