No real criteria, am open to anything (being an undergrad, I think I have sometime to explore).
themasterchief166
Karma: 32
Hi all! I am a final-year math + CS undergraduate who has recently been grappling with the following question. This is a question I’ve tried researching online, but haven’t found much discussion of:
Question: Does robotics capabilities research accelerate AGI timelines?
For context, I am considering pursuing a career in theoretical robotics, particularly in continual learning and the development of robots that can learn from and adapt to / navigate their environments in a human-like manner. One concern I have, however, is that such research might advance AGI timelines. Specficially, it seems possible that architectures developed for continual learning in robots could transfer to general AGI systems (even if the AGI systems are non-embodied, since capabilities such as continual adaptation and long-term objective pursuit may generalize beyond physical tasks.)
Is this a valid concern, and is it a common view within the AI safety community? I.e. would mainstream AI safety researchers view either of these directions as meaningfully contributing to AGI capabilities? Or are there strong reasons to believe that work on continual learning in robotics would not significantly accelerate AGI timelines? Would appreciate honest perspectives.
TLDR: Is it very likely that robotics capabilities research meaningfully accelerates AGI timelines? If so, why?
(For reference, I have read quite a bit of the AI safety literature, but don’t find alignment research particularly enjoyable. Hence, my [perhaps futile] hope that robotics does not meaningfully advance AGI. If people think such work significantly accelerates AGI capabilities, though, I’m happy to steer clear…)
Hi John Salter, thank you so much for the insights! I agree that neglectedness may be a misleading metric. However, I just wanted to clarify what you meant by the phrase “heuristics for finding good problems others will miss.” Given that neglectedness is not desirable, what do you mean by problems “others will miss” in your quote?
Do you mean problems that have rarely been considered at all (whereas “neglected” problems mean those that many people have recognized but chosen not to address)? Or something else?