Hey, one of the co-organisers of this special session here (I was planning to make a post about this on LW myself but OP beat me to it!).
Clearly I am biased, but I would highly recommend the ALIFE conference (even outside the context of this special session). I published a paper there myself at ALIFE 2021 and really enjoyed the experience.
It has a diverse, open-minded and enthusiastic set of attendees from a wide range of academic disciplines, the topics are varied but interesting. Regarding being in touch with reality, this is harder to comment on but it does typically include a lot of practical and empirical research, for example computer simulations, as well as more theoretical and philosophical work.
We are arranging this special session because we think that Artificial Life as a field, and in particular attendees of this conference, may have a lot to contribute to AI safety, so we are excited about the potential overlap between these areas.
Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions.
Hey, one of the co-organisers of this special session here (I was planning to make a post about this on LW myself but OP beat me to it!).
Clearly I am biased, but I would highly recommend the ALIFE conference (even outside the context of this special session). I published a paper there myself at ALIFE 2021 and really enjoyed the experience.
It has a diverse, open-minded and enthusiastic set of attendees from a wide range of academic disciplines, the topics are varied but interesting. Regarding being in touch with reality, this is harder to comment on but it does typically include a lot of practical and empirical research, for example computer simulations, as well as more theoretical and philosophical work.
We are arranging this special session because we think that Artificial Life as a field, and in particular attendees of this conference, may have a lot to contribute to AI safety, so we are excited about the potential overlap between these areas.
Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions.