I think interpretability/transparency are great things to work on. Basically all plausible stories for how to get good things involve attempts to use interpretability tools in some capacity.
If I were to play devil’s advocate, I would say that precisely because interpretability is so obviously useful, if you have less-obvious ideas for things to do you should consider working on those instead, because lots of other people can be directed at obvious good things like interpretability. This way of phrasing things is maybe not great, and it shouldn’t totally dominate your cost-benefit.
I think interpretability/transparency are great things to work on. Basically all plausible stories for how to get good things involve attempts to use interpretability tools in some capacity.
If I were to play devil’s advocate, I would say that precisely because interpretability is so obviously useful, if you have less-obvious ideas for things to do you should consider working on those instead, because lots of other people can be directed at obvious good things like interpretability. This way of phrasing things is maybe not great, and it shouldn’t totally dominate your cost-benefit.