Do we need to study at a US university in order to participate? I’m in Europe.
Who should be the target audience for the posts? CS students? The average LW reader? People somewhat interested in AI alignment? The average Joe? How much do we need to dumb it down?
Can we publish the posts before the contest ends?
Will you necessarily post the winners’ names? Can we go by a pseudonym instead?
How close to the source material should we stay? I might write a post about what value learning is, why it seems like the most promising approach and why it might be solvable, which would involve explaining a few of John Wentworth’s posts. But I don’t think my reasoning is exactly the same as his.
Also, is there any post that whoever is reading this comment tried and failed to understand? Or better yet, tried hard to understand but found completely impenetrable? If so, what part did you find confusing? If I choose to participate and try to explain that post, would you volunteer to read a draft to check that I’m explaining it clearly?
You can participate from any country! The submission should just be in English (but, if you’d like to additionally submit in another language, that could be cool to increase accessibility).
The target audience would ideally be a few levels lower than the audience of the original piece. If it was originally written for alignment researchers, then making the paper accessible to a CS student is good, but making it accessible to people who have never heard of alignment could be even better (although certainly harder). This is what the “accessibility” scoring point would be focusing on, but it’s far from the only factor.
You can publish the post before the contest ends, but please indicate that the post is intended to be part of the contest! We’d ideally like to be encouraging people to create content they wouldn’t have without the contest.
A pseudonym works! Publishing names would mainly be to help students build social capital, so it’s an optional part of winning.
I think that as long as you faithfully explain parts of the original posts you would be very welcome to add to the discussion.
(Would also love to hear answers to the last question!)
I have a few questions:
Do we need to study at a US university in order to participate? I’m in Europe.
Who should be the target audience for the posts? CS students? The average LW reader? People somewhat interested in AI alignment? The average Joe? How much do we need to dumb it down?
Can we publish the posts before the contest ends?
Will you necessarily post the winners’ names? Can we go by a pseudonym instead?
How close to the source material should we stay? I might write a post about what value learning is, why it seems like the most promising approach and why it might be solvable, which would involve explaining a few of John Wentworth’s posts. But I don’t think my reasoning is exactly the same as his.
Also, is there any post that whoever is reading this comment tried and failed to understand? Or better yet, tried hard to understand but found completely impenetrable? If so, what part did you find confusing? If I choose to participate and try to explain that post, would you volunteer to read a draft to check that I’m explaining it clearly?
You can participate from any country! The submission should just be in English (but, if you’d like to additionally submit in another language, that could be cool to increase accessibility).
The target audience would ideally be a few levels lower than the audience of the original piece. If it was originally written for alignment researchers, then making the paper accessible to a CS student is good, but making it accessible to people who have never heard of alignment could be even better (although certainly harder). This is what the “accessibility” scoring point would be focusing on, but it’s far from the only factor.
You can publish the post before the contest ends, but please indicate that the post is intended to be part of the contest! We’d ideally like to be encouraging people to create content they wouldn’t have without the contest.
A pseudonym works! Publishing names would mainly be to help students build social capital, so it’s an optional part of winning.
I think that as long as you faithfully explain parts of the original posts you would be very welcome to add to the discussion.
(Would also love to hear answers to the last question!)