My model is that MIRI prioritized comms before 2013 or so, prioritized a mix of comms and research in 2013-2016, prioritized research in 2017-2020, and prioritized comms again starting in 2021.
(This is very crude and probably some MIRI people would characterize things totally differently.)
I don’t think we “gave up” in any of those periods of time, though we changed our mind about which kinds of activities were the best use of our time.
I was actually thinking about something more like “direct” alignment work. 2013-2016 was a period where MIRI was outputting much more research, hosting workshops, et cetera.
2013-2016 had more “research output” in the sense that we were writing more stuff up, not in the sense that we were necessarily doing more research then.
I feel like your comment is blurring together two different things:
If someone wasn’t paying much attention in 2017-2020 to our strategy/plan write-ups, they might have seen fewer public write-ups from us and concluded that we’ve given up.
(I don’t know that this actually happened? But I guess it might have happened some...?)
If someone was paying some attention to our strategy/plan write-ups in 2021-2023, but was maybe misunderstanding some parts, and didn’t care much about how much MIRI was publicly writing up (or did care, but only for technical results?), then they might conclude that we’ve given up.
Combining these two hypothetical misunderstandings into a single “MIRI 2017-2023 has given up” narrative seems very weird to me. We didn’t even stop doing pre-2017 things like Agent Foundations in 2017-2023, we just did other things too.
My model is that MIRI prioritized comms before 2013 or so, prioritized a mix of comms and research in 2013-2016, prioritized research in 2017-2020, and prioritized comms again starting in 2021.
(This is very crude and probably some MIRI people would characterize things totally differently.)
I don’t think we “gave up” in any of those periods of time, though we changed our mind about which kinds of activities were the best use of our time.
2013-2016 had more “research output” in the sense that we were writing more stuff up, not in the sense that we were necessarily doing more research then.
I feel like your comment is blurring together two different things:
If someone wasn’t paying much attention in 2017-2020 to our strategy/plan write-ups, they might have seen fewer public write-ups from us and concluded that we’ve given up.
(I don’t know that this actually happened? But I guess it might have happened some...?)
If someone was paying some attention to our strategy/plan write-ups in 2021-2023, but was maybe misunderstanding some parts, and didn’t care much about how much MIRI was publicly writing up (or did care, but only for technical results?), then they might conclude that we’ve given up.
Combining these two hypothetical misunderstandings into a single “MIRI 2017-2023 has given up” narrative seems very weird to me. We didn’t even stop doing pre-2017 things like Agent Foundations in 2017-2023, we just did other things too.