Do you think focusing on s-risks leads to meaningfully different technical goals than focusing on other considerations?
I think it definitely leads to a difference in prioritization among the things one could study under the broad heading of AI safety. Hopefully this will be clear in the body of the agenda. And, some considerations around possible downsides of certain alignment work might be more salient to those focused on s-risk; the possibility that attempts at alignment with human values could lead to very bad “near misses” is an example. (I think some other EAF researchers have more developed views on this than myself.) But, in this document and my own current research I’ve tried to choose directions that are especially important from the s-risk perspective but which are also valuable by the lights of non-s-risk-focused folks working in the area.
[Just speaking for myself here]
I find myself someone confused by s-risks as defined here
For what it’s worth, EAF is currently deliberating about this definition and it might change soon.
We are now using a new definition of s-risks. I’ve edited this post to reflect the change.
New definition:
S-risks are risks of events that bring about suffering in cosmically significant amounts. By “significant”, we mean significant relative to expected future suffering.
Note that it may turn out that the amount of suffering that we can influence is dwarfed by suffering that we can’t influence. By “expectation of suffering in the future” we mean “expectation of action-relevant suffering in the future”.
I think it definitely leads to a difference in prioritization among the things one could study under the broad heading of AI safety. Hopefully this will be clear in the body of the agenda. And, some considerations around possible downsides of certain alignment work might be more salient to those focused on s-risk; the possibility that attempts at alignment with human values could lead to very bad “near misses” is an example. (I think some other EAF researchers have more developed views on this than myself.) But, in this document and my own current research I’ve tried to choose directions that are especially important from the s-risk perspective but which are also valuable by the lights of non-s-risk-focused folks working in the area.
[Just speaking for myself here]
For what it’s worth, EAF is currently deliberating about this definition and it might change soon.
Thanks, that helps!
Cool; if your deliberations include examples, it might be useful to include them if you end up writing an explanation somewhere.
We are now using a new definition of s-risks. I’ve edited this post to reflect the change.
New definition:
S-risks are risks of events that bring about suffering in cosmically significant amounts. By “significant”, we mean significant relative to expected future suffering.
Note that it may turn out that the amount of suffering that we can influence is dwarfed by suffering that we can’t influence. By “expectation of suffering in the future” we mean “expectation of action-relevant suffering in the future”.