Answerers should generally try to figure out enlightened questions and answer those questions. This method is often the one that will be best for the asker’s utility.
This takeaway makes sense to me, and I would suggest separating questions into different categories(contexts, characters, etc). In a large classroom, people often need clarifications than solutions, as thinking more than one minute here can be counter productive; Professor would answer directly and shortly, especially when questions are simple. In a problem-solving or thesis writing, people stuck, and enlightened-question-answering would help them a lot; People need different perspectives as well as solutions. In the case of daily life questions, like dentist appointment, the answerer would response, or notify in the morning as the answer is predictable, as you said above.
In above 3 cases, the most benefit of enlightened-question-answering comes to the complex and advanced situations like problem-solving. This reveals that your model gives different viewpoints, over giving knowledges.
You also concerned about people asking fewer questions to this answerer, partially because its answers are off-topic in its full force. Yeah, we don’t need diverse viewpoints everytime. It will be frustrating. but…
Correspondingly, I imagine that as AGI gets close, people might ask fewer and fewer questions; instead, relevant information will be better pushed to them. A really powerful oracle wouldn’t stay an oracle for long, they would quickly get turned into an information feed of some kind.
To me, this is already happening. First Youtube comes to my mind. Second is Lesswrong.com. The similarity of the two is that I use search bar rarely as contents are already displayed, by AI-recommender or by Human administrator. Surely this is the place where people want diverse viewpoints more and more.
On the other hand I don’t use search bar because I don’t come with questions. When I have new keywords, I should use search bar to play Baba Yetu or to watch more clip of Thomasin McKenzie.(On the third hand, youtube uses cookies and reflects my recent interest on Sid Meier’s Civilization. It is becoming “the good enough”!!) It is not exact to compare your answer model and youtube recommendation, but this may show the changing paradigm of questioning.
This takeaway makes sense to me, and I would suggest separating questions into different categories(contexts, characters, etc). In a large classroom, people often need clarifications than solutions, as thinking more than one minute here can be counter productive; Professor would answer directly and shortly, especially when questions are simple. In a problem-solving or thesis writing, people stuck, and enlightened-question-answering would help them a lot; People need different perspectives as well as solutions. In the case of daily life questions, like dentist appointment, the answerer would response, or notify in the morning as the answer is predictable, as you said above.
In above 3 cases, the most benefit of enlightened-question-answering comes to the complex and advanced situations like problem-solving. This reveals that your model gives different viewpoints, over giving knowledges.
You also concerned about people asking fewer questions to this answerer, partially because its answers are off-topic in its full force. Yeah, we don’t need diverse viewpoints everytime. It will be frustrating. but…
To me, this is already happening. First Youtube comes to my mind. Second is Lesswrong.com. The similarity of the two is that I use search bar rarely as contents are already displayed, by AI-recommender or by Human administrator. Surely this is the place where people want diverse viewpoints more and more.
On the other hand I don’t use search bar because I don’t come with questions. When I have new keywords, I should use search bar to play Baba Yetu or to watch more clip of Thomasin McKenzie.(On the third hand, youtube uses cookies and reflects my recent interest on Sid Meier’s Civilization. It is becoming “the good enough”!!) It is not exact to compare your answer model and youtube recommendation, but this may show the changing paradigm of questioning.
Solid points, thank you.
On the latter (around information feeds), I very much agree. Those examples are good ones. I just released a follow up post that goes into a bit more detail on some of this, here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kfY2JegjuzLewWyZd/oracles-informers-and-controllers
Oh this post surprises me! Similar thoughts are going on your next post and this one.