I actually spent several years studying this question intensely while in grad school studying neuroscience. I have a lot of thoughts about promising avenues, but my ultimate conclusion was that there just wasn’t time to get a working product before the world developed superintelligent AGI, and thus, it wasn’t worth pursuing.
For the record, this seems bonkers to me. (Hope this isn’t rude, I just want to be frank; not saying you’re bonkers or anything, just that I super super don’t see the logic here.) Like, are you saying that you’re 90% sure we’ll get AGI in the next 5 years? Or are you saying that you’re 90% sure we’ll get AGI in the next 15 years, and that we wouldn’t get a 30 IQ point boosting drug within the next 10 years if we tried? IMO it would be valuable to the world for you to write up, even in very rough form, your ideas for intelligence enhancement, and your back of envelope wild guesses as to their costs and benefits and what it would take to investigate/test them.
Yeah, I’m around 95% on AGI in the next fifteen years and less than 1% on 30 IQ boosting drug in that time even with lots of funding and smart people on the problem. What seems bonkers to me is that anyone smart enough to do novel neuroscience work of that caliber not already working full time on AGI alignment. I am of the opinion you just need to be smart, competent/agentic, and somewhat scientifically/mathematically educated to have a chance of meaningfully contributing to alignment research. I want more such people focusing on that ASAP.
[Maybe hard to explore this question in this context, but this seems likely mistaken (in particular, poorly calibrated). Curious why you think this if you’re willing to share.]
and less than 1% on 30 IQ boosting drug in that time even with lots of funding and smart people on the problem.
Could you say more? What about 15 IQ points? What are the obstacles? What are methods you considered and why did they seem infeasible or ineffective?
I actually spent several years studying this question intensely while in grad school studying neuroscience. I have a lot of thoughts about promising avenues, but my ultimate conclusion was that there just wasn’t time to get a working product before the world developed superintelligent AGI, and thus, it wasn’t worth pursuing.
For the record, this seems bonkers to me. (Hope this isn’t rude, I just want to be frank; not saying you’re bonkers or anything, just that I super super don’t see the logic here.) Like, are you saying that you’re 90% sure we’ll get AGI in the next 5 years? Or are you saying that you’re 90% sure we’ll get AGI in the next 15 years, and that we wouldn’t get a 30 IQ point boosting drug within the next 10 years if we tried? IMO it would be valuable to the world for you to write up, even in very rough form, your ideas for intelligence enhancement, and your back of envelope wild guesses as to their costs and benefits and what it would take to investigate/test them.
Yeah, I’m around 95% on AGI in the next fifteen years and less than 1% on 30 IQ boosting drug in that time even with lots of funding and smart people on the problem. What seems bonkers to me is that anyone smart enough to do novel neuroscience work of that caliber not already working full time on AGI alignment. I am of the opinion you just need to be smart, competent/agentic, and somewhat scientifically/mathematically educated to have a chance of meaningfully contributing to alignment research. I want more such people focusing on that ASAP.
[Maybe hard to explore this question in this context, but this seems likely mistaken (in particular, poorly calibrated). Curious why you think this if you’re willing to share.]
Could you say more? What about 15 IQ points? What are the obstacles? What are methods you considered and why did they seem infeasible or ineffective?
I’m working on a post about my neuroscience-informed timelines, and where my understanding agrees and disagrees with Ajeya’s Bio Anchors report.
I’ll separately keep in mind your request for summary of my neuroscience research and why I think it’s not tractable in the timeframe I think we have.
Thanks!