Alignment Newsletter, ect. are naturally going to strongly focus on ML-style research and might not even have the capability to vet MIRI-style research.
I think I’ve summarized ~every high-effort public thing from MIRI in recent years (I’m still working on the late 2021 conversations). I also think I understood them better (at time of summarizing) than most other non-MIRI people who have engaged with it.
MIRI also has a standing offer from me to work with me to produce summaries of new things they think should have summaries (though they might have forgotten it at this point—after they switched to nondisclosed-by-default research I didn’t bother reminding them).
I think that the lack of an equivalent of papers for MIRI-style research also plays a role here in that if someone writes a paper it’s more likely to make it into the newsletter. So the issue is further down the pipeline.
To be clear, I didn’t mean this comment as “stop cricitizing me”. I meant it as “I think the statement is factually incorrect”. The reason that the newsletter has more ML in it than MIRI work is just that there’s more (public) work produced on the ML side.
I don’t think it’s about the lack of papers, unless by papers you mean the broader category of “public work that’s optimized for communication”.
Even if the content is proportional, the signal-to-noise ratio will still be much higher for those interested in MIRI-style research. This is a natural consequence of being a niche area.
When I said “might not have the capacity to vet”, I was referring to a range of orgs.
I would be surprised if the lack of papers didn’t have an effect as presumably, you’re trying to highlight high-quality work and people are more motivated to go the extra yard when trying to get published because both the rewards and standards are higher.
I think I’ve summarized ~every high-effort public thing from MIRI in recent years (I’m still working on the late 2021 conversations). I also think I understood them better (at time of summarizing) than most other non-MIRI people who have engaged with it.
MIRI also has a standing offer from me to work with me to produce summaries of new things they think should have summaries (though they might have forgotten it at this point—after they switched to nondisclosed-by-default research I didn’t bother reminding them).
Sorry, I wasn’t criticizing your work.
I think that the lack of an equivalent of papers for MIRI-style research also plays a role here in that if someone writes a paper it’s more likely to make it into the newsletter. So the issue is further down the pipeline.
To be clear, I didn’t mean this comment as “stop cricitizing me”. I meant it as “I think the statement is factually incorrect”. The reason that the newsletter has more ML in it than MIRI work is just that there’s more (public) work produced on the ML side.
I don’t think it’s about the lack of papers, unless by papers you mean the broader category of “public work that’s optimized for communication”.
Even if the content is proportional, the signal-to-noise ratio will still be much higher for those interested in MIRI-style research. This is a natural consequence of being a niche area.
When I said “might not have the capacity to vet”, I was referring to a range of orgs.
I would be surprised if the lack of papers didn’t have an effect as presumably, you’re trying to highlight high-quality work and people are more motivated to go the extra yard when trying to get published because both the rewards and standards are higher.