It was formatted based on typical academic “I am conducting a survey on X, $Y for Z time”, and notably didn’t mention AI safety. The intro was basically this:
My name is Vael Gates, and I’m a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford studying how productive and active AI researchers (based on submissions to major conferences) perceive AI and the future of the field. For example:
- What do you think are the largest benefits and risks of AI?
- If you could change your colleagues’ perception of AI, what attitudes/beliefs would you want them to have?
My response rate was generally very low, which biased the sample towards… friendly, sociable people who wanted to talk about their work and/or help out and/or wanted money, and had time. I think it was usually <5% response rate for the NeurIPS / ICML sample off the top of my head. I didn’t A/B test the email. I also offered more money for this study than the main academic study, and expect I wouldn’t have been able to talk to the individually-selected researchers without the money component.
It was formatted based on typical academic “I am conducting a survey on X, $Y for Z time”, and notably didn’t mention AI safety. The intro was basically this:
My response rate was generally very low, which biased the sample towards… friendly, sociable people who wanted to talk about their work and/or help out and/or wanted money, and had time. I think it was usually <5% response rate for the NeurIPS / ICML sample off the top of my head. I didn’t A/B test the email. I also offered more money for this study than the main academic study, and expect I wouldn’t have been able to talk to the individually-selected researchers without the money component.