As far as I see it, nowadays CFAR is about 60% a hiring ground for MIRI and only 40% something else, though I could be wrong.
Actually, that was true for the last few years (with an ambiguous in-between time during covid), but it is not true now.
This thread is agreeing the orgs are completely different, but elsewhere you agreed that CFAR functions as a funnel into MIRI.
I ask this out of personal interest in CFAR and MIRI going forwards and because I’m currently much more confused about how the two work than I was a week ago.
In the era 2015 − 2018, CFAR served mostly as not a funnel into MIRI in terms of total effort, programs, the curriculum of those programs, etc., but also:
CFAR ran some specific programs intended to funnel promising people toward MIRI, such as MSFP
CFAR “kept its eyes out” during its regular programs for people who looked promising and might be interested in getting more involved with MIRI or MIRI-adjacent work
Toward the 2018 − 2020 era, some CFAR staff incubated the AIRCS program, which was a lot like CFAR workshops except geared toward bridging between the AI risk community and various computer scientist bubbles, with a strong eye toward finding people who might work on MIRI projects. AIRCS started as a more-or-less independent project that occasionally borrowed CFAR logistical support, but over time CFAR decided to contribute more explicit effort to it, until it eventually became (afaik) straightforwardly one of the two or three most important “things going on at CFAR,” according to CFAR.
Staff who were there at the time (this was as I was phasing out) might correct this summary, but I believe it’s right in its essentials.
In the last two years, CFAR hasn’t done much outward-facing work at all, due to COVID, and so has neither been a MIRI funnel nor definitively not a MIRI funnel.
In the last two years, CFAR hasn’t done much outward-facing work at all, due to COVID, and so has neither been a MIRI funnel nor definitively not a MIRI funnel.
Yes, but I would predict that we won’t be the same sort of MIRI funnel going forward. This is because MIRI used to have specific research programs that it needed to hire for, and it it was sponsoring AIRCS (covering direct expenses plus loaning us some researchers to help run the thing) in order to recruit for that, and those research programs have been discontinued and so AIRCS won’t be so much of a thing anymore.
This has been the main part of why no AIRCS post vaccines, not just COVID.
I, and I would guess some others at CFAR, am interested in running AIRCS-like programs going forward, especially if there are groups that want to help us pay the direct expenses for those programs and/or researchers that want to collaborate with us on such programs. (Message me if you’re reading this and in one of those categories.) But it’ll be less MIRI-specific this time, since there isn’t that recruiting angle.
Also, more broadly, CFAR has adopted different structures for organizing ourselves internally, and we are bigger now into “if you work for CFAR, or are a graduate of our instructor training program, and you have a ‘telos’ that you’re on fire to do, you can probably do it with CFAR’s venue/dollars/collaborations of some sorts” (we’re calling this “platform CFAR,” Elizabeth Garrett invented it and set it up maybe about a year ago, can’t remember), and also into doing hourly rather than salaried work in general (so we don’t feel an obligation to fill time with some imagined ’supposed to do CFAR-like activity” vagueness, so that we can be mentally free) and are also into taking more care not to have me or anyone speak for others at CFAR or organize people into a common imagined narrative one must pretend to believe, but rather into letting people do what we each believe in, and try to engage each other where sensible. Which makes it a bit harder to know what CFAR will be doing going forward, and also leaves me thinking it’ll have a bit more variety in it. Probably.
I think Anna was saying “it is true that in the 2018 − 2020 era, CFAR was about 60% a hiring ground and only 40% something else, but that is not true currently.”
If this is the case, I do understand now, but I think the comment claiming that it’s not true at the literal current moment of October 2021 is useless in a misleading (though probably not intentional way).
I think it is important to the CFAR-aligned folks that CFAR is not “bad” in the way noted in that comment, but to everyone else, the important thing is whether or not that criticism is true. It was the initial ignorance on my end that we were looking at the same fact from different angles that led to the confusion.
(Also, I’m not continuing this out of a desire to show that “I’m right” or something, but just to explain why I cared since I now understand the mistake and can explain it. I’m happy to flesh it out more if this wasn’t very clear)
TBC it easily may also be that CFAR made strategic shifts during COVID that make the statement true in a non-trivial way; I simply wouldn’t know that fact and so can’t speak to it.
I know you’re busy with all this and other things, but how is this statement
compatible with this statement?
This thread is agreeing the orgs are completely different, but elsewhere you agreed that CFAR functions as a funnel into MIRI. I ask this out of personal interest in CFAR and MIRI going forwards and because I’m currently much more confused about how the two work than I was a week ago.
In the era 2015 − 2018, CFAR served mostly as not a funnel into MIRI in terms of total effort, programs, the curriculum of those programs, etc., but also:
CFAR ran some specific programs intended to funnel promising people toward MIRI, such as MSFP
CFAR “kept its eyes out” during its regular programs for people who looked promising and might be interested in getting more involved with MIRI or MIRI-adjacent work
Toward the 2018 − 2020 era, some CFAR staff incubated the AIRCS program, which was a lot like CFAR workshops except geared toward bridging between the AI risk community and various computer scientist bubbles, with a strong eye toward finding people who might work on MIRI projects. AIRCS started as a more-or-less independent project that occasionally borrowed CFAR logistical support, but over time CFAR decided to contribute more explicit effort to it, until it eventually became (afaik) straightforwardly one of the two or three most important “things going on at CFAR,” according to CFAR.
Staff who were there at the time (this was as I was phasing out) might correct this summary, but I believe it’s right in its essentials.
In the last two years, CFAR hasn’t done much outward-facing work at all, due to COVID, and so has neither been a MIRI funnel nor definitively not a MIRI funnel.
Yes, but I would predict that we won’t be the same sort of MIRI funnel going forward. This is because MIRI used to have specific research programs that it needed to hire for, and it it was sponsoring AIRCS (covering direct expenses plus loaning us some researchers to help run the thing) in order to recruit for that, and those research programs have been discontinued and so AIRCS won’t be so much of a thing anymore.
This has been the main part of why no AIRCS post vaccines, not just COVID.
I, and I would guess some others at CFAR, am interested in running AIRCS-like programs going forward, especially if there are groups that want to help us pay the direct expenses for those programs and/or researchers that want to collaborate with us on such programs. (Message me if you’re reading this and in one of those categories.) But it’ll be less MIRI-specific this time, since there isn’t that recruiting angle.
Also, more broadly, CFAR has adopted different structures for organizing ourselves internally, and we are bigger now into “if you work for CFAR, or are a graduate of our instructor training program, and you have a ‘telos’ that you’re on fire to do, you can probably do it with CFAR’s venue/dollars/collaborations of some sorts” (we’re calling this “platform CFAR,” Elizabeth Garrett invented it and set it up maybe about a year ago, can’t remember), and also into doing hourly rather than salaried work in general (so we don’t feel an obligation to fill time with some imagined ’supposed to do CFAR-like activity” vagueness, so that we can be mentally free) and are also into taking more care not to have me or anyone speak for others at CFAR or organize people into a common imagined narrative one must pretend to believe, but rather into letting people do what we each believe in, and try to engage each other where sensible. Which makes it a bit harder to know what CFAR will be doing going forward, and also leaves me thinking it’ll have a bit more variety in it. Probably.
Ah, so I should take the first statement as being strictly NOW, like 2021? That clears things up a lot, thanks!
I think Anna was saying “it is true that in the 2018 − 2020 era, CFAR was about 60% a hiring ground and only 40% something else, but that is not true currently.”
If this is the case, I do understand now, but I think the comment claiming that it’s not true at the literal current moment of October 2021 is useless in a misleading (though probably not intentional way).
I think it is important to the CFAR-aligned folks that CFAR is not “bad” in the way noted in that comment, but to everyone else, the important thing is whether or not that criticism is true. It was the initial ignorance on my end that we were looking at the same fact from different angles that led to the confusion.
(Also, I’m not continuing this out of a desire to show that “I’m right” or something, but just to explain why I cared since I now understand the mistake and can explain it. I’m happy to flesh it out more if this wasn’t very clear)
TBC it easily may also be that CFAR made strategic shifts during COVID that make the statement true in a non-trivial way; I simply wouldn’t know that fact and so can’t speak to it.