Executive summary: This post proposes a strategy for safely accelerating alignment research. The plan is to set up human-in-the-loop systems which empower human agency rather than outsource it, and to use those systems to differentially accelerate progress on alignment.
Introduction: An explanation of the context and motivation for this agenda.
Automated Research Assistants: A discussion of why the paradigm of training AI systems to behave as autonomous agents is both counterproductive and dangerous.
Becoming a Cyborg: A proposal for an alternative approach/frame, which focuses on a particular type of human-in-the-loop system I am calling a “cyborg”.
Failure Modes: An analysis of how this agenda could either fail to help or actively cause harm by accelerating AI research more broadly.
Testimony of a Cyborg: A personal account of how Janus uses GPT as a part of their workflow, and how it relates to the cyborgism approach to intelligence augmentation.
The cyborgism post might be relevant: