Great post! I agree that academia is a resource that could be very useful for AI safety.
There are a lot of misunderstandings around AI safety and I think the AIS community has failed to properly explain the core ideas to academics until fairly recently. Therefore, I often encountered confusions like that AI safety is about fairness, self-driving cars and medical ML.
I think these misunderstandings are understandable based on the term “AI safety”. Maybe it would be better to call the field AGI safety or AGI alignment? This seems to me like a more honest description of the field.
You also write that you find it easier to not talk about xrisk. If we avoid talking about xrisk while presenting AI safety, then some misunderstandings about AI safety will likely persist in the future.
Firstly, I don’t think the term matters that much. Whether you use AGI safety, AI safety, ML safety, etc. doesn’t seem to have as much of an effect compared to the actual arguments you make during the conversation (at least that was my impression).
Secondly, I don’t say you should never talk about x-risk. I mostly say you shouldn’t start with it. Many of my conversations ended up in discussions of X-risk but only after 30 minutes of back and forth.
Great post! I agree that academia is a resource that could be very useful for AI safety.
I think these misunderstandings are understandable based on the term “AI safety”. Maybe it would be better to call the field AGI safety or AGI alignment? This seems to me like a more honest description of the field.
You also write that you find it easier to not talk about xrisk. If we avoid talking about xrisk while presenting AI safety, then some misunderstandings about AI safety will likely persist in the future.
Firstly, I don’t think the term matters that much. Whether you use AGI safety, AI safety, ML safety, etc. doesn’t seem to have as much of an effect compared to the actual arguments you make during the conversation (at least that was my impression).
Secondly, I don’t say you should never talk about x-risk. I mostly say you shouldn’t start with it. Many of my conversations ended up in discussions of X-risk but only after 30 minutes of back and forth.