I don’t understand why you think ‘MIRI folks won’t like the “beneficial AI” term because it is too broad a tent’ given that someone from MIRI gave a very broad definition to “AI alignment”. Do you perhaps think that Arbital article was written by a non-MIRI person?
I don’t really know what anyone from MIRI thinks about this issue. It was a guess based on (a) the fact that Rob didn’t like a number of possible alternative terms to “alignment” because they seemed to be too broad a definition, (b) the fact that virtually every MIRI usage of “alignment” refers to a much narrower class of problems than “beneficial AI” is usually taken to refer to, (c) the fact that Eliezer generally seems frustrated with people talking about other problems under the heading of “beneficial AI.”
(But (c) might be driven by powerful AI vs. nearer-term concerns / all the other empirical errors Eliezer thinks people are making, (b) isn’t that indicative, and (a) might be driven by other cultural baggage associated with the term / Rob was speaking off the cuff and not attempting to speak formally for MIRI.)
I’d consider it great if we standardized on “beneficial AI” to mean “AI that has good consequences” and “AI alignment” to refer to the narrower problem of aligning AI’s motivation/preferences/goals.
I don’t really know what anyone from MIRI thinks about this issue. It was a guess based on (a) the fact that Rob didn’t like a number of possible alternative terms to “alignment” because they seemed to be too broad a definition, (b) the fact that virtually every MIRI usage of “alignment” refers to a much narrower class of problems than “beneficial AI” is usually taken to refer to, (c) the fact that Eliezer generally seems frustrated with people talking about other problems under the heading of “beneficial AI.”
(But (c) might be driven by powerful AI vs. nearer-term concerns / all the other empirical errors Eliezer thinks people are making, (b) isn’t that indicative, and (a) might be driven by other cultural baggage associated with the term / Rob was speaking off the cuff and not attempting to speak formally for MIRI.)
I’d consider it great if we standardized on “beneficial AI” to mean “AI that has good consequences” and “AI alignment” to refer to the narrower problem of aligning AI’s motivation/preferences/goals.