People have disagreements over what the key ideas about AI/alignment even are.
People with different basic-intuitions notoriously remain unconvinced by each other’s arguments, analogies, and even (the significance of) experiments. This has not been solved yet.
To (try to) fix this, the community’s added concepts like “inferential distance” and “cruxes” to our vocabulary. These should be be discussed and used explicitly.
One researcher has some shortform notes (here and here) on how hard it is to communicate about AI alignment. I myself wrote some longer, more emotionally-charged notes on why we’d expect this.
But there’s hope yet! This chart format makes it easier to communicate beliefs on key AI questions. And better ideas can always be lurking around the corner...
Do you think these disagreements stem from a sort of egoistic desire to be known as the ‘owner’ of that concept? Or to be a forerunner for that vein of research should it become popular?
Or is it a genuinely good faith disagreement on the future of AI and what the best approach is? (Perhaps these questions are outlined in the articles you’ve linked, which I’ll begin reading now. Though I do think it’s still useful to perhaps include a summary here too.) Thanks for your help.
Seems to usually be good faith. People can still be biased of course (and they can’t all be right on the same questions, with the current disagreements), but it really is down to differing intuitions, which background-knowledge posts have been read by which people, etc.
To add onto other people’s answers:
People have disagreements over what the key ideas about AI/alignment even are.
People with different basic-intuitions notoriously remain unconvinced by each other’s arguments, analogies, and even (the significance of) experiments. This has not been solved yet.
Alignment researchers usually spend most time on their preferred vein of research, rather than trying to convince others.
To (try to) fix this, the community’s added concepts like “inferential distance” and “cruxes” to our vocabulary. These should be be discussed and used explicitly.
One researcher has some shortform notes (here and here) on how hard it is to communicate about AI alignment. I myself wrote some longer, more emotionally-charged notes on why we’d expect this.
But there’s hope yet! This chart format makes it easier to communicate beliefs on key AI questions. And better ideas can always be lurking around the corner...
Do you think these disagreements stem from a sort of egoistic desire to be known as the ‘owner’ of that concept? Or to be a forerunner for that vein of research should it become popular?
Or is it a genuinely good faith disagreement on the future of AI and what the best approach is? (Perhaps these questions are outlined in the articles you’ve linked, which I’ll begin reading now. Though I do think it’s still useful to perhaps include a summary here too.) Thanks for your help.
Seems to usually be good faith. People can still be biased of course (and they can’t all be right on the same questions, with the current disagreements), but it really is down to differing intuitions, which background-knowledge posts have been read by which people, etc.