100-300 knowing about it and working on it are two different things. While MIRI was somewhat secretive, I think there was a lot more exchange than what’s described there.
The same basic principles would apply, though, no? For essentially 10-20 years, MIRI was shouting into the void. Only now that the technology is taking off are people actually taking it seriously and starting to work on the problem. Whether it was known about or not, the point is that only a small handful of people were taking it seriously and trying to come up with innovative solutions.
Even now that AI is immensely popular, isn’t the estimation that still only about 100-300 people are working on solving AI alignment full time? And that that’s been one of the biggest hurdles to progress? The thing that all AI safety people have essentially been trying to do is to get more people working on the hard problems.
100-300 knowing about it and working on it are two different things. While MIRI was somewhat secretive, I think there was a lot more exchange than what’s described there.
The same basic principles would apply, though, no? For essentially 10-20 years, MIRI was shouting into the void. Only now that the technology is taking off are people actually taking it seriously and starting to work on the problem. Whether it was known about or not, the point is that only a small handful of people were taking it seriously and trying to come up with innovative solutions.
Even now that AI is immensely popular, isn’t the estimation that still only about 100-300 people are working on solving AI alignment full time? And that that’s been one of the biggest hurdles to progress? The thing that all AI safety people have essentially been trying to do is to get more people working on the hard problems.