My hypothesis based on this discussion is that it could be a lot harder to publish stuff outside of current academic mainstream. IIRC Hinton had trouble accepting foundational DL papers in the beginning. MIRI type stuff (and possibly Wei’s crypto, though not sure about the details) could have been far enough from the mainstream to increase the hardness a lot.
My hypothesis based on this discussion is that it could be a lot harder to publish stuff outside of current academic mainstream. IIRC Hinton had trouble accepting foundational DL papers in the beginning. MIRI type stuff (and possibly Wei’s crypto, though not sure about the details) could have been far enough from the mainstream to increase the hardness a lot.