I do appreciate arguments in favor of focusing your effort on tractable problems, even if they are not the most important problems to solve.
It’s certainly hard to answer the question, “Why is this the best project to work on within AI?” since it implicitly requires comparisons will all types of stuff. It’s probably unreasonable to ask Eliezer to answer this question in a comment. However, it is reasonable to ask, “Why will this research help make machine intelligence develop in a way that will benefit humanity?” Most of the other questions in my comment are also relevant to that question.
I do appreciate arguments in favor of focusing your effort on tractable problems, even if they are not the most important problems to solve.
It’s certainly hard to answer the question, “Why is this the best project to work on within AI?” since it implicitly requires comparisons will all types of stuff. It’s probably unreasonable to ask Eliezer to answer this question in a comment. However, it is reasonable to ask, “Why will this research help make machine intelligence develop in a way that will benefit humanity?” Most of the other questions in my comment are also relevant to that question.