Jaime directly emphasizes how increasing AI investment would be a reasonable and valid complaint about Epoch’s work if it was true!
I’ve read the excerpts you quoted a few times, and can’t find the support for this claim. I think you’re treating the bolded text as substantiating it? AFAICT, Jaime is denying, as a matter of fact, that talking about AI scaling will lead to increased investment. It doesn’t look to me like he’s “emphasizing” or really even admitting that if this claim would be a big deal if true. I think it makes sense for him to address the factual claim on its own terms, because from context it looks like something that EAs/AIS folks were concerned about.
For clarity, at the moment of writing I felt that was a valid concern.
Currently I think this is no longer compelling to me personally, though I think at least some of our stakeholders would be concerned if we published work that significantly sped up AI capabilities and investment, which is a perspective we keep in mind when deciding what to work on.
I never thought that just because something speed up capabilities it means it is automatically something we shouldn’t work on. We are willing to make trade offs here in service of our core mission of improving the public understanding of the trajectory of AI. And in general we make a strong presumption in favour of freedom of knowledge.
Huh, by gricean implicature it IMO clearly implies that if there was a strong case that it would increase investment, then it would be a relevant and important consideration. Why bring it up otherwise?
I am really quite confident in my read here. I agree Jaime is not being maximally explicit here, but I would gladly take bets that >80% of random readers who would listen to a conversation like this, or read a comment thread like this, would walk away thinking the author does think that whether AI scaling would increase as a result of this kind of work, is considered relevant and important by Jaime.
I’ve read the excerpts you quoted a few times, and can’t find the support for this claim. I think you’re treating the bolded text as substantiating it? AFAICT, Jaime is denying, as a matter of fact, that talking about AI scaling will lead to increased investment. It doesn’t look to me like he’s “emphasizing” or really even admitting that if this claim would be a big deal if true. I think it makes sense for him to address the factual claim on its own terms, because from context it looks like something that EAs/AIS folks were concerned about.
For clarity, at the moment of writing I felt that was a valid concern.
Currently I think this is no longer compelling to me personally, though I think at least some of our stakeholders would be concerned if we published work that significantly sped up AI capabilities and investment, which is a perspective we keep in mind when deciding what to work on.
I never thought that just because something speed up capabilities it means it is automatically something we shouldn’t work on. We are willing to make trade offs here in service of our core mission of improving the public understanding of the trajectory of AI. And in general we make a strong presumption in favour of freedom of knowledge.
Huh, by gricean implicature it IMO clearly implies that if there was a strong case that it would increase investment, then it would be a relevant and important consideration. Why bring it up otherwise?
I am really quite confident in my read here. I agree Jaime is not being maximally explicit here, but I would gladly take bets that >80% of random readers who would listen to a conversation like this, or read a comment thread like this, would walk away thinking the author does think that whether AI scaling would increase as a result of this kind of work, is considered relevant and important by Jaime.