For (3), now is the time to get this moving. Right now, machine ethics (especially regarding military robotics) and medical ethics (especially in terms of bio-engineering) are hot topics. Connecting AI Risk to either of these trends would allow you extend and, hopefully, bud it off as a separate focus.
Unfortunately, academics are pack animals, so if you want to communicate with them, you can’t just stake out your own territory and expect them to do the work of coming to you. You have to pick some existing field as a starting point. Then, knowing the assumptions of that field, you point out the differences in what you’re proposing and slowly push out and extend towards what you want to talk about (the pseudopod approach). This fits well with (1) since choosing what journals you’re aiming at will determine the field of researchers you’ll be able to recruit from.
One note, if you hold a separate conference, you are dependent on whatever academic credibility SIAI brings to the table (none, at present (besides, you already have the Singularity Summit to work with)). But, if you are able to get a track started at an existing conference, suddenly you can define this as the spot where the cool researchers are hanging out. Convince DARPA to put a little money towards this and suddenly you have yourselves a research area. The DOD already pushes funds for things like risk analyses of climate change and other 30-100 year forward threats so it’s not even a stretch.
I definitely agree.
For (3), now is the time to get this moving. Right now, machine ethics (especially regarding military robotics) and medical ethics (especially in terms of bio-engineering) are hot topics. Connecting AI Risk to either of these trends would allow you extend and, hopefully, bud it off as a separate focus.
Unfortunately, academics are pack animals, so if you want to communicate with them, you can’t just stake out your own territory and expect them to do the work of coming to you. You have to pick some existing field as a starting point. Then, knowing the assumptions of that field, you point out the differences in what you’re proposing and slowly push out and extend towards what you want to talk about (the pseudopod approach). This fits well with (1) since choosing what journals you’re aiming at will determine the field of researchers you’ll be able to recruit from.
One note, if you hold a separate conference, you are dependent on whatever academic credibility SIAI brings to the table (none, at present (besides, you already have the Singularity Summit to work with)). But, if you are able to get a track started at an existing conference, suddenly you can define this as the spot where the cool researchers are hanging out. Convince DARPA to put a little money towards this and suddenly you have yourselves a research area. The DOD already pushes funds for things like risk analyses of climate change and other 30-100 year forward threats so it’s not even a stretch.