In terms of the relationship to MIRI’s visible thoughts project, I’d say the main difference is that ARC is attempting to solve ELK in the worst case (where the way the AI understands the world could be arbitrarily alien from and more sophisticated than the way the human understands the world), whereas the visible thoughts project is attempting to encourage a way of developing AI that makes ELK easier to solve (by encouraging the way the AI thinks to resemble the way humans think). My understanding is MIRI is quite skeptical that a solution to worst-case ELK is possible, which is why they’re aiming to do something more like “make it more likely that conditions are such that ELK-like problems can be solved in practice.”
In terms of the relationship to MIRI’s visible thoughts project, I’d say the main difference is that ARC is attempting to solve ELK in the worst case (where the way the AI understands the world could be arbitrarily alien from and more sophisticated than the way the human understands the world), whereas the visible thoughts project is attempting to encourage a way of developing AI that makes ELK easier to solve (by encouraging the way the AI thinks to resemble the way humans think). My understanding is MIRI is quite skeptical that a solution to worst-case ELK is possible, which is why they’re aiming to do something more like “make it more likely that conditions are such that ELK-like problems can be solved in practice.”
Thanks! That’s illuminating.