SIAI has existed for 10 years now and here are its glorious accomplishments broken down by year. Frankly, I’d be less embarrassed if Eliezer were just one person doing research!
Yes well, in retrospect many things are seen as suboptimal. Remember that SIAI was founded back when Eliezer didn’t figure out importance of Friendliness and thought we need a big concerted effort to develop an AGI. Later, he was unable to interest sufficiently qualified people to do the research on FAI (equivalently, to explain the problem so that qualified people would both understand it and take seriously). This led to blogging on Overcoming Bias and now Less Wrong, which does seem to be a successful, if insanely inefficient, way of explaining the problem. Current SIAI seems to have a chance of mutating into a source of funding for more serious FAI research, but as multifoliaterose points out, right now publicity seems to be a more efficient way to eventually getting things done, since we need to actually find researchers to make the accomplishments you protest about the absence of.
Since you have advanced the state of the art both here and at decision-theory-workshop, I will take this opportunity to ask you: is your research funded by SIAI? Would it progress faster if it were? Is money the limiting factor?
Yes well, in retrospect many things are seen as suboptimal. Remember that SIAI was founded back when Eliezer didn’t figure out importance of Friendliness and thought we need a big concerted effort to develop an AGI. Later, he was unable to interest sufficiently qualified people to do the research on FAI (equivalently, to explain the problem so that qualified people would both understand it and take seriously). This led to blogging on Overcoming Bias and now Less Wrong, which does seem to be a successful, if insanely inefficient, way of explaining the problem. Current SIAI seems to have a chance of mutating into a source of funding for more serious FAI research, but as multifoliaterose points out, right now publicity seems to be a more efficient way to eventually getting things done, since we need to actually find researchers to make the accomplishments you protest about the absence of.
Since you have advanced the state of the art both here and at decision-theory-workshop, I will take this opportunity to ask you: is your research funded by SIAI? Would it progress faster if it were? Is money the limiting factor?
I’ll reply privately via e-mail (SIAI doesn’t fund me, and it’d be helpful if a few unlikely things were different).
For the record, Vladimir did reply.