At the start of 2024, the comms team was only me and Rob. We hired Harlan in Q1 and Joe and Mitch are only full time as of this week. Hiring was extremely labor-intensive and time consuming. As such, we haven’t kicked into gear yet.
The main publicly-visible artifact we’ve produced so far is the MIRI newsletter; that comes out monthly.
Most of the rest of the object-level work is not public yet; the artifacts we’re producing are very big and we want to get them right.
the artifacts we’re producing are very big and we want to get them right.
To the extent that this can be shared– What are the artifacts you’re most excited about, and what’s your rough prediction about when they will be ready?
Moreover, how do you plan to assess the success/failure of your projects? Are there any concrete metrics you’re hoping to achieve? What does a “really good outcome” for MIRI’s comms team look like by the end of the year, and what does a “we have failed and need to substantially rethink our approach, speed, or personnel” outcome look like?
(I ask partially because one of my main uncertainties right now is how well MIRI will get its materials in front of the policymakers and national security officials you’re trying to influence. In the absence of concrete goals/benchmarks/timelines, I could imagine a world where MIRI moves at a relatively slow pace, produces high-quality materials with truthful arguments, but this content isn’t getting to the target audience, and the work isn’t being informed by the concerns/views of the target audience.)
What are the artifacts you’re most excited about, and what’s your rough prediction about when they will be ready?
Due to bugs in human psychology, we are more likely to succeed in our big projects if we don’t yet state publicly what we’re going to do by when. Sorry. I did provide some hints in the main post (website, book, online reference).
how do you plan to assess the success/failure of your projects? Are there any concrete metrics you’re hoping to achieve? What does a “really good outcome” for MIRI’s comms team look like by the end of the year,
The only concrete metric that really matters is “do we survive” but you are probably interested some intermediate performance indicators. :-P
The main things I am looking for within 2024 are not as SMART-goal shaped as you are probably asking for. What I’d like to see is that that we’ve developed enough trust in our most recent new hires that they are freely able to write on behalf of MIRI without getting important things wrong, such that we’re no longer bottlenecked on a few key people within MIRI; that we’re producing high-quality content at a much faster clip; that we have the capacity to handle many more of the press inquiries we receive rather than turning most of them down; that we’re better positioned to participate in the ‘wave’ shaped current event conversations.
I’d like to see strong and growing engagement with the new website.
And probably most importantly, when others in our network engage in policy conversations, I’d like to hear reports back that our materials were useful.
what does a “we have failed and need to substantially rethink our approach, speed, or personnel” outcome look like?
Failure looks like: still bottlenecked on specific people, still drowning in high-quality press requests that we can’t fulfill even though we’d like to, haven’t produced anything, book project stuck in a quagmire, new website somehow worse than the old one / gets no traffic, etc.
Thanks! Despite the lack of SMART goals, I still feel like this reply gave me a better sense of what your priorities are & how you’ll be assessing success/failure.
One failure mode– which I’m sure is already on your radar– is something like: “MIRI ends up producing lots of high-quality stuff but no one really pays attention. Policymakers and national security people are very busy and often only read things that (a) directly relate to their work or (b) are sent to them by someone who they respect.”
Another is something like: “MIRI ends up focusing too much on making arguments/points that are convincing to general audiences but fail to understand the cruxes/views of the People Who Matter.” (A strawman version of this is something like “MIRI ends up spending a lot of time in the Bay and there’s lots of pressure to engage a bunch with the cruxes/views of rationalists, libertarians, e/accs, and AGI company employees. Meanwhile, the kinds of conversations happening among natsec folks & policymakers look very different, and MIRI’s materials end up being less relevant/useful to this target audience.”
I’m extremely confident that these are already on your radar, but I figure it might be worth noting that these are two of the failure modes I’m most worried about. (I guess besides the general boring failure mode along the lines of “hiring is hard and doing anything is hard and maybe things just stay slow and when someone asks what good materials you guys have produced the answer is still ‘we’re working on it’.)
(Final note: A lot of my questions and thoughts have been critical, but I should note that I appreciate what you’re doing & I’m looking forward to following MIRI’s work in the space! :D)
What are the best things—or some good things—MIRI comms has done or published in 2024?
At the start of 2024, the comms team was only me and Rob. We hired Harlan in Q1 and Joe and Mitch are only full time as of this week. Hiring was extremely labor-intensive and time consuming. As such, we haven’t kicked into gear yet.
The main publicly-visible artifact we’ve produced so far is the MIRI newsletter; that comes out monthly.
Most of the rest of the object-level work is not public yet; the artifacts we’re producing are very big and we want to get them right.
To the extent that this can be shared– What are the artifacts you’re most excited about, and what’s your rough prediction about when they will be ready?
Moreover, how do you plan to assess the success/failure of your projects? Are there any concrete metrics you’re hoping to achieve? What does a “really good outcome” for MIRI’s comms team look like by the end of the year, and what does a “we have failed and need to substantially rethink our approach, speed, or personnel” outcome look like?
(I ask partially because one of my main uncertainties right now is how well MIRI will get its materials in front of the policymakers and national security officials you’re trying to influence. In the absence of concrete goals/benchmarks/timelines, I could imagine a world where MIRI moves at a relatively slow pace, produces high-quality materials with truthful arguments, but this content isn’t getting to the target audience, and the work isn’t being informed by the concerns/views of the target audience.)
Due to bugs in human psychology, we are more likely to succeed in our big projects if we don’t yet state publicly what we’re going to do by when. Sorry. I did provide some hints in the main post (website, book, online reference).
The only concrete metric that really matters is “do we survive” but you are probably interested some intermediate performance indicators. :-P
The main things I am looking for within 2024 are not as SMART-goal shaped as you are probably asking for. What I’d like to see is that that we’ve developed enough trust in our most recent new hires that they are freely able to write on behalf of MIRI without getting important things wrong, such that we’re no longer bottlenecked on a few key people within MIRI; that we’re producing high-quality content at a much faster clip; that we have the capacity to handle many more of the press inquiries we receive rather than turning most of them down; that we’re better positioned to participate in the ‘wave’ shaped current event conversations.
I’d like to see strong and growing engagement with the new website.
And probably most importantly, when others in our network engage in policy conversations, I’d like to hear reports back that our materials were useful.
Failure looks like: still bottlenecked on specific people, still drowning in high-quality press requests that we can’t fulfill even though we’d like to, haven’t produced anything, book project stuck in a quagmire, new website somehow worse than the old one / gets no traffic, etc.
Thanks! Despite the lack of SMART goals, I still feel like this reply gave me a better sense of what your priorities are & how you’ll be assessing success/failure.
One failure mode– which I’m sure is already on your radar– is something like: “MIRI ends up producing lots of high-quality stuff but no one really pays attention. Policymakers and national security people are very busy and often only read things that (a) directly relate to their work or (b) are sent to them by someone who they respect.”
Another is something like: “MIRI ends up focusing too much on making arguments/points that are convincing to general audiences but fail to understand the cruxes/views of the People Who Matter.” (A strawman version of this is something like “MIRI ends up spending a lot of time in the Bay and there’s lots of pressure to engage a bunch with the cruxes/views of rationalists, libertarians, e/accs, and AGI company employees. Meanwhile, the kinds of conversations happening among natsec folks & policymakers look very different, and MIRI’s materials end up being less relevant/useful to this target audience.”
I’m extremely confident that these are already on your radar, but I figure it might be worth noting that these are two of the failure modes I’m most worried about. (I guess besides the general boring failure mode along the lines of “hiring is hard and doing anything is hard and maybe things just stay slow and when someone asks what good materials you guys have produced the answer is still ‘we’re working on it’.)
(Final note: A lot of my questions and thoughts have been critical, but I should note that I appreciate what you’re doing & I’m looking forward to following MIRI’s work in the space! :D)
Yup to all of that. :)