Seems like it probably does, but only incidentally.
I instead tend to view ML research as the background over which alignment work is now progressing. That is, we’re in a race against capabilities research that we have little power to stop, so our best bets are either that it turns out capabilities are about to hit the upper inflection point of an S-curve, buying us some time, or that the capabilities can be safely turned to helping us solve alignment.
I do think there’s something interesting about a direction not considered in this post related to intelligence enhancement of humans and human emulations (ems) as a means to working on alignment, but I think realistically current projections of AI capability timelines suggest they’re unlikely to have much opportunity for impact.
Seems like it probably does, but only incidentally.
I instead tend to view ML research as the background over which alignment work is now progressing. That is, we’re in a race against capabilities research that we have little power to stop, so our best bets are either that it turns out capabilities are about to hit the upper inflection point of an S-curve, buying us some time, or that the capabilities can be safely turned to helping us solve alignment.
I do think there’s something interesting about a direction not considered in this post related to intelligence enhancement of humans and human emulations (ems) as a means to working on alignment, but I think realistically current projections of AI capability timelines suggest they’re unlikely to have much opportunity for impact.