Simple but key insights in AI (e.g doing backprop, using sensible weight initialisation) have been missed for decades.
If the right tail for the time to AGI by a single group can be long and there aren’t that many groups, convincing one group to slow down / paying more attention to safety can have big effects.
How big of an effect? Years doesn’t seem off the table. Eliezer suggests 6 months dismissively. But add a couple years here and a couple years there, and pretty soon you’re talking about the possibility of real progress. It’s obviously of little use if no research towards alignment is attempted in that period of course, but it’s not nothing.
In addition
There aren’t that many actors in the lead.
Simple but key insights in AI (e.g doing backprop, using sensible weight initialisation) have been missed for decades.
If the right tail for the time to AGI by a single group can be long and there aren’t that many groups, convincing one group to slow down / paying more attention to safety can have big effects.
How big of an effect? Years doesn’t seem off the table. Eliezer suggests 6 months dismissively. But add a couple years here and a couple years there, and pretty soon you’re talking about the possibility of real progress. It’s obviously of little use if no research towards alignment is attempted in that period of course, but it’s not nothing.
It’s of use at least inasmuch as it increases my life expectancy.