I don’t think the word “breakthrough” is reserved exclusively for “we have solved the AI alignment problem in its entirety”. I am using it here to mean “this is a significant new discovery that advances the state of the art”.
If you don’t think there are weekly breakthoughs in AI, you haven’t been paying attention to AI.
It sounds like what you call a breakthrough, I’d just call a “result”. In my understanding, it’d either have to open up an unexpected + promising new direction, or solve a longstanding problem in order to be considered a breakthrough.
Unfortunately, significant insights into alignment seem much rarer than “capabilities breakthroughs” (which are probably also more due to an accumulation of smaller insights, so even there one might simply say the field is moving fast)
I don’t think the word “breakthrough” is reserved exclusively for “we have solved the AI alignment problem in its entirety”. I am using it here to mean “this is a significant new discovery that advances the state of the art”.
If you don’t think there are weekly breakthoughs in AI, you haven’t been paying attention to AI.
It sounds like what you call a breakthrough, I’d just call a “result”. In my understanding, it’d either have to open up an unexpected + promising new direction, or solve a longstanding problem in order to be considered a breakthrough.
Unfortunately, significant insights into alignment seem much rarer than “capabilities breakthroughs” (which are probably also more due to an accumulation of smaller insights, so even there one might simply say the field is moving fast)