Plausible universe in which AI safety research going mainstream now would be bad: The mainstream version of the field uses the current dominant paradigms for understanding the problem, and those cause network effects such that new paradigms are very slow to be introduced. In the counterfactual world, the non-mainstream version of the field one year later develops a paradigm which, if introduced to academia immediately, solves the problem 2 years faster than the old paradigm would after being introduced to academia.
This is a conceivable universe, but do you really think it’s likely? It seems to me much more likely that additional funding opportunities would help AI safety research move at least a little bit faster.
I don’t know enough about the dynamics in academia, or the rate of progress in alignment to be confident in my assessment. But I don’t think it’s <6% something similar to this happens, so if people are introducing the field to mainstream academia, they should take precautions to minimize the chances of effect I described resulting in significant slowdowns.
Plausible universe in which AI safety research going mainstream now would be bad: The mainstream version of the field uses the current dominant paradigms for understanding the problem, and those cause network effects such that new paradigms are very slow to be introduced. In the counterfactual world, the non-mainstream version of the field one year later develops a paradigm which, if introduced to academia immediately, solves the problem 2 years faster than the old paradigm would after being introduced to academia.
This is a conceivable universe, but do you really think it’s likely? It seems to me much more likely that additional funding opportunities would help AI safety research move at least a little bit faster.
I don’t know enough about the dynamics in academia, or the rate of progress in alignment to be confident in my assessment. But I don’t think it’s <6% something similar to this happens, so if people are introducing the field to mainstream academia, they should take precautions to minimize the chances of effect I described resulting in significant slowdowns.