I’ll note that I think this is a mistake that lots of people working in AI safety have made, ignoring the benefits of academic credentials and prestige because of the obvious costs and annoyance. It’s not always better to work in academia, but it’s also worth really appreciating the costs of not doing so in foregone opportunities and experience, as Vanessa highlighted. (Founder effects matter; Eliezer had good reasons not to pursue this path, but I think others followed that path instead of evaluating the question clearly for their own work.)
And in my experience, much of the good work coming out of AI Safety has been sidelined because it fails the academic prestige test, and so it fails to engage with academics who could contribute or who have done closely related work. Other work avoids or fails the publication process because the authors don’t have the right kind of guidance and experience to get their papers in to the right conferences and journals, and not only is it therefore often worse for not getting feedback from peer review, but it doesn’t engage others in the research area.
I’ll note that I think this is a mistake that lots of people working in AI safety have made, ignoring the benefits of academic credentials and prestige because of the obvious costs and annoyance. It’s not always better to work in academia, but it’s also worth really appreciating the costs of not doing so in foregone opportunities and experience, as Vanessa highlighted. (Founder effects matter; Eliezer had good reasons not to pursue this path, but I think others followed that path instead of evaluating the question clearly for their own work.)
And in my experience, much of the good work coming out of AI Safety has been sidelined because it fails the academic prestige test, and so it fails to engage with academics who could contribute or who have done closely related work. Other work avoids or fails the publication process because the authors don’t have the right kind of guidance and experience to get their papers in to the right conferences and journals, and not only is it therefore often worse for not getting feedback from peer review, but it doesn’t engage others in the research area.