All of jungofthewon's Comments + Replies

This was really interesting, thanks for running and sharing! Overall this was a positive update for me. 

Results are here

I think this just links to PhilPapers not your survey results? 

I also appreciated reading this.

This was really helpful and fun to read. I'm sure it was nontrivial to get to this level of articulation and clarity. Thanks for taking the time to package it for everyone else to benefit from. 

If anyone has questions for Ought specifically, we're happy to answer them as part of our AMA on Tuesday.

I think we could play an endless and uninteresting game of "find a real-world example for / against factorization."

To me, the more interesting discussion is around building better systems for updating on alignment research progress -   

1. What would it look like for this research community to effectively update on results and progress? 
2. What can we borrow from other academic disciplines? E.g. what would "preregistration" look like? 
3. What are the ways more structure and standardization would be limiting / taking us further from truth? 
4. Wh

 Access

Alignment-focused policymakers / policy researchers should also be in positions of influence. 

Knowledge

I'd add a bunch of human / social topics to your list e.g. 

• Policy 
• Every relevant historical precedent
• Crisis management / global logistical coordination / negotiation
• Psychology / media / marketing
• Forecasting 

Research methodology / Scientific “rationality,” Productivity, Tools

I'd be really excited to have people use Elicit with this motivation. (More context here and here.)

Re: competitive games of introducing new tools, we di... (read more)

This is exactly what Ought is doing as we build Elicit into a research assistant using language models / GPT-3. We're studying researchers' workflows and identifying ways to productize or automate parts of them. In that process, we have to figure out how to turn GPT-3, a generalist by default, into a specialist that is a useful thought partner for domains like AI policy. We have to learn how to take feedback from the researcher and convert it into better results within session, per person, per research task, across the entire product. Another spin on it: w... (read more)

I generally agree with this but think the alternative goal of "make forecasting easier" is just as good, might actually make aggregate forecasts more accurate in the long run, and may require things that seemingly undermine the virtue of precision.

More concretely, if an underdefined question makes it easier for people to share whatever beliefs they already have, then facilitates rich conversation among those people, that's better than if a highly specific question prevents people from making a prediction at all. At least as much, if not more, of the value ... (read more)