Yup. The logic at the time went something like, "I want something that will be reasonably fast and scale to lots of multiple processors and runs in a tight sandbox and has been thoroughly debugged with enterprise-scale muscle behind it, and which above all is not C++, and in a few years (note: HAH!) when we start coding, Java will probably be it." There were lots of better-designed languages out there but they didn't have the promise of enterprise-scale muscle behind their implementation of things like parallelism.
Also at that time, I was thinking in terms of a much larger eventual codebase, and was much more desperate to use something that wasn't C++. Today I would say that if you can write AI at all, you can write the code parts in C, because AI is not a coding problem.
Mostly in that era there weren't any good choices, so far as I knew then. Ben Goertzel, who was trying to scale a large AI codebase, was working in a mix of C/C++ and a custom language running on top of C/C++ (I forget which), which I think he had transitioned either out of Java or something else, because nothing else was fast enough or handled parallelism correctly. Lisp, he said at that time, would have been way too slow.
Today I would say that if you can write AI at all, you can write the code parts in C, because AI is not a coding problem.
Exactly -- which is why the sentence sounded so odd.
Last summer, 15 Less Wrongers, under the auspices of SIAI, gathered in a big house in Santa Clara (in the SF bay area), with whiteboards, existential risk-reducing projects, and the ambition to learn and do.
Now, the new and better version has arrived. We’re taking folks on a rolling basis to come join in our projects, learn and strategize with us, and consider long term life paths. Working with this crowd transformed my world; it felt like I was learning to think. I wouldn’t be surprised if it can transform yours.
A representative sample of current projects:
Interested, but not sure whether to apply?
Past experience indicates that more than one brilliant, capable person refrained from contacting SIAI, because they weren’t sure they were “good enough”. That kind of timidity destroys the world, by failing to save it. So if that’s your situation, send us an email. Let us be the one to say “no”. Glancing at an extra application is cheap, and losing out on a capable applicant is expensive.
And if you’re seriously interested in risk reduction but at a later time, or in another capacity -- send us an email anyway. Coordinated groups accomplish more than uncoordinated groups; and if you care about risk reduction, we want to know.
What we’re looking for
At bottom, we’re looking for anyone who:
Bonus points for any (you don’t need them all) of the following traits:
If you think this might be you, send a quick email to jasen@intelligence.org. Include:
Our application process is fairly informal, so send us a quick email as initial inquiry and we can decide whether or not to follow up with more application components.
As to logistics: we cover room, board, and, if you need it, airfare, but no other stipend.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Anna
ETA (as of 3/25/10): We are still accepting applications, for summer and in general. Also, you may wish to check out http://www.singinst.org/grants/challenge#grantproposals for a list of some current projects.