The current evidence that anyone anywhere can implement CEV is two papers in six years that talk about it a bit. There appears to have been nothing else from SIAI and no-one else in philosophy appears interested.
If that's all there is for CEV in six years, and AI is on the order of thirty years away, then (approximately) we're dead.
This is rather disappointing, as if CEV is possible then a non-artificial general intelligence should be able to implement it, at least partially. And we have those. The reason for CEV is (as I understand it) the danger of the AI going FOOM before it cares about humans. However, human general intelligences don't go FOOM but should be able to do the work for CEV. If they know what that work is.
Addendum: I see others have been asking "but what do you actually mean?" for a couple of years now.
The current evidence that anyone anywhere can implement CEV is two papers in six years that talk about it a bit. There appears to have been nothing else from SIAI and no-one else in philosophy appears interested.
If that's all there is for CEV in six years, and AI is on the order of thirty years away, then (approximately) we're dead.
This strikes me as a demand for particular proof. SIAI is small (and was much smaller until the last year or two), the set of people engaged in FAI research is smaller, Eliezer has chosen to focus on writing about rationality...
Ideally, I'd like to save the world. One way to do that involves contributing academic research, which raises the question of what's the most effective way of doing that.
The traditional wisdom says if you want to do research, you should get a job in a university. But for the most part the system seems to be set up so that you first spend a long time working for someone else and research their ideas, after which you can lead your own group, but then most of your time will be spent on applying for grants and other administrative trivia rather than actually researching the interesting stuff. Also, in Finland at least, all professors need to also spend time doing teaching, so that's another time sink.
I suspect I would have more time to actually dedicate on research, and I could get doing it quicker, if I took a part-time job and did the research in my spare time. E.g. the recommended rates for a freelance journalist in Finland would allow me to spend a week each month doing work and three weeks doing research, of course assuming that I can pull off the freelance journalism part.
What (dis)advantages does this have compared to the traditional model?
Some advantages:
Some disadvantages:
EDIT: Note that while I certainly do appreciate comments specific to my situation, I posted this over at LW and not Discussion because I was hoping the discussion would also be useful for others who might be considering an academic path. So feel free to also provide commentary that's US-specific, say.