tenlier comments on Brainstorming additional AI risk reduction ideas - Less Wrong

12 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 14 June 2012 07:55AM

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Comment author: VincentYu 14 June 2012 02:12:57PM *  8 points [-]

Establish a scholarship to collect information on young talent

Related: Reaching young math/compsci talent

Create a merit scholarship for the type of young talent that SI wants to attract – this can reveal valuable information about this group of people, and can potentially be used a targeted publicity tool if handled well.

Information that could be collected from applications

  • Basic personal details (age, location, contact methods, etc.)
  • Education (past and future)
  • Academic interests
  • Career goals
  • Awards and competition results
  • Third-party reviews (i.e., letters of recommendation)
  • Basic personality assessment (see previous LW discussion on correlates with Big Five personality traits: [1], [2], [3])
  • Ideas about and attitudes toward x-risks/FAI/SI/FHI (these could be responses to prompts – as a bonus, applicants are introduced to the content in the prompts)
  • ... Pretty much anything else (personal anecdote: I've revealed things about myself in college and scholarship applications that I have never expressed to anyone else)

Uses of this information

  • Check whether SI is effectively reaching the right people with its current plans.
  • The compiled list of young talent could be directly used to advertise things like SPARC to the right people.
  • General survey tool.

Potential problems and difficulties

  • Its use as an information gathering tool could be seen negatively.
  • Legal issues?
  • Publicity. The scholarship has to be made known to the relevant people, and this has to be done in such a way that SI is seen as a reputable institute. However, a scholarship does open up new avenues for publicity.
  • Cost and manpower.

Is anyone else doing this?

As with many ideas, we ought to be cautious if we see no one else doing something similar. Indeed, I cannot think of any high school scholarship that is used primarily to collect information for the sponsoring organization (is this really the case?). However, there is good reason for this – no one else is interested in reaching the same group of high school students. SI is the only organization I know of who wants to reach high school students for their research group.

FHI had a competition that could be an attempt to collect information, but I'm not sure.

High school scholarships

It would be wise to consult current high school scholarships, and AoPS has a good list.

Comment author: tenlier 16 June 2012 03:15:16PM -1 points [-]

"Indeed, I cannot think of any high school scholarship that is used primarily to collect information for the sponsoring organization (is this really the case?). However, there is good reason for this – no one else is interested in reaching the same group of high school students. SI is the only organization I know of who wants to reach high school students for their research group."

I find this place persistently surprising, which is nice. Try to imagine what you would think if a religious organization did this and how you would feel. It's alright to hold a scholarship to encourage kids to be interested in a topic; not so to garner information for your own purposes, unless that is incredibly clear upfront. Very Gwernian.

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