palladias comments on Help us name a short primer on AI risk! - Less Wrong

7 Post author: lukeprog 17 September 2013 08:35PM

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Comment author: gjm 18 September 2013 08:13:24AM 11 points [-]

I don't like all the clever-clever titles being proposed because (1) they probably restrict the audience and (2) one of the difficulties MIRI faces is persuading people to take the risk seriously in the first place -- which will not be helped by a title that's flippant, or science-fiction-y, or overblown, or just plain confusing.

You don't need "primer" or anything like it in the title; if the book has a fairly general title, and is short, and has a preface that begins "This book is an introduction to the risks posed by artificial intelligence" or something, you're done. (No harm in having something like "primer" or "introduction" in the title, if that turns out to make a good title.)

Spell out "artificial intelligence". (Or use some other broadly equivalent term.)

I would suggest simply "Risks of artificial intelligence" or maybe "Risks of machine intelligence" (matching MIRI's name).

Comment author: palladias 20 September 2013 05:58:55AM *  2 points [-]

I think titles also follow the "the only goal of the first sentence is to make the reader want to read the second sentence" rule. If MIRI is pitching this book at bright laypeople, I think it's good to be a bit jazzy and then dismantle the Skynet assumptions early on (as it looks like this does).

If the goal is for it to be a technical manual for people in math and CS, I'd agree that anything that sounds like pop sci or Gladwell is probably a turn-off.

Of course, you could always have two editions, with two titles (and differing amounts of LaTeX)