Pamphlets work for wells in Africa. They don't work for MIRI's mission. The inferential distance is too great, the ideas are too Far, the impact is too far away.

Didn't you get convinced about AI risk by reading a short paragraph of I. J. Good?

Yes.

But MIRI's ideas have now influenced the mainstream. Since 2011 we have had Norvig & Russell, Barrat, etc, providing some proof by authority and social proof.

The next step is not to popularize the ideas to a mass audience, but to continue targeting the relevant elite audience, e.g. Gary Marcus (not that he really gets it).

HPMOR has had some success at reaching the younger and more flexible of these, but bringing some more senior people on board will allow the junior researchers to work on MIRI-style work without ruining their careers -- as-is, some are doing it as a part-time hobby during a PhD on another topic, which is a precarious situation.

MIRI is actually having some success at this. It seems that this audience can now be targeted with a decent chance of success and high value for that success.

Here I am talking about the academic community, but the forward-thinking tech-millionaire community is a harder nut to crack and probably needs a separate plan.

I would hesitate to use failure during "SIAI's early years" to justify the ease or difficulty of the task. First, the organization seems far more capable now than it was at the time. Second, the landscape has shifted dramatically even in the last few years. Limited AI is continuing to expand and with it discussion of the potential impacts (most of it ill-informed, but still).

While I share your skepticism about pamphlets as such, I do tend to think that MIRI has a greater chance of shifting the odds away from UFAI with persuasion/education rather than trying to build an FAI or doing mathematical research.

The next time you give your talk, record it, and put it on YouTube.

Ask all of MIRI’s donors, all LW readers, HPMOR subscribers, friends and family etc, to forward that one document to their friends.

There has got to be enough writing by now that an effective chain mail can be written.

ETA: The chain mail suggestion isn't knocked down in luke's comment. If it's not relevant or worthy of acknowledging, please explain why.

ETA2: As annoying as some chain mail might be, it does work because it does get around. It can be a very effective method of spreading an idea.

Thanks, Luke. This is an informative reply, and it's great to hear you have a standard talk! Is it publicly available, and where can I see it if so? Maybe MIRI should ask FOAFs to publicise it?

It's also great to hear that MIRI has tried one pamphlet. I would agree that "This one pamphlet we tried didn't work" points us in the direction that "No pamphlet MIRI can produce will accomplish much", but that proposition is far from certain. I'd still be interested in the general case of "Can MIRI reduce the chance of UFAI x-risk through pamphlets?"

Pamphlets...don't work for MIRI's mission. The inferential distance is too great, the ideas are too Far, the impact is too far away.

You may be right. But, it is possible to convince intelligent non-rationalists to take UFAI x-risk seriously in less than an hour (I've tested this), and anything that can do that process in a manner that scales well would have a huge impact. What's the Value of Information on trying to do that? You mention the Sequences and HPMOR (which I've sent to a number of people with the instruction "set aside what you're doing and read this"). I definitely agree that they filter nicely for "able to think". But they also require a huge time commitment on the part of the reader, whereas a pamphlet or blog post would not.