Laser-mounted mosquito-exterminating drones seems an uncommon and difficult-to-engineer enough approach that if anyone was serious or successful enough in even launching such an endeavor that they have a public-facing interface to raise awareness or gauge interest, I figure they'd be both impressive and rare enough Eliezer would want to at least get in touch with them. Either that, or he is trolling us with all his projects near the end, or is partially trolling us by interjecting fake interest in ridiculously ambitious projects between his real interest in other ridiculously ambitious projects.
Another source of perspective is the fact that Eliezer has made research into engineering safety mechanisms into advanced machine agents a seriously substantial movement, and he did this by blogging about rationality for two years, and then writing a Harry Potter fanfiction over the course of the succeeding five years. From Eliezer's perspective, the rationality of him and his network, combined with the gusto of the surrounding community, may be enough to achieve very ambitious projects which start from seemingly ridiculous premises.
Another source of perspective is the fact that Eliezer has made research into engineering safety mechanisms into advanced machine agents a seriously substantial movement, and he did this by blogging about rationality for two years, and then writing a Harry Potter fanfiction over the course of the succeeding five years.
Yet another source of perspective is reading the documents he wrote around the turn of the millennium circa the founding of SIAI on the subject. They can only be described as 'hilarious'. There were specs for a programming language that ...
[Contains No HPMOR Spoliers]
[http://hpmor.com/notes/119/](http://hpmor.com/notes/119/)
I was at first confused by Eliezer's requests at the end of Ch. 119. I missed his Author's Notes, which his explains his rationale behind them. I thought I would share in case others missed it, especially because readers on LessWrong may have more elite or broader networks to help Eliezer achieve his new goals.
Eliezer has several other projects he might be interested in. Learn more by clicking the link.