rmoehn comments on Earning money with/for work in AI safety - Less Wrong

7 Post author: rmoehn 18 July 2016 05:37AM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 18 July 2016 11:17:44AM 2 points [-]

Currently most AI safety research happens in the West. On the one hand it means that there are more jobs for it in the West. On the other hand it might mean that AI safety is neglegted in Japan and China.

How do you see the AI safety landscape in Japan?

Comment author: rmoehn 19 July 2016 02:14:59AM 1 point [-]

Not much going on as far as I know. What I know is the following:

  • Naozumi Mitani has taught a course on Bostrom's Superintelligence and is »broadly pursuing the possible influence of AI on the future lives of humanity«. He's an associate professor of philosophy at Shinshu University (in Nagano).
  • The Center for Applied Philosophy and Ethics at Kyoto University is also somehow interested in AI impacts.
  • My supervisor is gradually getting interested, too. This is partly my influence, but also his own reading. For example, he found the Safely Interruptible Agents and Concrete Problems in AI Safety independently of me through Japanese websites. He's giving me chances to make presentations about AI safety for my fellow students and hopefully also for other professors.

Other than that I know of nobody and searching the web quickly, I didn't find out more. One problem here is that most students don't understand much English, so most of the AI safety literature is lost on them. The professors do know English, but I maybe they're usually not inclined or able to change their research focus.

It's a good sign that my supervisor finds AI safety articles through Japanese websites, though.

Comment author: Kyre 19 July 2016 04:01:21AM 2 points [-]

Maybe translating AI safety literature into Japanese would be a high-value use of your time ?

Comment author: rmoehn 19 July 2016 04:52:45AM 0 points [-]

Yeah, that would be great indeed. Unfortunately my Japanese is so rudimentary that I can't even explain to my landlord that I need a big piece of cloth to hang it in front of my window (just to name an example). :-( I'm making progress, but getting a handle on Japanese is about as time-consuming as getting a handle on ML, although more mechanical.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 21 July 2016 11:13:53AM 0 points [-]

Do you get the impression that Japan has numerous benevolent and talented researchers who could and would contribute meaningfully to AI safety work? If so, it seems possible to me that your comparative advantage is in evangelism rather than research (subject to the constraint that you're staying in Japan indefinitely). If you're able to send multiple qualified Japanese researchers west, that's potentially more than you'd be able to do as an individual.

You'd still want to have thorough knowledge of the issues yourself, if only to convince Japanese researchers that the problems were interesting.

Comment author: rmoehn 29 July 2016 03:50:49AM 0 points [-]

Why should I send them west? Hopefully so that they learn and come back and produce researcher offspring? I'll see what I can do. – Nag my supervisor to take me to domestic conferences…

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