A bit about our last few months:
- We’ve been working on getting a simple clear mission and an organization that actually works. We think of our goal as analogous to the transition that the old Singularity Institute underwent under Lukeprog (during which chaos was replaced by a simple, intelligible structure that made it easier to turn effort into forward motion).
- As part of that, we’ll need to find a way to be intelligible.
- This is the first of several blog posts aimed at causing our new form to be visible from outside. (If you're in the Bay Area, you can also come meet us at tonight's open house.) (We'll be talking more about the causes of this mission-change; the extent to which it is in fact a change, etc. in an upcoming post.)
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We care a lot about AI Safety efforts in particular, and about otherwise increasing the odds that humanity reaches the stars.
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Also, we[1] believe such efforts are bottlenecked more by our collective epistemology, than by the number of people who verbally endorse or act on "AI Safety", or any other "spreadable viewpoint" disconnected from its derivation.
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Our aim is therefore to find ways of improving both individual thinking skill, and the modes of thinking and social fabric that allow people to think together. And to do this among the relatively small sets of people tackling existential risk.
Existential wins and AI safety
Who we’re focusing on, why
- AI and machine learning graduate students, researchers, project-managers, etc. who care; who can think; and who are interested in thinking better;
- Students and others affiliated with the “Effective Altruism” movement, who are looking to direct their careers in ways that can do the most good;
- Rationality geeks, who are interested in seriously working to understand how the heck thinking works when it works, and how to make it work even in domains as confusing as AI safety.
Brier-boosting, not Signal-boosting
- Further discussion of CFAR’s focus on AI safety, and the good things folks wanted from “cause neutrality”
- CFAR's mission statement (link post, linking to our website).
Thanks so much for saying this! Thinking about this distinction you made, I feel there may be actually four groups of LW readers, with different needs or expectations from the website:
"Science/Tech Fans" -- want more articles about new scientific research and new technologies. "Has anyone recently discovered a new particle, or built a new machine? Give me a popular science article about it!"
"Competence/Insight Consumers" -- want more articles about pop psychology theories and life hacks. They feel they are already doing great, and only want to improve small details. "What do you believe is the true source of human motivation, and how do you organize your to-do lists? But first, give me your credentials: are you a successful person?"
"Already Solving a Problem" -- want feedback on their progress, and information speficially useful for them. Highly specific; two people in the same category working on completely different problems probably wouldn't benefit too much from talking to each other. If they achieve critical mass, it would be best to make a subgroup for them (except that LW currently does not support creating subgroups).
"Not Started Yet" -- inspired by the Sequences, they would like to optimize their lives and the universe, but... they are stuck in place, or advancing very very slowly. They hope for some good advice that would make something "click", and help them leave the ground.
Maybe it's poll time... what do you want to read about?
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