Follow-up to:
- CFAR's new focus, and AI safety
- CFAR's new mission statement (link post; links to our website).
In the days since we published our previous post, a number of people have come up to me and expressed concerns about our new mission. Several of these had the form “I, too, think that AI safety is incredibly important — and that is why I think CFAR should remain cause-neutral, so it can bring in more varied participants who might be made wary by an explicit focus on AI.”
I would here like to reply to these people and others, and to clarify what is and isn’t entailed by our new focus on AI safety.
First: Where are CFAR’s activities affected by the cause(s) it chooses to prioritize?
Some components that people may be hoping for from “cause neutral”, that we can do, and that we intend to do:
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We can be careful to include all information that they, from their vantage point, would want to know -- even if on our judgment, some of the information is misleading or irrelevant, or might pull them to the “wrong” conclusions.
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Similarly, we can attempt to expose people to skilled thinkers they would want to talk with, regardless of those thinkers’ viewpoints; and we can be careful to allow their own thoughts, values, and arguments to develop, regardless of which “side” this may lead to them supporting.
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More generally, we can and should attempt to cooperate with each student’s extrapolated volition, and to treat the student as they (from their initial epistemic vantage point; and with their initial values) would wish to be treated. Which is to say that we should not do anything that would work less well if the algorithm behind it were known, and that we should attempt to run such workshops (and to have such conversations, and so on) as would cause good people of varied initial views to stably on reflection want to participate in them.
Some components that people may be hoping for from “cause neutral”, that we can’t or won’t do:
- CFAR’s history around our mission: How did we come to change?
[1] In my opinion, I goofed this up historically in several instances, most notably with respect to Val and Julia, who joined CFAR in 2012 with the intention to create a cause-neutral rationality organization. Most integrity-gaps are caused by lack of planning rather than strategic deviousness; someone tells their friend they’ll have a project done by Tuesday and then just… doesn’t. My mistakes here seem to me to be mostly of this form. In any case, I expect the task to be much easier, and for me and CFAR to do better, now that we have a simpler and clearer mission.
I think this question implicitly assumes as a premise that CFAR is the main vehicle by which the rationality community grows. That may be more or less true now, plausibly it can become less true in the future, but most interestingly it suggests that you already understand the value of CFAR as a coordination point (for rationality in general). That's the kind of value I think CFAR is trying to generate in the future as a coordination point for AI safety in particular, because it might in fact turn out to be that important.
I sympathize with your concerns - I would love for the rationality community to be more diverse along all sorts of axes - but I worry they're predicated on a perspective on existential risk-like topics as these luxuries that maybe we should devote a little time to but that aren't particularly urgent, and that if you had a stronger sense of urgency around them as a group (not necessarily around any of them individually) you might be able to have more sympathy for people (such as the CFAR staff) who really, really just want to focus on them, even though they're highly uncertain and even though there are no obvious feedback loops, because they're important enough to work on anyway.
I am always trying to cultivate a little more sympathy for people who work hard and have good intentions! CFAR staff definitely fit in that basket. If your heart's calling is reducing AI risk, then work on that! Despite my disappointment, I would not urge anyone who's longing to work on reducing AI risk to put that dream aside and teach general-purpose rationality classes.
That said, I honestly believe that there is an anti-synergy between (a) cultivating rationality and (b) teaching AI researchers. I think each of those worthy goals is best pursued separately.