Brainstorming additional AI risk reduction ideas

John_Maxwell

It looks as though lukeprog has finished his series on how to purchase AI risk reduction. But the ideas lukeprog shares are not the only available strategies. Can Less Wrong come up with more?

A summary of recommendations from Exploring the Idea Space Efficiently:

Deliberately avoid exposing yourself to existing lines of thought on how to solve a problem. (The idea here is to defeat anchoring and the availability heuristic.) So don't review lukeprog's series or read the comments on this thread before generating ideas.
Start by identifying broad categories where ideas might be found. If you're trying to think of calculus word problems, your broad categories might be "jobs, personal life, the natural world, engineering, other".
With these initial broad categories, try to include all the categories that might contain a solution and none that will not.
Then generate subcategories. Subcategories of "jobs" might include "agriculture, teaching, customer service, manufacturing, research, IT, other". You're also encouraged to generate subsubcategories and so on.
Spend more time on those categories that seem promising.
You may wish to map your categories and subcategories on a piece of paper.

If you don't like that approach, here's another that's more difficult to summarize. Of course, unstructured idea generation is fine too.

If you're strictly a lurker, you can send your best ideas to lukeprog anonymously using his feedback box. Or send them to me anonymously using my feedback box so I can post them here and get all your karma.

Thread Usage

Please reply here if you wish to comment on the idea of this thread.

You're encouraged to discuss the ideas of others in addition to coming up with your own ideas.

If you split your ideas into individual comments, they can be voted on individually and you will probably increase your karma haul.

It looks as though lukeprog has finished his series on how to purchase AI risk reduction. But the ideas lukeprog shares are not the only available strategies. Can Less Wrong come up with more?

A summary of recommendations from Exploring the Idea Space Efficiently:

Deliberately avoid exposing yourself to existing lines of thought on how to solve a problem. (The idea here is to defeat anchoring and the availability heuristic.) So don't review lukeprog's series or read the comments on this thread before generating ideas.
Start by identifying broad categories where ideas might be found. If you're trying to think of calculus word problems, your broad categories might be "jobs, personal life, the natural world, engineering, other".
With these initial broad categories, try to include all the categories that might contain a solution and none that will not.
Then generate subcategories. Subcategories of "jobs" might include "agriculture, teaching, customer service, manufacturing, research, IT, other". You're also encouraged to generate subsubcategories and so on.
Spend more time on those categories that seem promising.
You may wish to map your categories and subcategories on a piece of paper.

If you don't like that approach, here's another that's more difficult to summarize. Of course, unstructured idea generation is fine too.

Thread Usage

Please reply here if you wish to comment on the idea of this thread.

You're encouraged to discuss the ideas of others in addition to coming up with your own ideas.

If you split your ideas into individual comments, they can be voted on individually and you will probably increase your karma haul.

Establish a scholarship to collect information on young talent

Create a merit scholarship for the type of young talent that SI wants to attract – this can reveal valuable information about this group of people, and can potentially be used a targeted publicity tool if handled well.

Information that could be collected from applications

Basic personal details (age, location, contact methods, etc.)
Education (past and future)
Academic interests
Career goals
Awards and competition results
Third-party reviews (i.e., letters of recommendation)
Basic personality assessment (see previous LW discussion on correlates with Big Five personality traits: [1], [2], [3])
Ideas about and attitudes toward x-risks/FAI/SI/FHI (these could be responses to prompts – as a bonus, applicants are introduced to the content in the prompts)
... Pretty much anything else (personal anecdote: I've revealed things about myself in college and scholarship applications that I have never expressed to anyone else)

Uses of this information

Check whether SI is effectively reaching the right people with its current plans.
The compiled list of young talent could be directly used to advertise things like SPARC to the right people.
General survey tool.

Potential problems and difficulties

Its use as an information gathering tool could be seen negatively.
Legal issues?
Publicity. The scholarship has to be made known to the relevant people, and this has to be done in such a way that SI is seen as a reputable institute. However, a scholarship does open up new avenues for publicity.
Cost and manpower.

Is anyone else doing this?

As with many ideas, we ought to be cautious if we see no one else doing something similar. Indeed, I cannot think of any high school scholarship that is used primarily to collect information for the sponsoring organization (is this really the case?). However, there is good reason for this – no one else is interested in reaching the same group of high school students. SI is the only organization I know of who wants to reach high school students for their research group.

FHI had a competition that could be an attempt to collect information, but I'm not sure.

High school scholarships

It would be wise to consult current high school scholarships, and AoPS has a good list.

"Indeed, I cannot think of any high school scholarship that is used primarily to collect information for the sponsoring organization (is this really the case?). However, there is good reason for this – no one else is interested in reaching the same group of high school students. SI is the only organization I know of who wants to reach high school students for their research group."

I find this place persistently surprising, which is nice. Try to imagine what you would think if a religious organization did this and how you would feel. It's alrigh... (read more)

4John_Maxwell14y

I like this. The fact that this sort of thing is done by so many organizations seems evidence that it's a good way to reach young people. It might be wise to emphasize getting young folks to think about existential risks through an essay contest over gathering data about them. [...] Here's what I found: http://lesswrong.com/lw/82g/on_the_openness_personality_trait_rationality/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/9m6/the_personality_of_greatcreative_scientists_open/ I suspect this sort of competition is better run through FHI, if only due to their Oxford affiliation.

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Brainstorming additional AI risk reduction ideas

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