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.

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.

Hmm... I was thinking that no other organization does this, but I imagine that we mean different things by "this" – I suppose you are referring to the large number of organizations that sponsor a scholarship, as opposed to the lack of organizations that sponsor a scholarship with the specific goal of collecting information on high school students.

It might be wise to emphasize getting young folks to think about existential risks through an essay contest over gathering data about them.

Good point. The way this is publicized would be important – it might be worthwhile to consult professionals.

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/

Thanks! These are the posts I was thinking of. I've added them to the grandparent. One more tangentially related post (also by Gwern):
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ac4/online_education_and_conscientiousness/

I suspect this sort of competition is better run through FHI, if only due to their Oxford affiliation.

That's a good idea. The main obstacle I see is that FHI might not want to get involved in such an endeavor, especially since they are targeting only postdocs for their research positions, and have no programs for students.

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Brainstorming additional AI risk reduction ideas

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