They are probably not yet financially secure to stop asking for money, which is also ok.
Who is? Last I checked, Harvard was still asking alums for donations, which suggests to me that asking is driven by getting money more than it's driven by needing money.
I think comparing Harvard to a research group is a type error, though. Research groups don't typically do this. I am not going to defend Unis shaking alums down for money, especially given what they do with it.
I also think MIRI should stop hitting people up for money and get a normal funding stream going. You know, let their ideas of how to avoid UFAI compete in the normal marketplace of ideas.
Currently MIRI gets their funding by 1) donations 2) grants. Isn't that exactly what the normal funding stream for non-profits is?
Sure. Scientology probably has non-profits, too. I am not saying MIRI is anything like Scientology, merely that it isn't enough to just determine legal status and call it a day, we have to look at the type of thing the non-profit is.
MIRI is a research group. They call themselves an institute, but they aren't, really. Institutes are large. They are working on some neat theory stuff (from what Benja/EY explained to me) somewhat outside the mainstream. Which is great! They have some grant funding, actually, last I checked. Which is also great!
They are probably not yet financially secure to stop asking for money, which is also ok.
I think all I am saying is, in my view the success condition is they "achieve orbit" and stop asking, because basically what they are working on is considered sufficiently useful research that they can operate like a regular research group. If they never stop asking I think that's a bit weird, because either their direction isn't perceived good and they can't get enough funding bandwidth without donations, or they do have enough bandwidth but want more revenue anyways, which I personally would find super weird and unsavory.
It's actually much worse than that, because huge breakthroughs themselves are what create new experts. So on the eve of huge breakthroughs, currently recognized experts invariably predict the future is far, simply because they can't see the novel path towards the solution.
In this sense everyone who is currently an AI expert is, trivially, someone who has failed to create AGI. The only experts who have any sort of clear understanding of how far AGI is are either not currently recognized or do not yet exist.
Btw, I don't consider myself an AI expert. I am not sure what "AI expertise" entails, I guess knowing a lot about lots of things that include stuff like stats/ML but also other things, including a ton of engineering. I think an "AI expert" is sort of like "an airplane expert." Airplanes are too big for one person -- you might be an expert on modeling fluids or an expert on jet engines, but not an expert on airplanes.
Go is a hard game, but it is a toy problem in a way that dealing with the real world isn't.
What do you mean by this exactly? That real world has combinatorics problems that are much wider, or that dealing with real world does not reduce well to search in a tree of possible actions?
I think getting this working took a lot of effort and insight, and I don't mean to discount this effort or insight at all. I couldn't do what these guys did. But what I mean by "toy problem" is it avoids a lot of stuff about the physical world, hardware, laws, economics, etc. that happen when you try to build real things like cars, robots, or helicopters.
In other words, I think it's great people figured out the ideal rocket equation. But somehow it will take a lot of elbow grease (that Elon Musk et al are trying to provide) to make this stuff practical for people who are not enormous space agencies.
I should say, getting this working is very impressive, and took an enormous amount of effort. +1 to the team!
Thanks for taking action on this.
The comments are still banned, so it's unclear what you are talking about (maybe they were banned, unbanned and banned again?). If the account's posting rights were previously revoked and then given back, it's implausible Eliezer could be the one giving you the posting rights, right in the middle of this post. It's strange how the parent comment got 40 upvotes (and 20 downvotes), seems too many for a sane manual sockpuppet farm. Anti-moderation faction?
Anyway, banning the copies of banned comments posted as The_Lion2. Neutral on the original moderator's decision, but against such workarounds.
Why would it be either manual or sane in this case?
People here didn't say "oh experts said X, I am updating," they said "EY said X on facebook, time for me to change my opinion."
My reaction was more "oh, EY made a good argument about why this is a big deal, so I'll take that argument into account".
Presumably a lot of others felt the same way; attributing the change in opinion to just a deference for tribal authority seems uncharitable.
Say I am worried about this tribal thing happening a lot -- what would put my mind more at ease?
I think you are having a similar confusion people have sometimes about computer science and programming.
I don't think I do? I am well aware of the famous Dijkstra's quote.
As you mentioned, statistics is what statisticians do. Most statisticians don't work in academia. I don't doubt there are a lot of theory-heavy stats deparments, just like there are a lot of physics-heavy engineering departments.
Going up one meta-level, I'm less interested in what discipline boundaries have the social reality constructed, and more interested in feeling for the joint in the underlying territory.
Not sure why we are having this discussion. Statistics is a discipline with certain themes, like "intelligently using data for conclusions we want." These themes are sufficient to give it its own character, and make it both an applied and theoretical discipline. I don't think you are a statistician, right? Why are you talking about this?
Statistics is as much an applied discipline as physics.
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In my experience, research groups exist inside universities or a few corporations like Google. The senior members are employed and paid for by the institution, and only the postgrads, postdocs, and equipment beyond basic infrastructure are funded by research grants. None of them fly "in orbit" by themselves but only as part of a larger entity. Where should an independent research group like MIRI seek permanent funding?
By "in orbit" I mean "funded by grants rather than charity." If a group has a steady grant research stream, that means they are doing good enough work that funding agencies continue to give them money. This is the standard way to be self-sustaining for a research group.