LESSWRONG
LW

All of SherkanerUnderhill's Comments + Replies

[CORE] Concepts for Understanding the World
SherkanerUnderhill00

Whoa, awesome! Aligns well with my current interests. A lot of great insights there...

Reply
0SquirrelInHell
Cool, thanks! I didn't know about the third and the fourth. After checking everything from comments here, I have enough material that it'll take me months to work through it all. Also if you don't know it, Meaningness has some interesting remarks about formulating concepts and problem descriptions: http://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-think#feynman-objects
To contribute to AI safety, consider doing AI research
SherkanerUnderhill30

Hi Victoria,

I am highly interested in AI safety research. Unfortunately, I do not have a strong math background and I live in an area distant from AI research. After spending some time thinking about my future I have come to the decision to go for a math intensive PhD in some area not far from MIRI or FLI. I have only the bachelor degree in Engineering with major in Computer Science and Software Engineering. Currently, I spend most of my time working full time as a software developer, preparing for a GRE general exam and thinking about PhD and FAI.

Andrew C... (read more)

Reply
4Vika
I would recommend doing a CS PhD and take statistics courses, rather than doing a statistics PhD. For examples of promising research areas, I recommend taking a look at the work of FLI grantees. I'm personally working on the interpretability of neural nets, which seems important if they become a component of advanced AI. There's not that much overlap between MIRI's work and mainstream CS, so I'd recommend a more broad focus. Research experience is always helpful, though it's harder to get if you are working full time in industry. If your company has any machine learning research projects, you could try to get involved in those. Taking machine learning / stats courses and doing well in them is also helpful for admission. Math GRE subject test probably helps (not sure how much) if you have a really good score.
Study partner matching thread
SherkanerUnderhill10

I'm going to apply for AI research related PhD this year. I want to start some research project in the near future with a goal of learning and increasing the chances of successful PhD admission. It's very likely that the domain of this research project will lie close to ML or MIRI research agenda.

I have only a bachelor degree in Engineering (CS and Software Engineering). I work as a software engineer and spend evenings by preparing for GRE, thinking and learning about FAI. Probably will do something with my job to free more time. My timezone: UTC+6.

Reply
0Gyrodiot
I forgot to mention I was currently an AI PhD student. Which doesn't entail much free time ^^ So... what exactly are you interested in learning (if you want to pair up)? I'm also interested in your project, if you have an idea in mind.
Boring Advice Repository
SherkanerUnderhill00

I have listened to audiobooks for about a 6 months. Recently I started to spend less time on audiobooks and more time on thinking. Not much evidence is gathered, by so far thinking while walking seems more useful for me.

Reply