Best introductory overviews of AGI safety?

post by JakubK (jskatt) · 2022-12-13T19:01:37.887Z · LW · GW · 3 comments

This is a link post for https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aa6wwy3zmLxn7wLNb/best-introductory-overviews-of-agi-safety

This is a question post.

Contents

  Answers
    6 Thomas Larsen
    2 Michael Tontchev
    2 Tor Økland Barstad
None
3 comments

I'm interested what people think are the best overviews of AI risk for various types of people. Below I've listed as many good overviews as I could find (excluding some drafts), splitting based on "good for a popular audience" and "good for AI researchers." I'd also like to hear if people think some of these intros are better than others (prioritizing between intros). I'd be interested to hear about podcasts and videos as well.

I am maintaining a list at this Google doc to incorporate people's suggestions.

Popular audience: 

AI researchers:

Alignment landscape:

Podcasts and videos:

Answers

answer by Thomas Larsen · 2022-12-13T21:13:13.092Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

My favorite for AI researchers is Ajeya's Without specific countermeasures [LW · GW], because I think it does a really good job being concrete about a training set up leading to deceptive alignment. It also is sufficiently non-technical that a motivated person not familiar with AI could understand the key points. 

↑ comment by JakubK (jskatt) · 2022-12-13T22:04:50.107Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Forgot to include this. It's sort of a more opinionated and ML-focused version of Carlsmith's report and has a corresponding video/talk (as does Carlsmith [EA · GW]).

answer by Michael Tontchev · 2023-06-07T01:26:03.080Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Want to add this one:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/B8Djo44WtZK6kK4K5/outreach-success-intro-to-ai-risk-that-has-been-successful [LW · GW]

This is the note I wrote internally at Meta - it's had over 300 reactions, as well as people reaching out to me saying it has convinced them to switch to working on alignment.

↑ comment by JakubK (jskatt) · 2023-06-27T05:43:00.358Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks for writing and sharing this. I've added it to the doc.

answer by Tor Økland Barstad · 2022-12-13T21:24:14.251Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Good initiative.

Regarding introductions to a popular audience, I feel like Tim Urban wrote an intro that also is worth mentioning: Part 1 - Part 2 - Reply from Luke Muehlhauser

Another one is A Response to Steven Pinker on AI (Rob Miles)

Btw, I sometimes recommend Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (but that's an entire book)

Will be interesting to see what kinds of introductions that are available one or a few years from now. Some people have created good introductions, but I do feel as if there is room for improvement.

Btw, I think Rob Miles is working on a collaborative FAQ: https://stampy.ai/wiki/Main_Page (which he talks about here)

↑ comment by JakubK (jskatt) · 2022-12-13T22:30:36.798Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Yeah Tim Urban's is perhaps the most enjoyable / fun read. But I worry that skeptics won't take it seriously.

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comment by the gears to ascension (lahwran) · 2022-12-13T20:49:50.714Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I appreciate already having a big list of candidates, so I can't comment with one!