What is MIRI currently doing?
post by Roko · 2024-12-14T02:39:20.886Z · LW · GW · 2 commentsThis is a question post.
Contents
Answers 14 Casey B. 12 Liron 5 Harlan 5 MichaelDickens None 2 comments
As of EoY 2022, MIRI has 11 people on payroll, assets of about $20M and a lot of mindshare. Its mission is stated as follows on the most recent tax filing I can find:
"To ensure that the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence has a positive impact. thus, the charitable purpose of the organization is to:
a) perform research relevant to ensuring that smarter-than-human intelligence has a positive impact;
b) raise awareness of this important issue;
c) advise researchers, leasers and laypeople around the world;
d) as necessary, implement a smarter-than-human intelligence with humane, stable goals. "
The website lists a workshop from 2018 and some papers from 2015. There are also some papers from 2020-2021.
What is MIRI currently (or at least over the past 12 months) doing to fulfill these goals? (This is not intended to be a hostile question, just as a matter of fact what are MIRI doing/what have they done over the past 12 months)
Answers
Some technical governance work at: https://techgov.intelligence.org/research
https://x.com/peterbarnett_/status/1864405388092952595
https://x.com/peterbarnett_/status/1864425086486466621
↑ comment by davekasten · 2024-12-14T04:45:19.134Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Note also that this work isn't just papers; e.g., as a matter of public record MIRI has submitted formal comments to regulators to inform draft regulation based on this work.
(For those less familiar, yes, such comments are indeed actually weirdly impactful in the American regulatory system).
↑ comment by Roko · 2024-12-14T09:20:18.798Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Why is this work hidden from the main MIRI website?
Replies from: Zahima↑ comment by Casey B. (Zahima) · 2024-12-17T15:02:08.453Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I got curious why this was getting agreement-downvoted, and the only links I could find on the main/old MIRI site to the techgov site were in the last two blogposts. Given their stated strategy shift to policy/comms, this does seem a little odd/suboptimal; I'd expect them to be more prominently/obviously linked. To be fair the new techgov site does have a prominent link to the old site.
I’ve heard MIRI has some big content projects in the works, maybe a book.
FWIW I think having a regular stream of lower-effort content that a somewhat mainstream audience consumes would help to bolster MIRI’s position as a thought leader when they release the bigger works.
Hi, I'm part of the communications team at MIRI. Here's a very high-level summary of what MIRI is currently doing:
- Our research portfolio includes the new Technical Governance Team, as well as some alignment research (though much less than before).
- We have also spun up a comms team. We think of our comms work in terms of "rock content" and "wave content." Currently more effort is going into "rock content" projects which will be announced later.
- We also do some work in DC, though this is limited by our status as a 501(c)(3).
MIRI's strategy update from earlier this year explains the reasoning behind our shift from primarily doing technical alignment research to focusing more on communications and policy. The actual work of making that shift is a lot of why 2024 looked quieter, from the outside, than 2023 (and than our hopes for 2025).
MIRI's communications strategy update published in May explained what they were planning on working on. I emailed them a month or so ago and they said they are continuing to work on the things in that blog post. They are the sorts of things that can take longer than a year so I'm not surprised that they haven't released anything substantial in the way of comms this year.
↑ comment by Roko · 2024-12-14T05:05:22.021Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"Our objective is to convince major powers to shut down the development of frontier AI systems worldwide"
This?
Replies from: Mo Nastri↑ comment by Mo Putera (Mo Nastri) · 2024-12-15T06:33:25.566Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That's the objective, not the strategy, which is explained in the rest of that writeup.
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comment by Alexej Gerstmaier (alexej-gerstmaier-1) · 2024-12-14T05:27:05.327Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Nothing. It's dead. Seems to be a grift at this point
Replies from: Roko