Creating a Discord server for Mechanistic Interpretability Projects

post by Victor Levoso (victor-levoso) · 2023-03-12T18:00:17.153Z · LW · GW · 6 comments

Contents

  Why?
  Mechanistic Interpretability Group
  Algorithm distillation project
  Final thoughts
  Acknowledgements
None
6 comments

TL;DR: I think there likely are a lot of people who want to work on mechanistic interpretability projects but couldn’t get into AI safety camp, so I created a Discord server for people to organize themselves into such projects. I’m going to lead one of them.

Why?

Many people interested in mechanistic interpretability projects were unable to get into AI safety camp. According to Linda Lisenfors, one of the main bottlenecks was a lack of project proposals.

The most popular project at AI safety camp was on understanding search in Transformers, with 46 people selecting it as their first choice. This suggests significant interest in mechanistic interpretability projects.

Moreover, I think that many mechanistic interpretability projects are low-hanging fruit that don’t require lots of experience or specific knowledge to execute. Anyone with basic CS skills can probably learn what they need to contribute along the way.

Mechanistic Interpretability Group

All in all, it would be a shame if people who are interested in working on mechanistic interpretability end up not doing so due to a lack of available projects and project leads.

With that in mind, I have created a Discord server to encourage people to propose and organize their own projects. You can join here: https://discord.gg/cMr5YqbU4y

This Discord server aims to help interested individuals with forming project teams, whilst being provided with guidance from other researchers in the area. You are welcome to join even if you don’t think you have what it takes to participate in such projects: it is also a place to learn and discover beginner-friendly resources. You can also check out Neel Nanda's guide to getting started on the field.

Algorithm distillation project

I’m also organizing a project on interpreting models that use the algorithm distillation setup. If you are interested, join the Discord server and go to the #algorithm-distillation-project channel to indicate your willingness to participate.

The project will start once I have a better idea of who wants to join and how I’m going to organize it, in about 1-2 weeks.

Final thoughts

How exactly things will go on from here depends on how popular the Discord server ends up being. If the Discord server barely gets enough people for the algorithm distillation project, then I will focus on that and the server will become the home of that project. But I think it is likely that there is enough interest in a MI server and working on mechanistic interpretability, and in that case a lot of similar projects can be organized.

I'm not especially attached to being the owner of the server and I don’t have a lot of experience organizing communities, but I felt somebody had to create something like this, so I decided to take initiative. People who are better at organizing communities are encouraged to help and eventually take over.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to firstuserhere, Alex Spies and Alejandro González for helping me write this and set up the Discord server.

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