Comment by ShenZhen on My Assessment of the Chinese AI Safety Community · 2023-04-26T03:59:40.498Z · LW · GW

Old lurker new account! Need to go work soon so very very quick high-level thoughts:

I feel like we feel some of the same frustration at mainstream/western EA, or others alignment speculaters without a deep understanding of China. I can crudely gesture at their wrong inferences sourcing from assumptions orthogonal to the truth, implying fundamental misconceptions in their model, but in the end it comes down to context: much of this is sub-verbal subtle differences that I can succinctly identify without putting in a few months of effort first. Often when I talk to even ABC EAs I want to shout JUST LIVE IN CHINA FOR TWENTY YEARS AND I WON'T NEED TO CONVINCE YOU.

Having said that, I disagree with some of these conclusions: HPMOR is cringe, yes, but also HPMOR is glorious, c'mon. It's polarizing in Chinese, yes, but it's also polarizing in English. Good selector for the target audience. Translating it to build the Alignment field is not exactly zero expected utility but pretty close.

My impression of Chinese EA field-building is that it's basically still severely under-resourced, both funding and talent (esp talent). A team of like 10 people (of various degrees of Chinese background) has been plugging away at it for a few years, but they need much more help. Marginal impact through the roof, for the handful of people that are capable of helping.