Talk: AI safety fieldbuilding at MATS

By Ryan Kidd @ 2024-06-23T23:06 (+14)

This is a crosspost, probably from LessWrong. Try viewing it there.

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SummaryBot @ 2024-06-24T15:01 (+1)

Executive summary: AI safety fieldbuilding efforts like MATS aim to rapidly grow the AI safety research community to address potential existential risks from advanced AI systems, which some predict could arrive as soon as 2031.

Key points:

  1. Forecasts predict transformative AI or AGI could arrive between 2031-2040, potentially causing major economic and societal disruptions.
  2. AI poses a significant existential risk (9% chance of human extinction by 2100 according to some estimates), necessitating urgent safety research.
  3. The AI safety field needs to grow rapidly, aiming for ~90,000 researchers to adequately address safety challenges before AGI arrives.
  4. MATS focuses on accelerating high-impact scholars, supporting research mentors, and growing the AI safety field through training and placement.
  5. Key needs in the field include researchers skilled in iterating on ideas, building connections, and amplifying impact, as well as work on interpretability, control, and theory.
  6. International coordination between AI safety institutes and researchers is crucial to address potential risks and prevent dangerous arms races.

 

 

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