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An open letter to SERI MATS program organisers — LessWrong

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In order to be effective, independent AI alignment/safety/x-risk researchers should be unusually competent in philosophy of science, epistemology, and methodology of research (the latter imports some strategic considerations, too, as I’ll illustrate shortly), relative to other fields of research. The reasons for this are: (1) The field is pre-paradigmatic. (2) There is a number of epistemic complications with this type of research, many of which are detailed by Adam Shimi here (also see my comment to this post). I’d add, on top of that, that the very concept of risk is poorly understood and risk science is often conducted poorly (usually because one doesn’t realise they are doing risk science). (3) The object of research relates to ethics (i.e., philosophy, unless one subscribes to ethical naturalism), so researchers should be able to properly synthesise science and philosophy. (4) Alignment work within AGI labs tends to be more empirical and iterative, which partially ameliorates

x An open letter to SERI MATS program organisers — LessWrong AI Alignment Fieldbuilding Epistemology MATS Program Practice & Philosophy of Science AI Frontpage 26 An open letter to SERI MATS program organisers by Roman Leventov 20th Apr 2023 4 min read 26 26 (Independent) alignment researchers need to be exceptionally good at philosophy of science In order to be effective, independent AI alignment/safety/x-risk researchers should be unusually competent in philosophy of science, epistemology, and methodology of research (the latter imports some strategic considerations, too, as I’ll illustrate

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