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rohinmshah's Shortform - AI Alignment Forum

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Comment by Rohin Shah - It's common for people to be worried about recommender systems being addictive or promoting filter bubbles etc, but as far as I can tell, they don't have very good arguments for these worries. Whenever I talk to someone who seems to have actually studied the topic in depth, it seems they think that there are problems with recommender systems, but they are different from what people usually imagine. I'll go through the articles I've read that argue for worrying about recommender systems, and explain why I find them unconvincing. I've only looked at the ones that are widely read; there are probably significantly better arguments that are much less widely read. Aligning Recommender Systems as Cause Area [https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xzjQvqDYahigHcwgQ/aligning-recommender-systems-as-cause-area] . I responded [https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xzjQvqDYahigHcwgQ/aligning-recommender-systems-as-cause-area?commentId=WtT93JofGRgEE3Lwa] briefly on the post. Their main arguments and my counterarguments are: 1. A few sources say that it is bad + it has incredible scale + it should be super easy to solve. (I don't trust the sources and suspect the authors didn't check them; I agree there's huge scale; I don't see why it should be super easy to solve even if there is a problem, especially given that many of the supposed problems seem to have existed before recommender systems.) 2. Maybe working on recommender systems would have spillover effects on AI alignment. (This seems dominated by just working directly on AI alignment. Also the core feature of AI alignment is that the AI system deliberately and intentionally does things, and creates plans in new situations that you hadn't seen before, which is not the case with recommender systems, so I don't expect many spillover effects.) 80K podcast with Tristan Harris [https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tristan-harris-changing-incentives-social-media/] . This was acti

x rohinmshah's Shortform by Rohin Shah 18th Jan 2020 1 min read 161 10 This is a special post for quick takes by Rohin Shah . Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page . More from Rohin Shah View more Curated and popular this week 44 Comments 161 Rendering 0 / 44 comments, sorted by top scoring (show more) Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 1:17 PM Moderation Log rohinmshah's Shortform — AI Alignment Forum Comment Permalink Rohin Shah 5y * 15 0 It's common for people to be worried about recommender systems being a

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