> Very few if any of the things that currently need to be discussed are such that the code level is where they should be articulated.
That may be true. But:
1. SIAI's website says that part of its core mission is to "Provide the AI community at large with conceptual, mathematical, and software tools that they can use to move and accelerate their AI R&D work toward the direction of safe and beneficial general intelligence."
2. In very difficult mathematical problems, you often have huge misconceptions about what you're talking about that aren't apparent until you spell it out at the code level. (For example, Russell's paradox showed that existing concepts of "formal mathematics" weren't formal enough.) So a useful discussion is necessarily at the code level.
> (My impression is that there isn't much yet done on the code level anyway, since the big problems still are on a higher level of abstraction.)
Eliezer's been working at the code level for years, but AFAIK no one but Marcello knows what he's doing, because he won't tell people, even within SIAI.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: obviousness of possible failure modes
Date: 2010-05-18 06:05 pm (UTC)That may be true. But:
1. SIAI's website says that part of its core mission is to "Provide the AI community at large with conceptual, mathematical, and software tools that they can use to move and accelerate their AI R&D work toward the direction of safe and beneficial general intelligence."
2. In very difficult mathematical problems, you often have huge misconceptions about what you're talking about that aren't apparent until you spell it out at the code level. (For example, Russell's paradox showed that existing concepts of "formal mathematics" weren't formal enough.) So a useful discussion is necessarily at the code level.
> (My impression is that there isn't much yet done on the code level anyway, since the big problems still are on a higher level of abstraction.)
Eliezer's been working at the code level for years, but AFAIK no one but Marcello knows what he's doing, because he won't tell people, even within SIAI.