In the coming decades, humanity will likely create a powerful AI. SIAI exists to confront this urgent challenge, both the opportunity and the risk. SIAI is fostering research, education, and outreach to increase the likelihood that the promise of AI is realized for the benefit of everyone.
We are also giving out $500 prizes for suggested rationality exercises: details here.
Finally, a few other updates:
We are running 3 more rationality minicamps! The dates are May 11-13, June 22-24, and July 21-28. Details here.
Did you know that the Singularity Institute’s research fellows and research associates have more peer-reviewed publications forthcoming in 2012 than they had published in all past years combined? See our latest monthly progress report.
Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is being updated again, and has a snazzy new website, HPMoR.com.
Here’s what the Singularity Institute did in April 2012:
SPARC: Several SI staff members are working in collaboration with SI research associate Paul Christiano and a few others to develop a rationality camp for high school students with exceptional mathematical ability: the Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition (SPARC). This is related to our efforts to spin off a new rationality-focused organization, and it is also a major step forward in our efforts to locate elite young math talent that may be useful in our research efforts.
Other articles: Luke published a dialogue with AGI researcher Pei Wang and several more posts in the AI Risk and Opportunity series. Luke also worked with Kaj Sotala to develop an instructional booklet for Less Wrong meetup group organizers, which is nearly complete.
Ongoing long-term projects: Amy continued to work on Singularity Summit 2012. Michael launched the new Singularity Summit website, continued to work on the Singularity Institute’s new primary website, new annual report, and new newsletter design. Luke uploaded several more volunteer-prepared translations of Facing the Singularity. Luke also continued to build the Singularity Institute’s set of remote collaborators, who are hard at work converting the Singularity Institute’s research articles to a new template, hunting down predictions of AI, writing literature summaries on heuristics and biases, and more.
Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR): “Rationality Group” now has a final name: the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR). The CFAR team has been hard at work preparing for the upcoming rationality minicamps, as well as continuing to develop the overall strategy for the emerging organization.
Meetings with advisors, supporters, and potential researchers: As usual, various SI staff met or spoke with dozens of advisors, supporters, and collaborators about how to build the existential risk community, how to mitigate AI risk, how to improve the Singularity Institute’s effectiveness, and other topics. Quixey co-founder and CEO Liron Shapira was added as an advisor.
And of course much more than is listed here!
Finally, we’d like to recognize our most active volunteers in April 2012: Matthew Fallshaw, Gerard McCusker, Frank Adamek, David Althaus, Tim Oertel, Casey Pfluger, Paul Gentemann, and John Maxwell. Thanks everyone! (And, our apologies if we forgot to name you!)
Ongoing long-term projects: Amy continued to work on Singularity Summit 2012. Michael continued to work on the Singularity Institute’s new primary website, new Summit website, new annual report, and new newsletter design. Louie continued to improve our accounting processes and also handled several legal and tax issues. Luke uploaded several more volunteer-prepared translations of Facing the Singularity. Luke also continued to build the Singularity Institute’s set of remote collaborators, who are hard at work converting the Singularity Institute’s research articles to a new template, hunting down predictions of AI, writing literature summaries on heuristics and biases, and more.
Rationality Group: Per our strategic plan, we will launch this new “Rationality Group” organization soon, so that the Singularity Institute can focus on its efforts on activities related to AI risk. In March, Rationality Group (led by Anna) contracted with Julia Galef and Michael Smith to work toward launching the organization. Eliezer continued to help Rationality Group develop and test its lessons. Rationality Group has begun offering prizes for suggesting exercises for developing rationality skills, starting with the skills of “Be Specific” and “Check Consequentialism.” Rationality Group has also announced three Minicamps on Rationality and Awesomeness, for May 11-13, June 22-24, and July 21-28. Apply now.
Meetings with advisors, supporters, and potential researchers: As usual, various SI staff met or spoke with dozens of advisors, supporters, and collaborators about how to build the existential risk community, how to mitigate AI risk, how to improve the Singularity Institute’s effectiveness, and other topics. This included a two-week visit by Nick Beckstead, who worked with us on AI risk reduction strategy.
And of course much more than is listed here!
Finally, we’d like to recognize our most active volunteers in March 2012: Matthew Fallshaw, Gerard McCusker, Frank Adamek, and David Althaus. Thanks everyone! (And, our apologies if we forgot to name you!)
Here’s what the Singularity Institute did in February 2012:
Winter fundraiser completed: Thanks to the generous contributions of our supporters, our latest winter fundraiser was a success, raising much more than our target of $100,000!
Ongoing long-term projects: Amy continued to work on Singularity Summit 2012. Michael continued to work on the Singularity Institute’s new website, and uploaded all past Singularity Summit videos to YouTube. Louie continued to improve our accounting processes and also handled several legal and tax issues. Luke uploaded several volunteer-prepared translations of Facing the Singularity, and also a podcast for this online mini-book.
Rationality Group: Anna and Eliezer continued to lead the development of a new rationality education organization, temporarily called “Rationality Group.” Per our strategic plan, we will launch this new organization soon, so that the Singularity Institute can focus on its efforts on activities related to AI risk. In February our Rationality Group team worked on curriculum development with several potential long-term hires, developed several rationality lessons which they tested (weekly) on small groups and iterated in response to feedback, spoke to advisors about how to build the organization and gather fundraising, and much more. The team also produced one example rationality lesson on sunk costs, including a presentation and exercise booklets. Note that Rationality Group is currently hiring curriculum developers, a remote executive assistant, and others, so apply here if you’re interested!
Meetings with advisors, supporters, and potential researchers: As usual, various SI staff met or spoke with dozens of advisors, supporters, and collaborators about how to build the existential risk community, how to mitigate AI risk, how to improve the Singularity Institute’s effectiveness, and other topics. We also met with several potential researchers to gauge their interest and abilities. Carl spent two weeks in Oxford visiting the Future of Humanity Institute and working with the researchers there.
Outsourcing: On Louie’s (sound) advice, the Singularity Institute is undergoing a labor transition such that most of the work we do (in hours) will eventually be performed not by our core staff but by (mostly remote) hourly contractors and volunteers, for example remote researchers, remote LaTeX workers, remote editors, and remote assistants. This shift provides numerous benefits, including (1) involving the broader community more directly in our work, (2) providing jobs for aspiring rationalists, and (3) freeing up our core staff to do the things that, due to accumulated rare expertise, only they can do.
And of course much more than is listed here!
Finally, we’d like to recognize our most active volunteers in February 2012: Brian Rabkin, Cameron Taylor, Mitchell Owen, Gerard McCusker, Alex Richard, Andrew Homan, Vincent Vu, Gabriel Sztorc, Paul Gentemann, John Maxwell, and David Althaus. Thanks everyone! (And, our apologies if we forgot to name you!)
Thanks to our dedicated supporters, we met our goal for our 2011-2012 Winter Fundraiser. Thank you!
The fundraiser ran for 56 days, from December 27, 2011 to February 20, 2012.
We exceeded our $100K goal, raising a total of $143,048.84 from 101 individual donors.
Every donation that the Singularity Institute receives is powerful support for our mission — ensuring that the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence (superintelligence) benefits human society. We welcome donors contacting us to learn more about our pursuit of this mission and our continued expansion.
Keep your eye on this blog for regular progress reports from our executive director.
Here’s what the Singularity Institute did in January 2012:
Winter fundraiser: We continued raising funds in January, but we still have about $30,000 left to go in our winter fundraiser before the deadline of February 20th. Please support our recent efforts toward greater transparency, efficiency, and productivity by donating now!
Strategic discussions: In January we held a long and ongoing series of discussions concerning Singularity Institute strategy. Which scenarios are the most probable “desirable” futures for humanity, which ones can our species influence most significantly, and which ones should the Singularity Institute work to influence? Which tactical moves should the Singularity Institute make right now? How can our efforts best create synergies with other organizations focused on existential risks? These are complex questions, and in January, Singularity Institute staff members spent dozens of hours sharing their own evidence and arguments. (At one point, we also called upon the expertise of more than a dozen elite mathematicians in our circle.) These discussions continue today, and our opinions on strategy appear to be more unified than they were at the beginning of the month. But there is more evidence to gather and more strategic analysis to be done.
Ongoing long-term projects: Amy continued her preparations for Singularity Summit 2012. Michael Anissimov and others continued work on the Singularity Institute’s new website, which will feature loads of new content and a cleaner design. As part of our transparency efforts, Luke gave a second Q&A about the Singularity Institute, an interview at 80,000 Hours, and another interview at Singularity 1 on 1. Louie continued to work on improving our book-keeping and accounting practices. Anissimov finished thanking all donors who gave during 2011. (If you donated in 2011 and were not thanked, please contact michael@singularity.org!)
Rationality Group: Anna continued to lead the development of a new rationality education organization, temporarily called “Rationality Group.” Per our strategic plan, we will launch this new organization soon, so that the Singularity Institute can focus on its efforts on activities related to AI risk. In January we made one trial-hire for the new organization, and reached out to dozens of other potential team members. We also published a draft of one rationality lesson as a sample (PowerPoint slides + booklet PDFs).
Meetings with advisors, supporters, and potential researchers: As usual, various SI staff met or spoke with dozens of advisors, supporters, and collaborators about how to build the existential risk community, how to mitigate AI risk, how to improve the Singularity Institute’s effectiveness, and other topics. We also met with several potential researchers to gauge their interest and abilities.
Relaunched the Visiting Fellows program: In January we relaunched our Visiting Fellows program. Instead of hosting many visiting fellows at once, we will now host only 1-2 fellows at a time, for a limited duration unique to each visiting fellow. Our visiting fellow for the last week of January was Princeton philosophy undergraduate Jake Nebel. If you’re interested, please apply to our Visiting Fellows program here.
Much more: Launched a redesign of HPMoR.com, continued work in the optimal philanthropy movement, continued work on our first annual report, and much more.
Finally, we’d like to recognize our most active volunteers in January 2012: Mitchell Owen, Brian Rabkin, Huon Wilson, David Althaus, Florent Berthet, Sergio Terrero, “Lightwave,” Emile Kroeger, and Giles Edkins. Thanks everyone! (And, our apologies if we forgot to name you!)
“I think the Singularity Institute has some very smart people working on the most important mission on Earth, but… what exactly are they doing these days? I’m in the dark.”
There’s a good reason I hear this comment so often. We haven’t done a good job of communicating our progress to our supporters.
Since being appointed Executive Director of the Singularity Institute (SI) in November, I’ve been working to change that. I gave twoQ&As about SI and explained our research program with a list of open problems in AI risk research. Now, I’d like to introduce our latest effort in transparency: monthly progress reports.
We begin with last month: December 2011. What did we do in December 2011?
(From this point on I’ll refer to myself as “Luke,” for clarity.)
Winter fundraiser. We launched our winter fundraiser and have been contacting our supporters. The fundraiser has raised over $40k so far, though we still have $60k to go! (So, please donate!)
Singularity Summit 2012. Our chief operating officer Amy Willey worked all month on preparations for Singularity Summit 2012, with much help from Luke. As a result we have now chosen a team of professionals with which we will take the Summit to “the next level,” and we’ve already confirmed several major speakers: Ray Kurzweil, Steven Pinker, Tyler Cowen, Temple Grandin, Peter Norvig, Robin Hanson, Peter Thiel, Melanie Mitchell, Vernor Vinge, and Carl Zimmer. We have also opened negotiations with many other speakers. This is a big improvement over our preparations for Singularity Summit 2011, which effectively began in May 2011, leaving us little time to capture certain speakers and develop certain kinds of media coverage. This much progress at such an early stage, in addition to a larger budget and greater professional assistance, will allow Singularity Summit 2012 to be a major leap forward for the event. Amy has also been developing arrangements for a possible European Singularity Summit in 2012.
Rationality Org. As explained in our strategic plan, we recognize the branding confusion produced by focusing on both AI risk research and rationality education, so we are preparing to spin off a separate rationality education organization so that the Singularity Institute can focus on AI risk research. Internally, we are calling the rationality education organization “Rationality Org.” Anna and Eliezer, with some help from Luke, did a lot of work developing plans for the future Rationality Org. We spent even more time developing the core rationality lessons, testing versions of them on different groups of people, and iterating the content. We expect the Rationality Org to launch late this year or early next year, and we expect it to not only raise the sanity waterline but also bring significant funding toward existential risk reduction.
New website design. Our media director Michael Anissimov, with much help from Luke, worked out the strategy and design of SI’s new website and worked with a designer to iterate the design several times. The designer is now programming the site.
New donor database. In December, our Director of Development Louie Helm finished setting up our new donor database, including the custom code for automatically importing data from Paypal, Google Checkout, etc. This gives us a much better view of who our supporters are, and allows us to more effectively thank them for their support. Anissimov wrote personal thank-you notes to hundreds of past donors.
Research articles. Luke and Anna made continued progress on their overview article “Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import.” Carl continued work with FHI‘s Stuart Armstrong on their article “Arms Races and Intelligence Explosions,” and continued work with Nick Bostrom on their article “How Hard is Artificial Intelligence? Evolutionary Arguments and Selection Effects.”
Eliezer’s book. Eliezer finished the book proposal for his first book (already mostly written), The Science of Changing Your Mind. We have begun looking for good agents to represent the book.
Additional transparency efforts. Anissimov and Luke began work on the design and content for an annual report. They also shot and produced Luke’s video Q&A #1.
Optimal philanthropy. The optimal philanthropy movement (e.g. Giving What We Can) is growing exponentially. Carl and Anna did much collaboration and research with other members of the movement. Partly due to their work, the optimal philanthropy movement has great awareness of the case for existential risk reduction as optimal philanthropy, which should bring significant funding for existential risk reduction work in the coming years.
Meetings with advisors, supporters, and potential researchers. During December 2011, various SI staff met or spoke with dozens of advisors, supporters, and collaborators about how to build the existential risk community, along with other topics. We also met with several potential researchers to gauge their interest and abilities.
Google Adwords upgrade. For months, Louie and others have been tweaking the ads we get from $10k/month of Google Adwords donated to us by Google. By December 2011 our ads were so successful that we qualified for an upgrade, and are now receiving $40k/month of free advertising via Google Adwords.
Better financial management. In December 2011 we began to train our new treasurer, long-time donor and friend of SI Jesse Liptrap. This means that someone outside the organization is keeping a close watch on our finances. We also began work on improving our book-keeping and accounting practices, which will allow better budgeting, forecasting, and resource management.
New board member. Quixey co-founder and CEO Tomer Kagan was added to SI’s board of directors. Tomer is a good friend and brings a wealth of business and management experience to our team.
Much more. Of course, we worked on dozens of other, smaller projects. These include: updates to IntelligenceExplosion.com; development of contacts for Rationality Org; the organization of regular SI staff dinners, to promote coordination and friendship; speaking with donors at Peter Thiel’s “Fast Forward” party; development of a database of helpful volunteers and assistants; implementing Olark on our donate page; meetings with reporters from various media organizations; uploading old videos to Vimeo and YouTube; fixing errors and outdated content on our website; finishing our 2010 990 and sent it to Brandon Reinhart to add to his financial examination of the Singularity Institute, preparing a new template for SI research publications (courtesy of research associate Daniel Dewey); and much more.
There is a new paper by Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence. It will appear in the Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence:
The possibility of creating thinking machines raises a host of ethical issues. These
questions relate both to ensuring that such machines do not harm humans and other
morally relevant beings, and to the moral status of the machines themselves. The first
section discusses issues that may arise in the near future of AI. The second section
outlines challenges for ensuring that AI operates safely as it approaches humans in its
intelligence. The third section outlines how we might assess whether, and in what
circumstances, AIs themselves have moral status. In the fourth section, we consider
how AIs might differ from humans in certain basic respects relevant to our ethical
assessment of them. The final section addresses the issues of creating AIs more
intelligent than human, and ensuring that they use their advanced intelligence for
good rather than ill.
This paper serves as a good introduction to the problem of Friendly AI.
