All of Neil Natarajan's Comments + Replies

I confess I’m not entirely sure how you got there after reading the link post. Not that I disagree (I’m personally fine w/ being called a neartermist, I think it sounds good, but open to p much anything)

“It seems to me a generally bad practice to take the positive part of the phrase a movement or philosophy uses to describe itself, and then negate that to describe people outside the movement” seems to imply that we shouldn’t be “not longtermist”s

3
david_reinstein
1y
I see what you mean. I guess my point is “neartermist” sounds like it’s a coherent ideology in opposition to longtermism. “Not longtermist” is not a banner to march behind or a team, it’s just a factual description (in lower case).

Hi Hazelfire,

Thanks for pointing them out, we’ll definitely have a chat with them!

It looks to me like they’re mostly focused on volunteering opportunities at pre-existing projects, whereas our main focus is going to be in helping people start / join something new - not necessarily volunteering. Our aim is to break down the barriers that would keep people from going into value-aligned jobs / full-time roles, where CoLabs appears to be mostly matching helping hands to projects that need help.

For what it's worth, I'm optimistic about the EU AI regulation! I think, at least insofar as it is a smoke test, it marks a beginning in much-needed regulation on AI. I am also optimistic about transferability – perhaps not in exact wording or policy, but I like the risk-based approach. I think it gives companies the ability to replace the most risky AIs while keeping the less risky ones, and I think if it is shown to be feasible in the EU, it will likely be adopted elsewhere – if only because companies will already have found replacement solutions for una... (read more)

3[anonymous]2y
Thanks Neil - I share your concerns. However, to your point on vagueness: most policymakers also think it is more vague than usual. The Commission intends to clarify a lot during the trilogue based on input from the Parliament and the Council. They have also mandated standard-setting organisations ETSI and CEN-CENELEC to develop harmonized standards for operationalizing some of the governance concepts very concretely (E.g. defining techno-operationally what "robustness" is or what constitutes sufficient "human oversight"). They did not want to overspecify the regulations because they want a lot of expert input before enshrining them into law.  So in my opinion it is a good thing that they have left it vague, rather than off-the-mark.