The comment about counterfactuals makes me think about computational cognitive scientist Tobias Gerstenberg's research (https://cicl.stanford.edu), where his research focuses a lot on counterfactual reasoning in the physical domain, but he also has work in the social domain. 

I confess to only a surface-level understanding of MIRI's research agenda, so I'm not quite able to connect my understanding of counterfactual reasoning in the social domain to a concrete research question within MIRI's agenda. I'd be happy to hear more though if you had more detail! 

Thanks so much; I'd be excited to talk! Emailed.

Got my post up :). https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dKgWZ8GMNkXfRwjqH/seeking-social-science-students-collaborators-interested-in

Also "Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Initiative Research Agenda - Centre for a New American Security, no date" was published in July 2017, according to the embedded pdf in that link!

Additions under "Less technical / AI strategy / AI governance"?

-  https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WdMnmmqqiP5zCtSfv/cognitive-science-psychology-as-a-neglected-approach-to-ai 
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9kNqYzEAYtvLg2BbR/baobao-zhang-how-social-science-research-can-inform-ai (though this one only has three research questions and isn't focused on generating questions)