Announcing AlignmentForum.org Beta by Raymond Arnold.

Release Date: 12/06/2021

Description: Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AMA: Paul Christiano, alignment researcher, published by Paul Christiano on the AI Alignment Forum. I'll be running an Ask Me Anything on this post from Friday (April 30) to Saturday (May 1). If you want to ask something just post a top-level comment; I'll spend at least a day answering questions. You can find some background about me here. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

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Release Date: 11/17/2021

Description: Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Would an option to publish to AF users only be a useful feature?Q , published by Richard Ngo on the AI Alignment Forum. Right now there are quite a few private safety docs floating around. There's evidently demand for a privacy setting lower than "only people I personally approve", but higher than "anyone on the internet gets to see it". But this means that safety researchers might not see relevant arguments and information. And as the field grows, passing on access to such documents on a personal basis will become even less efficient. My guess is that in most cases, the authors of these documents don't have a problem with other safety researchers seeing them, as long as everyone agrees not to distribute them more widely. One solution could be to have a checkbox for new posts which makes them only visible to verified Alignment Forum users. Would people use this? Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

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Release Date: 11/17/2021

Description: Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: What is the alternative to intent alignment called? Q, published by Richard Ngo on the AI Alignment Forum. Paul defines intent alignment of an AI A to a human H as the criterion that A is trying to do what H wants it to do. What term do people use for the definition of alignment in which A is trying to achieve H's goals (whether or not H intends for A to achieve H's goals)? Secondly, this seems to basically map on to the distinction between an aligned genie and an aligned sovereign. Is this a fair characterisation? (Intent alignment definition from) Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

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Release Date: 12/05/2021

Description: Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Welcome & FAQ!, published by by Ruben Bloom, Oliver Habryka on the AI Alignment Forum. The AI Alignment Forum was launched in 2018. Since then, several hundred researchers have contributed approximately two thousand posts and nine thousand comments. Nearing the third birthday of the Forum, we are publishing this updated and clarified FAQ. Minimalist, watercolor sketch of humanity spreading across the stars by VQGAN I have a practical question concerning a site feature. Almost all of the Alignment Forum site features are shared with LessWrong.com; have a look at the LessWrong FAQ for questions concerning the Editor, Voting, Questions, Notifications & Subscriptions, Moderation, and more. If you can’t easily find the answer there, ping us on Intercom (bottom right of screen) or email us at team@lesswrong.com What is the AI Alignment Forum? The Alignment Forum is a single online hub for researchers to discuss all ideas related to ensuring that transformatively powerful AIs are aligned with human values. Discussion ranges from technical models of agency to the strategic landscape, and everything in between. Top voted posts include What failure looks like, Are we in an AI overhang?, and Embedded Agents. A list of the top posts of all time can be viewed here. While direct participation in the Forum is limited to deeply established researchers in the field, we have designed it also as a place where up-and-coming researchers can get up to speed on the research paradigms and have pathways to participation too. See How can non-members participate in the Forum? below. We hope that by being the foremost discussion platform and publication destination for AI Alignment discussion, the Forum will serve as the archive and library of the field. To find posts by sub-topic, view the AI section of the Concepts page. Why was the Alignment Forum created? Foremost, because misaligned powerful AIs may pose the greatest risk to our civilization that has ever arisen. The problem is of unknown (or at least unagreed upon) difficulty, and allowing the researchers in the field to better communicate and share their thoughts seems like one of the best things we could do to help the pre-paradigmatic field. In the past, journals or conferences might have been the best methods for increasing discussion and collaboration, but in the current age we believe that a well-designed online forum with things like immediate publication, distributed rating of quality (i.e. “peer review”), portability/shareability (e.g. via links), etc., provides the most promising way for the field to develop good standards and methodologies. A further major benefit of having alignment content and discussion in one easily accessible place is that it helps new researchers get onboarded to the field. Hopefully, this will help them begin contributing sooner. Who is the AI Alignment Forum for? There exists an interconnected community of Alignment researchers in industry, academia, and elsewhere who have spent many years thinking carefully about a variety of approaches to alignment. Such research receives institutional support from organizations including FHI, CHAI, DeepMind, OpenAI, MIRI, Open Philanthropy, ARC, and others. The Alignment Forum membership currently consists of researchers at these organizations and their respective collaborators. The Forum is also intended to be a way to interact with and contribute to the cutting edge research for people not connected to these institutions either professionally or socially. There have been many such individuals on LessWrong, and that is the current best place for such people to start contributing, to be given feedback and to skill-up in this domain. There are about 50-100 members of the Forum who are (1) able to post and comment directly to the Forum without review, (2) able to promo...

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