Posts By: Rob Bensinger

After completing a study fellowship at MIRI that he began in late 2019, Blake Jones is joining the MIRI research team full-time! Blake joins MIRI after a long career working on low-level software systems such as the Solaris operating system and the Oracle database. Other MIRI updates MIRI researcher Evan Hubinger goes on the FLI… Read more »

MIRI researcher Evan Hubinger reviews “11 different proposals for building safe advanced AI under the current machine learning paradigm”, comparing them on outer alignment, inner alignment, training competitiveness, and performance competitiveness.  Other updates We keep being amazed by new shows of support ⁠— following our last two announcements, MIRI has received a donation from another anonymous donor totaling ~$265,000 in euros, facilitated by… Read more »

MIRI has received an anonymous donation of ~$275,000 in euros, facilitated by Effective Giving UK. Additionally, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, working with funders Jaan Tallinn and Jed McCaleb, has announced $340,000 in grants to MIRI. SFF is a new fund that is taking over much of BERI's grantmaking work. To everyone involved in both decisions… Read more »

MIRI has been awarded its largest grant to date — $7,703,750 split over two years from Open Philanthropy, in partnership with Ben Delo, co-founder of the cryptocurrency trading platform BitMEX! We have also been awarded generous grants by the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative ($300,000) and the Long-Term Future Fund ($100,000). Our thanks to everybody involved! Other updates… Read more »

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, the LessWrong team has put together a database of resources for learning about the disease and staying updated, and 80,000 Hours has a new write-up on ways to help in the fight against COVID-19. In my non-MIRI time, I've been keeping my own quick and informal notes on various sources' COVID-19… Read more »

Updates Colm reviews our 2019 fundraiser: taking into account matching, we received a total of $601,120 from 250+ donors. Our thanks again for all the support! Evan Hubinger's Exploring Safe Exploration clarifies points he raised in Safe Exploration and Corrigibility. The issues raised here are somewhat subtler than may be immediately apparent, since we tend to discuss things in ways that… Read more »

Updates Our 2019 fundraiser ended Dec. 31. We'll have more to say in a few weeks in our fundraiser retrospective, but for now, a big thank you to the ~240 donors who together donated more than $526,000, including $67,484 in the first 20 seconds of Giving Tuesday (not counting matching dollars, which have yet to be announced).  Jan. 15… Read more »