Nick_Beckstead

As part of our work on reducing potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence, Open Philanthropy is seeking proposals for projects working with deep learning systems that could help us understand and make progress on AI alignment: the problem of creating AI systems more capable than their designers that robustly try to do what their designers intended. We are interested in proposals that fit within certain research directions, described below and given as posts in the rest of this sequence, that we think could contribute to reducing the risks we are most concerned about. Anyone is eligible to apply, including those working in academia, industry, or independently. Applicants are invited to submit proposals for up to $1M in total funding covering up to 2 years. We may invite grantees who do outstanding work to apply for larger and longer grants in the future. Proposals are due January 10, 2022. Submit a proposal here. If you have any questions, please contact ai-alignment-rfp@openphilanthropy.org. Our view of alignment risks from advanced artificial intelligence This section was written by Nick Beckstead and Asya Bergal, and may not be representative of the views of Open Philanthropy as a whole. We think the research directions below would be pursued more fruitfully by researchers who understand our background views about alignment risks from advanced AI systems, and who understand why we think these research directions could help mitigate these risks. In brief: * We believe it is plausible that later this century, advanced AI systems will do the vast majority of productive labor more cheaply than human workers can. * We are worried about scenarios where AI systems more capable than humans acquire undesirable objectives that make them pursue and maintain power in unintended ways, causing humans to lose most or all influence over the future. * We think it may be technically challenging to create powerful systems that we are highly certain have desi