Talk:Machine Intelligence Research Institute

message: I have merged in information from the previously separate items on Emerson and Yudkowsky, which amounted to about a line of exposition and a few links.  Those items now redirect to this item.
:Yeah, I'd like that redirect to be removed. Actually, I'm removing it now. Eliezer Yudkowsky is wikified in many articles already. There is no reason to redirect an article about a person to their association's article. Biographical articles can be fleshed out over time and as of now it *looks* like we don't have an article on Yudkowsky when in fact we did. A line would have been a good start for smeone to write more. I'm making Eliezer Yudkowsky a bio-stub. --JoeHenzi 22:52, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merges 

message: Is it behavior that promotes the survival and flourishing of others at a cost to one's own? Wouldn't this require an AI with self-awareness and free will? But if an AI has free will, would it be moral to enslave it to serve the interests of others at the cost of it's own interests? Or is this merely a nod at Azimov's science-fiction "Three Laws of Robotics"? Those are close to a robotic version of a policeman's duties which may be seen as altruistic but may also be seen fulfilling a contract for which one is compensated. Or does the statement merely envision a non-self-aware AI with an analog of what ethologists call biological altruism?  Whatever SIAI has in mind, I think the article should either make it explicit or drop the sentence since, as it stands, it is difficult or impossible to know what it means. Blanchette 04:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The SIAI web site spends many pages addressing that question. Unfortunately I don't think it can be concisely added to this article, which is already fairly long; interested parties will just have to follow the references. Perhaps someone could expand the 'promotion and support' section of the 'Friendly Artificial Intelligence' article to detail the SIAI's definition of the term better. --Michael Wilson
Michael, thanks for the hint that what the author of the phrase "reliably altruistic AI" had in mind was the same thing as "Friendly AI".  A search of the SIAI website reveals that the phrase "reliably altruistic AI" is not used there, nor is the term "reliably altruistic" nor is "altruistic AI". So "reliably altruistic AI" looks like an  attempt to define Friendly AI that leads one away from rather than closer to understanding SIAI's ideas. I have replaced it with "Friendly AI" and the curious will then understand that further information is available through the previous link to "Friendly artificial intelligence". --Blanchette 07:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is "reliably altruistic AI"? 

message: I just removed the notice about notability considering the institute has been written about in dozens of major publications. It's fairly obvious the notice doesn't belong.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.81.203.35 (talk) 15:21, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notibility 

message: *Update
*Expand
*Check sources and insert refs
*Reassess once finished
Chaosdruid (talk) 08:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Robotics attention needed 

message: Two of the several linked papers are even slightly peer-reviewed. Should these be linked? There is no evidence given that this work is noteworthy, either. If these extensive sections should be here, there needs to be evidence they're noteworthy and not effectively just an ad - David Gerard (talk) 11:53, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-published papers? 

message: The SI->MIRI name change was January 2013. When was the SIAI->SI name change? I can't pin it down more closely than "some time between 2010 and 2012" - David Gerard (talk) 11:09, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  When was SIAI->SI name change? 

message: User User:Zubin12 added a neutrality POV tag in this edit. However, the tag says "[r]elevant discussion may be found on the talk page," and the only discussion of neutrality issues on the talk page dates back to 2004. Per this guideline, the POV tag can be removed "[i]n the absence of any discussion." I'm going to remove the tag now, and if anyone feels the need to discuss the neutrality of the article, they can discuss it here first. --Gbear605 (talk) 00:29, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality? 

message: The article is most likely written by those supportive of the organization and it's mission, which is to be expected but that has caused a large amount of bias to appear in the article. Not only is much of the terminology used in the article confusing and not standardized but tons of tenous connections some of which I have removed.
The research section is incredibly confusing and next to impossible for a layman or even somebody not familiar with the specific sub-culture associated with the organization to follow, additional criticism or controversy about the organization remains limited. For this reason the article doesn't meat W:NPV standards Zubin12 (talk) 00:49, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for adding your reasoning for the tag. I'm not entirely convinced it needs to be there, but I'm okay with leaving it for now. Gbear605 (talk) 01:07, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

text: I don't see how any of it is biased or confusing at all. Could you give some examples? K.Bog 15:15, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It is a blatant advertisement, full of sources by the organization and other primary sources, and quotes that are not encyclopedic. This is not an encyclopedia article Jytdog (talk) 15:40, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's completely false. The primary sources here are being used for straightforward facts just like WP:PRIMARY says; it's okay to cite research to say what the research says. The presence of primary sources doesn't make something an advertisement. And the quotes seem perfectly encyclopedic to me. K.Bog 16:06, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

text: Hmm, that being said the research section does have some problems. So, I'll go ahead and fix it, and probably you will feel better about it afterwards.K.Bog 16:21, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: It is disgusting to see fancruft with shitty, bloggy sources on science topics.  Video games, I understand more  This is just gross. Jytdog (talk) 17:04, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Please keep your emotions out of it. If you're not capable of evaluating this topic reasonably then move on to other things. Plus, I was in the middle of major edits, as I noted already. It's not good etiquette to change the article at the same time. I'm going to return it to the version I am writing, because I was working on it first, and then incorporate your changes if they are still relevant and suitable. K.Bog 17:29, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: "Disgust" is more an opinion, and one quite appropriate to blatant fan editing. This needs some serious non-fan review, and scouring of primary sources - David Gerard (talk) 17:40, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: But it's not fan editing, and primary sources are acceptable in the contexts used here. If you believe it requires third party review then flag it for actual third party review - you don't get to claim that you are unbiased if you have an axe to grind, whether it's negative or positive. K.Bog 17:44, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

text: @Jytdog you can finish if you want but you interrupted a major in-progress edit (this is the second time you did this to me, as I recall) and I'm going to revise it to my draft before looking at your changes.K.Bog 18:03, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I wasn't aware that you were working over the page. That is what tags are for. Please communicate instead of edit warring. I will self revert. Jytdog (talk) 18:06, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I searched for the tag but couldn't remember what it was called. That's why I wrote it here on the talk page. K.Bog 18:11, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Large amounts of Bias present 

message: :::Content like this:  
:::He argues that the intentions of the operators are too vague and contextual to be easily coded.
:::is still in the article. This is a primary source (a conference paper published on their own website and branded even) and the content is randomly grabbing some thing out of it. Not encyclopedic. This is what fans or people with a COI do (they edit the same way). There are a bunch of other conference papers like this as well and used in the same way. Conference papers are the bottom of the barrel for scientific publishing.  There are still somewhat crappy blogs or e-zines like OZY and Nautlius.
:::A different kind of bad:
:::In early 2015, MIRI's research was cited in a research priorities document accompanying an open letter on AI that called for "expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and beneficial". Musk responded by funding a large AI safety grant program, with grant recipients including Bostrom, Russell, Bart Selman, Francesca Rossi, Thomas Dietterich, Manuela M. Veloso, and researchers at MIRI. MIRI expanded as part of a general wave of increased interest in safety among other researchers in the AI community.
:::In the first sentence
::::a) the first citation is completely wrong, which I have fixed. 
::::b) The quotation doesn't appear in the cited piece (which is not the open letter itself, but rather says of itself "This article was drafted with input from the attendees of the 2015 conference The Future of AI: Opportunities and Challenges (see Acknowledgements), and was the basis for an open letter that has collected nearly 7000 signatures in support of the research priorities outlined here."
::::c) The cited document doesn't mention MIRI - this content saying "MIRI's research was cited in a research priorities document..." is pure commentary by who over wrote this; similar to the way the conference papers are used, discussed above. Again we don't do this. 
:::In the second sentence: 
::::a) The WaPo source doesn't mention the open letter. (I understand the goal here, but this is invalid way to do it)
::::b) The following people named as getting money, are not mentioned in the WaPo source: Russell, Selman, Rossi, Dietterich.  However, Bostrom, Veloso, and Fallenstein at MIRI are mentioned. The WaPo piece mentions Heather Roff Perkins, Owain Evans, and Michael Webb.  But this list has nothing to do with MIRI, so what is this even doing here? 
::::The content is not even trying to summarize the source.  This is editing driven by something other than the basic methods of scholarship we use here. 
:::The third sentence:
::::The source here is the one that actually is telling the whole story of this paragraph. The reference lacks a page number (another issue of basic scholarship).  It doesn't say that MIRI expanded per se; there is one sentence mentioning MIRI and it says "Major new Al­ safety donations enabled expanded research at our largest nonprofit sister organizations: the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford and  the  Cen­tre for the Study of Existential Risk in Cambridge (UK)."
:::I have fixed the paragraph here. Jytdog (talk) 15:00, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: arbitrary break

message: The points of dispute are: (a) whether to remove the statement that Musk "had previously endorsed Bostrom's arguments,[11][12]" (b) whether to preserve the NPOV maintenance tag, (c) whether to preserve the primary source maintenance tag, and (d) whether the language is too technical. K.Bog 05:13, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: My view on this topic should be obvious, The tag's should be preserved for the reasons I articulated in the earlier, The musk references should be removed and the reliance on primary sources create both stylistic and content problems. Zubin12 (talk) 23:57, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:36, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

text: Given the radical changes in the page is the RFC not a bit reduant at this point ?Zubin12 (talk) 08:47, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure that folks who preferred the prior version have really consented; i think they are being patient to see what the RfC brings. Jytdog (talk) 02:14, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for comment on NPOV and sourcing 

message: * This is not an RfC about policy; I have removed that tag from the RfC because per WP:RFCST that  Jytdog (talk) 14:01, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Given the radical changes in the page is the RFC not a bit reduant at this point ?Zubin12 (talk) 08:47, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure that folks who preferred the prior version have really consented; i think they are being patient to see what the RfC brings. Jytdog (talk) 02:14, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Notes

message: is very marginal.  Lots of passing mentions but I had to resort to an in-bubble blog at FLI to get even one source focused on MIRI and its story.  I found no others.  Plenty of passing mentions but I don't believe this passes WP:ORGCRIT since we revised it. Jytdog (talk) 04:03, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: , here are five articles that talk about MIRI that pass the primary criteria: https://www.npr.org/2011/01/11/132840775/The-Singularity-Humanitys-Last-Invention (not used in WP article), https://www.ft.com/content/abc942cc-5fb3-11e4-8c27-00144feabdc0 (used in WP article), https://www.analyticsindiamag.com/top-non-profit-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-institutes-that-are-working-on-making-ai-safe/ (not used in WP article), https://news.bitcoin.com/66-funding-stop-ai-apocalypse-comes-crypto-donors/ (not used in WP article), http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/04/will_artificial_intelligence_kill_us_all_an_explainer.html (not used in WP article). These all have significant coverage, although it is only the primary focus of the first two. Gbear605 (talk) 04:39, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of those are in Jytdog's version of the article, but his version also cuts some sources out. In any case, the page has been nominated for deletion twice already, and the motion failed both times. K.Bog 04:43, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Both AfDs were sparsely attended and weakly argued, and more importantly, were before we revised WP:ORGCRIT. Yes I forgot the NPR one (which is used).  The Slate piece has just a paragraph, ditto the AnalyticaIndia listicle.   The Bitcoin ref is churnalism unsurprisingly hyping bitcoin (unremarkably skewing the contents of the underlying press release/blogpost) to ignore the donations in Ethereum, and plagiarizing it in a couple of spots. Jytdog (talk) 13:18, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notability 

message: some merging might be in order? Jytdog (talk) 04:04, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Nah, it would be weird to conflate a niche think-tank/research centre with a broader movement.Zubin12 (talk) 08:45, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Singularitarianism]] 

message: An anonymous editor removed what he termed "fluff" regarding the first sentence, which included (regarding Yudkowsky) "who was mostly self-educated and had been involved in the Extropian group,"- I'm inclined to agree that this is "fluff"; indeed, it seems to veer into promotion of the individual in question. I've reverted the edit in question so that this content is removed. I'm open to the idea that either of these bits of biographical information are relevant to this particular article, but frankly, this seems far-fetched. It's enough to mention his name in the lead, along with the brief relevant historical information in the first section (which seems perfectly appropriate). Also I think it's crucially important to point out that articles about organizations and individuals as contentious as this one are especially at risk of preferential editing by fans of the personalities and ideas involved. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 21:15, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree, this might belongs to Yudkowsky's BLP page or in a relevant context in this article, if this piece of information is essential to encyclopedic content about MIRI, but not otherwise. --Btcgeek (talk) 22:26, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irrelevant promotion of Yudkowsky in first sentence? 

message: User:David Gerard, isn't WP:PRIMARY acceptable in this case? It can be supplemented with Open Phil's page on the grant, as well as an additional non-primary source once available. - Indefensible (talk) 16:56, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless anyone else in the world cares about it, it's likely WP:UNDUE, I'd think - or the "yes, but so what?" test. I mean, others might disagree with me, sure. But nonprofits whose WP pages are encrusted with their own blog posts about themselves, detailing things that no third parties bothered documenting, tend to be the ones that really shouldn't have that much detail in their articles - David Gerard (talk) 19:52, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Supplemented with Open Phil ref, at minimum this meets the existing 2019 grant sentence. - Indefensible (talk) 05:02, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: While it is unfortunately common to list grants in some articles, this still should be explained using neutral language. Ideally with context from  better sources. Grayfell (talk) 05:40, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Open Phil grant 

message: Do we have WP:RS for this yet? He mentioned it on this podcast. - Scarpy (talk) 12:12, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eliezer has left the building