This is second kind of obvious point to make, but if you are interested in AI, AI safety, or cognition in general, it is likely worth going to top ML conferences, such as NeurIPS, ICML or ICLR. In this post I cover some reasons why, and some anecdotal stories.

1. Parts of AI alignment and safety are now completely mainstream

Looking at the "Best paper awards" at ICML, you'll find these safety-relevant or alignment-relevant papers:

Stealing part of a production language model by Carlini et al.
Probabilistic Inference in Language Models via Twisted Sequential Monte Carlo by Zhao et al.
Debating with More Persuasive LLMs Leads to More Truthful Answers by Khan et al.
Genie: Generative Interactive Environments Bruce et al.

which amounts to about one-third (!). "Because of safety concerns" is part of the motivation for hundreds of papers.

While the signal-to-noise ratio is even worse [...]

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Outline:

(00:23) 1. Parts of AI alignment and safety are now completely mainstream

(01:22) 2. Conferences are an efficient way how to screen general ML research without spending a lot of time on X

(02:57) 3. ML research community as a control group

(04:04) 4. What experts think

(04:54) 5. Examples

(06:28) 6. Conclusion

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First published:
July 24th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/czNgEuaxkXHL2g8mQ/you-should-go-to-ml-conferences

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“You should go to ML conferences” by Jan_Kulveit

LessWrong (30+ Karma)