Previous: My AGI safety research—2022 review, ’23 plans. (I guess I skipped it last year.)

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.” –attributed to DL Moody

Tl;dr

Section 1 goes through my main research project, “reverse-engineering human social instincts”: what does that even mean, what's the path-to-impact, what progress did I make in 2024 (spoiler: lots!!), and how can I keep pushing it forward in the future?
Section 2 is what I’m expecting to work on in 2025: most likely, I’ll start the year with some bigger-picture thinking about Safe & Beneficial AGI, then eventually get back to reverse-engineering human social instincts after that. Plus, a smattering of pedagogy, outreach, etc.
Section 3 is a sorted list of all my blog posts from 2024
Section 4 is acknowledgements

1. Main research project: reverse-engineering human social instincts

1.1 Background [...]

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Outline:

(00:25) Tl;dr

(01:12) 1. Main research project: reverse-engineering human social instincts

(01:21) 1.1 Background: What's the problem and why should we care?

(04:31) 1.2 More on the path-to-impact

(07:41) 1.3 Progress towards reverse-engineering human social instincts

(10:09) 1.4 What's next?

(11:22) 2. My plans going forward

(12:58) 3. Sorted list of my blog posts from 2024

(15:58) 4. Acknowledgements

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 31st, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2wHaCimHehsF36av3/my-agi-safety-research-2024-review-25-plans

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“My AGI safety research—2024 review, ’25 plans” by Steven Byrnes

LessWrong (30+ Karma)