I think this is a question that is better directed at Eric himself :) I can confirm that he was one of Foresight’s co-founders, and that he did present at a few more Foresight recent events, such as the Decentralized AI workshop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pClSjljMKeA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDD-ZbEsJA) and a Molecular Machines workshop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjgjtAk-lws&t=1s).
I can also definitely say that our community remains excited about his outstanding work, such as Comprehensive AI Services, the Open Agency Architecture, Paretotopian Goal Alignment, and Molecular Nanotechnology.
Hi Sam, here are two previews of projects we’re working on but which aren’t published yet.
AI-assisted tech trees enabled by Discourse graphs
Throughout 2022, we have been building technology trees to map our five interest areas; molecular nanotechnology, longevity biotechnology, neurotechnology, secure human AI interaction, and space. The goal is to help onboard new talent and funders into the fields by sketching out which required capabilities are required for the long-term goals of the field, who is working on them, and which open challenges are left to be tackled. The trees contain 50k+ nodes but the current interfaces are still pretty clunky and hard to navigate for outsiders: https://foresight.org/tech-tree
What’s new is that we’ll likely be launching a Discourse graph-enabled tech tree edition, which allows natural language question-based navigation of the trees, making the main info much easier to digest for users. In addition, a gpt integration in the tool itself can automate parts of the research process by populating entire paths of the tree automatically. For instance, when prompting the gpt integration questions such as “what are the ten main labs working on autophagy” or “what are the main technical challenges we need to solve to make progress on privacy-preserving ML?” replies relatively well matched human-generated replies, even though there is still fact-checking and completion to do. This means our tech tree architects can function as reviewers and editors, rather than research assistants combing the web from scratch, making the roadmaps more long-term sustainable.
The discourse graph editions of the trees scheduled to go live by July would allow individuals to contribute to the main trees and fork their own AI-assisted tech trees. They would also enable users to advance progress on highlighted challenges via an integrated bounty tool. Thanks to the amazing Discourse graph team for building the tool and allowing us to use it. More about how the tool works: https://protocol.ai/blog/discourse-graph-qa/
Existential Hope book
We’re currently working on a book proposal on Existential Hope to highlight alternative futures to the currently en vogue doomerism. It’s early stage but may discuss various great future scenarios, plus “eucatastrophes”, i.e. positive turning points, technologies and strategies to get there. Many of the people and resources that inspire the book can be found on: https://www.existentialhope.com