Source for SimpleAISafety.org, a website that provides simple, intuitive explanations for import AI (artificial intelligence) and AI safety concepts.
We think that AI (artificial intelligence) has a lot of potential for doing good but worry that risks are being neglected. One of the reasons for this is the lack of easily accessible information both for laypeople and for people with a technical background but not already deep into AIS (artificial intelligence safety) topics. By easily accessible we mean two things:
- Appropriate given the reader's background knowledge
- In the reader's native language
To achieve this we want to present concepts that keep appearing in the discussion around AI, ML (machine learning) and AIS in increasing levels of complexity to cater to as many readers as possible. We also want to leverage analogies, metaphors and drawings to serve as intuition pumps.
The three levels of complexity are:
- Basic: The target group is people with a high school degree or comparable general knowledge. A useful simplification, since we tend to overcomplicate, is to aim for: Explain it to me like I am 5. Even experts can frequently benefit from simplified explanations of new concepts because they are easier to remember and allow you to mentally start attaching other concepts to them, building up a more complex mental model over time. The writer should avoid technical jargon and math.
- Intermediate: The target group is people with a bachelor's degree in computer science, physics or some other technical subject. The writer should use technical jargon, code samples and math where appropriate.
- Advanced: The target group is people with a master's degree in AI/ML or job experience in AI/ML. The writer should probably limit themself to linking to third-party resources for now.
This project is meant to be collaborative. We kindly ask informed readers to submit new content, corrections and other kinds of improvements. To do so you can submit a pull request (see below), which requires some technical background, write a bug report (https://github.com/simpleaisafety/simpleaisafety/issues/new/choose) or send an e-mail to info@simpleaisafety.org
- Install Git
- Why? Git is used to download the website content and then later upload your modifications.
- Install Hugo (extended version)
- Why? Hugo is a static site generator. It is used to convert text files (in markdown format) to a regular HTML website.
- Use some Git tool (e.g. Git Bash) and go the the directory on your PC where you would like to save the project.
- Get the project e.g. by executing
git clone git@github.com:simpleaisafety/simpleaisafety.git - Inside the project directory use a terminal/console to execute
hugo server. - Access the website preview with http://localhost:1313
To modify an existing page edit anything in the content/ directory.
To create a new page execute something like hugo new "posts/my-new-concept.md"
Contribute your modification back to the main project via a pull request e.g. as documented here
The theme is the overall look and feel of the website. We are currently using a third-party theme. You can probably ignore this section.
git remote add -f theme-meme https://github.com/reuixiy/hugo-theme-meme
git subtree add --prefix themes/meme theme-meme master --squashUpdate later
git fetch theme-meme master
git subtree pull --prefix themes/meme theme-meme master --squashWhy are you using a static site generator instead of a CMS or a custom-written web application? Because it is easier to set up, requires essentially no maintenance (as opposed to a CMS that needs to be updated), requires no user management (GitHub does it for you) and is free (minimal compute needed, no DB needed). This decision comes with some disadvantages so it might be changed in the future. e.g. you can do no dynamic processing on the server (possibly particularly limiting where search is concerned) end and asking people to make contributions via GitHub might be too big a hurdle.
It is possible to build a dynamic frontend application (e.g. React) on top of the static site.