ClaimsEliezer Yudkowsky

“MIRI has something called the Visible Thoughts Project, which did not get enough funding and enough personnel and was going too slowly.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIRI founder, interviewee 6 April 2023 Eliezer Yudkowsky - Why AI Will Kill Us, Aligning LLMs, Nature of Intelligence, SciFi, & Rationality (Dwarkesh Podcast) archived copy

Factual Their own work or organisation

MIRI ran a Visible Thoughts Project that did not get enough funding or personnel and was progressing too slowly.

Mixed Partly true and partly false in roughly equal measure.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

The evidence is the person's or their organisation's own records.

Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.

What would count as true or false

Judge as of 2023-04-06. The claim has three parts: (a) MIRI ran a Visible Thoughts Project; (b) it lacked enough funding or personnel; (c) it was progressing too slowly. True: MIRI announcements, LessWrong or MIRI blog posts, or contemporaneous reporting confirm (a), and show the project was underfunded or understaffed and slow-moving, e.g. it fell short of its dataset targets or timeline or was wound down for those reasons. Mostly true: (a) holds and the project clearly stalled or fell short, but the documented reason differs somewhat in detail, e.g. writer-recruitment difficulty rather than money. Mixed: the project existed, but only one of the problems (resources, slow progress) is supported. Mostly false: the project existed, but the record shows it was adequately resourced and on schedule, or ended for unrelated reasons. False: no such MIRI project existed.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (4)

  1. E1 Visible Thoughts Project and Bounty Announcement - Machine Intelligence Research Institute Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) · 29 November 2021 Own record

    “In this case, we tried to execute this project in a closed way in mid-2021, but work was not proceeding fast enough.”

  2. E2 Visible Thoughts Project and Bounty Announcement - Machine Intelligence Research Institute Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) · 29 November 2021 Own record

    “We have $200,000 in prizes for building the first fragments of the dataset, plus an additional $1M prize/budget for anyone who demonstrates the ability to build a larger dataset at scale.”

  3. E3 I don't think MIRI "gave up" — LessWrong LessWrong · 3 February 2023 Own record

    “Launched the Visible Thoughts Project, which while not a stunning exemplar of efficient success *has* produced two complete 1000-step runs so far, with more in the works”

  4. E4 MIRI's May 2024 Newsletter — LessWrong LessWrong (linkpost of intelligence.org, by MIRI staff member Harlan) · 15 May 2024 Own record

    “Neither hope played out, and in the intervening time, the ML field has moved on.”

Reasoning

MIRI's November 2021 announcement confirms that it ran the Visible Thoughts Project. It also says that in an earlier closed attempt in mid-2021 "work was not proceeding fast enough" (E1). A 2023 LessWrong post calls the project "not a stunning exemplar of efficient success" and says it had produced two complete 1000-step runs so far, with more in the works (E3). That supports the claim that progress was slow. However, none of the quotes shows a shortage of funding or staff. E2 shows MIRI offering $200,000 in prizes plus a $1M prize/budget, but does not say whether the project had enough funding or staff. Only the slow-progress part is supported, which fits the "mixed" verdict.

Cite this claim

Eliezer Yudkowsky, “MIRI ran a Visible Thoughts Project that did not get enough funding or personnel and was progressing too slowly.” (said 6 April 2023). Verdict: mixed. Reliability API, claim c_dca2cbb4c1f7, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_dca2cbb4c1f7

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

For Eliezer Yudkowsky, or someone speaking for them: a correction or counter-evidence. Replies are read before anything is shown; an approved reply shows your name, role, date, statement and link. Your email address is never shown and is deleted 30 days after the decision (privacy).

More factual claims by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  1. Mostly true Factual September 2025
    “I mean, as far as I know, I'm the person who originally made that argument.”

    Yudkowsky said that, as far as he knows, he was the person who originally made that argument.

  2. Resolved true Factual 7 April 2023
    “I refrained from signing because I think the letter is understating the seriousness of the situation and asking for too little to solve it.”

    Yudkowsky said he did not sign the open letter because he thinks it understates the seriousness of the situation and asks for too little to solve it.

  3. Mostly true Factual 6 April 2023
    “I have refused to deploy timelines with fancy probabilities on them consistently for many years”

    Eliezer Yudkowsky has consistently refused for many years to publish AI timelines with detailed probabilities.

  4. Mostly true Factual 6 April 2023
    “I previously thought that when intelligence was built, there were going to be multiple specialized systems in there.”

    Yudkowsky previously thought that building intelligence would involve multiple specialized systems.

  5. Resolved true Factual 31 March 2023
    “My TIME piece did not suggest nuclear strikes against countries that refuse to sign on to a global agreement against large AI training runs.”

    Yudkowsky's TIME piece did not suggest nuclear strikes against countries refusing to sign a global agreement against large AI training runs.

All of them

Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.