Quiz on the limits of ITN

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Your friend says: “I used the ITN framework and concluded that researching whether plants are sentient is the top priority—it’s potentially enormously important (trillions of plants), nobody’s working on it (extremely neglected), and I think we could make progress (moderately tractable).” What’s the best response?

They’re right—the framework supports their conclusioneglectedness alone doesn’t make something important; the probability of plant sentience is very low, which should dramatically reduce the importance scoreThe ITN framework can’t handle this kind of questionTractability is too low to make this worthwhile

A friend says: “The ITN framework told me to work on AI safety, but I’m a nurse with 20 years of clinical experience and no technical background.” Drawing on the lesson’s discussion of what ITN misses, what would you advise?

Follow the framework—AI safety is more important regardless of backgroundPersonal fit is one of the things ITN doesn’t capture. A slightly less important cause where you have rare skills can do more good than one where you’d be starting from scratchRetrain—if AI safety is the top cause, you should switchThe framework doesn’t apply to career decisions

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Lesson 5: The limits of ITN

Lesson 6: Forming your own view