Distillation Contest

If you are interested in receiving updates on deadlines, potential workshops, and resources for the Distillation contest, we recommend you fill out the interest form.

The Distillation interest form is separate from the first AIMS contest interest form, so people who signed up for the first contest should sign up again, but filling out the interest form is not required for participation in the Distillation Contest.

Distillation is the practice of “taking a complex subject and making it easier to understand.” Distillation is more involved than summarizing; a distillation also communicates new examples and applications of the original research. 

The field of AI Alignment/AI Safety needs more distillers to improve communication within the field, as well as to make their research accessible to a wider audience. In this second round of the Artificial Intelligence Misalignment Solutions contest, you can directly support the alignment community by creating valuable distillations of complex alignment research. 

Contest Description:

The Distillation Contest asks that participants: 

  1. Pick an article/post/research paper on AI Alignment/Safety (ideally from our list below) that would benefit from being more clearly explained. 

  2. Indicate which ideas or sections of their chosen research should be distilled. Applicants can either distill a whole post/article, a specific part of the post/article, or multiple posts/articles.

  3. Create a distillation: a clearer explanation of the research, along with a new example or new application of the research. 

  4. Optionally: If there is a problem that is trying to be solved by the research you’re distilling, you can attempt to create an additional solution to the problem and include it in your response.

Note: Submissions can be submitted as an attachment, preferably in a PDF, or a link to a forum/blog post. Lesswrong and the EA Forum are ideal places to post distillations!

Posts/articles that we would encourage applicants to choose for the Distillation Contest to distill include the following list. Applicants are allowed to propose their own posts/articles outside of this list, although it’s possible that the judges will not believe that those articles are convoluted enough to need distillation. Therefore, it’s recommended that applicants distill from the list below.

Scoring and Examples

  • Distillations will be scored on the following factors:

    • Depth of understanding

    • Clarity of presentation

    • Rigor of work

    • Concision/Length (longer papers will need to present more information than shorter papers)

    • Originality of insight

    • Accessibility

    Preference may be given to distillations that:

    • Synthesize multiple sources

    • Increase the ease of access for the distillation to be an introduction to a topic

  • Holden Karnofsky, after creating the Most Important Century Series, created a roadmap to make the series more digestible and navigable. Furthermore, Scott Alexander has distilled multiple complex dialogues (and even a meme) in order to make them more accessible

  • A good distillation would explain the most confusing part of another piece of writing – the use of distillation is found in creating new ways to understand confusing concepts or confusing technical writing.

    These distillations would also help readers infer how the distilled ideas relate to other Alignment research.

    Because of this, creating a good distillation will likely require participants to read related research outside of their distilled post in order to make sure they fully understand the ideas presented in the paper.

Prizes:

$2,500 - One prize available for 1st place submission.

$1,250 - One prize available for 2nd place submission.

$500 - Up to 5 prizes available.

$250 - Up to 10 prizes avaliable.

All prize winners’ names will be posted on the EA Berkeley website and selected distillations will be optionally posted to the website. 

Timeline:

 

April 13th - Interest and Submission Forms Open

It is not required to fill out the interest form in order to enter the contest. Filling out the interest form will add you to an email list that will provide you with information about opportunities to further engage with others about this contest.

May 20th - Deadline to submit at 11:59 PM.

Late May/Early June - Winners announced, prizes allocated, names added to the website.

Submission Qualifications 

In order to be considered for the listed prizes, your submission must: 

  • Be submitted before 11:59 PM on Friday, May 20th.

  • Be submitted by a student. Students can either currently attend a college or university, have recently graduated from a college or university in 2022, or are enrolled to attend a university in 2022 (graduating high schoolers).

  • Be submitted in English. The submission can come from any country.

Frequently Asked Questions

 
  • Yes! Even if you aren’t in the US.

  • Yes! Although it is possible that this may be taken to account when distributing prizes and awards because the main audience of this contest is undergraduates.

  • The judges are still being finalized but will include AI Safety professionals.

  • The audience is someone with less background knowledge than the original audience of the post/paper. We’re open to distillations for multiple audiences (CS undergrads who haven’t heard of alignment, people who are interested in alignment but have limited understanding of AI, people who have never heard of the alignment problem).

 

Plagiarism Policy

If it is discovered that your submission to the AIMS Contest is plagiarized, your submission will be rejected and you will be banned from submitting to future contests hosted by EA Berkeley.

Plagiarism includes using the ideas of another person and portraying them as your own. You are encouraged to read and build off of the ideas of others as long as you cite them, especially when you feel confused about terminology, but any solutions submitted to this contest must be ideas originating from your own thinking.  

If you have additional questions about the Distillation Contest, please email admin@eaberkeley.com and cc alarichardson@berkeley.edu