How to Engage with the Curriculum

Structure of the Curriculum

This curriculum is made up of 8 sections, each of which has been designed to require roughly 3-4 hours of engagement.

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Each section consists of a written piece that links together external resources and exercises to engage with, which are displayed on blocks. Before moving on, take a quick glance at the next section ‘1. What is Cooperative AI’ so you can see what this looks like. On each block for external resources, you’ll find a link to the resource and which parts we’d like you to engage with. Also, we’ve labelled each external resource and exercise with:

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• whether or not they’re optional,
• how long we expect it to take to engage with, 
• the topics that will come up,
• the prerequisite material required to get the most out of it (more on this under the next heading).

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As the position of the exercises in each section has been thought through carefully, so we highly recommend doing them as they appear and not leaving them until you’ve finished the content of a section.

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Prerequisites and the Appendix Section

We rarely expect background knowledge throughout the curriculum and hope people from multiple different backgrounds can find value in it. However, when we think some background knowledge would be particularly beneficial, we aim to include links to relevant material as needed. (Note that the majority of required content in the curriculum does not have prerequisites, but the majority of optional content does.)

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If we think an exercise or external resource needs prerequisite material, you’ll find a drop down on its respective block that displays a list of tags that link to material in the ‘Appendix’. For example, if ‘basic game theory’ is listed in the prerequisites, you will be taken to this part of the ‘Appendix’ listing material that will help you understand core concepts in game theory. Note that the same tags always link to the same material in the ‘Appendix’, so if you engage with the ‘basic game theory’ material for example, you won’t need to again (unless it’s helpful) before engaging with another piece of content or exercise with the ‘basic game theory’ prerequisite tag. The ‘Appendix’ section contains content on all the prerequisite concepts we expect to come up, so if you’d like to see the kinds of topics to expect and do some extra preparation, feel free to have a peruse.

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Learning Best Practices

Before engaging with a curriculum or spending a lot of time learning something new, we highly recommend reviewing some learning best practices. This resource is quite comprehensive and aims to be evidence based in its recommendations: Learning How to Learn (And 20+ Studies). Take a little time before diving into the content to make sure you have a system in place to remind yourself of or implement as many of these best practices as possible.

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Feedback

This curriculum is currently in beta and we are trialling facilitated courses based on the material, so feedback now is especially valuable to us. At the end of each section, you will see a link to a short 5-10min feedback form. If you would like to leave feedback, please do so as close to finishing a section as possible. There is also a feedback form at the end of the curriculum for leaving your overall impression.