131–140 of 329 posts
Places where AIs aren't used to command peoples lives will probably not even realise that an AI apocalypse had happened. Perhaps a case of western navel-gazing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's impossible to come up with arguments against them. For one thing, extrapolating the current gradual rate of progress forwards means that we will get to see several minor "intelligence spills" before the hypothetical big and last one, and by observing what went wrong, humanity will have the opportunity to come up with solutions. Since very smart human beings have in history done a lot of damage, but…
something never happening before == can't happen is extremely dangerous attittude. I suggest you read Taleb and his duck example.
AI safety is an apocalypse cult and we should recognize that everyone who has ever been in an apocalypse cult thinks that "no, this time it's really the end of the world". Everyone who believes crazy shit thinks they're being reasonable, so just because we're super sure we're being reasonable doesn't mean what we believe isn't crazy. Do we believe that we alone, of all people who have believed in the coming end, have…
Personally, I find the AI safety arguments sound pretty far-fetched, but I can’t come up with solid arguments against them. Also, when I look for a good ”debunking”, I don’t find anything. Mostly all I find are mockery, ad-hominem and the like. Frankly, the people who argue climate change isn’t real do a better job than the people who argue AI risk isn’t real, and they’re wrong!
but EA is at least doing something about a huge problem we will face.
I was not aware that there is an Atlas Shrugged-length Harry Potter fanfiction about rationality. Learn something new every day!
YMMV. I tried to finish it based on a strong trusted recommendation, but could not get past the insufferable author-inserts, and the unpleasant and unbelievable hero character.
EA is at least partly a moral and ethical pyramid scheme. You get to be noble and far-sighted, do relatively little real work, and you’ll never be judged on the outcomes because of the long timelines. And so you rope in more and more acolytes who both increase and accrue these same benefits. It seems unlikely that the fall from grace of prominent figures will affect the movement, given that it’s partly based on cogni…
Since the A.I. would have to already exist (and there's no reason to believe it would be incentivised to even encourage humans to create other, rival A.Is, with potentially differing goals) before it could punish anyone - Q.E.D.: Roko's basilisk has essentially zero likelihood.
Worse - it's an essentially christian eschatological idea. What is this hypothetical A.I. but an avenging angel, a righteous judge at the end of time? It's pure religion. Dark, manipulative, blood sacrifice religion at that.
If you'd like to read more about the roots of Effective Altruism, ranging from old mailing lists, LessWrong, bitcoin, cults, AI and the surprising connections to many well known figures in tech, I highly recommend the 7-part Extropia's Childen series from Jon Evans [1] 1. https://aiascendant.substack.com/p/extropias-children-chapte...
I’m pro-American because I believe in its stated values. Moreover, I believe that despite original and continuing failures to perfectly reflect those values, there is large and concrete progress in aggregate.
I feel the same way about EA: I aspire to their ideals (including the continued discussion and reconsideration of those ideals) and believe the weight of thousands of people quietly moving concretely in the right direction far exceeds the damage of bad actors (who would have twisted any ideology they were immersed in).
So the bad actors should be punished. The parts of the community system which failed should be changed. AND the many others who are earnestly trying to live according to these values should be judged according to their _own_ impact.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human nature. If you're a part of the common tribe, people are actually pretty good. There doesn't seem to be an upper limit on the size of the tribe (although some people just wanna hate somebody). You can also look at it this way. The only real objection against socialist societies was that people are lazy, and don't care enough about producing stuff or resolving economic inefficiencies. But with AI, this objection…
Humans ability to push others out of the circle of concern is near limitless. We literally bought and sold people. I think there is reason for hope. We stopped doing some of those terrible things and only partially for economic reasons, but ai still fills me with some great fear. It shrinks the circle that the wealthy absolutely must keep in their circle, in their tribe, to go on and live happy lives and people of th…
In theory, yes. In practice, the circle has been continually expanding with technological progress.
Stated differently: What's the point of being powerful if you cannot rule over other people? What's the point of having thousands of empty palaces, when no other humans see them or care?
Even if this is 2 orders of magnitude too high it's worth a lot of our time. But these are probably mainly normy researchers not AI safety-ists. https://aiimpacts.org/2022-expert-survey-on-progress-in-ai/#...
AI safety is an apocalypse cult and we should recognize that everyone who has ever been in an apocalypse cult thinks that "no, this time it's really the end of the world". Everyone who believes crazy shit thinks they're being reasonable, so just because we're super sure we're being reasonable doesn't mean what we believe isn't crazy. Do we believe that we alone, of all people who have believed in the coming end, have…