we tech/ea/ai people are overly biased in the actual relevance of our own field (I’m CS student)?
You can just as easily say that global institutions are biased about the relevance of their own fields, and I think that is a good enough explanation: Traditional elite fields (press, actors, lawyers, autocrats) don’t teach AI, and so can’t influence the development of AGI. To perform the feats of confidence that gains or defends career capital in those fields, or to win the agreement and flattery of their peers, they have to avoid acknowledging that AGI is important, because if it’s important, then none of them are important.
But, I think this dam will start to break, generally. Economists know better than the other specializations, they have the background in decision theory to know what superintelligence will mean, and they see what’s happening in industry. Military is also capable of sometimes recognizing and responding to emerging risks. They’re going to start to speak up, and then maybe the rest of the elite will have to face it.
You can just as easily say that global institutions are biased about the relevance of their own fields, and I think that is a good enough explanation: Traditional elite fields (press, actors, lawyers, autocrats) don’t teach AI, and so can’t influence the development of AGI. To perform the feats of confidence that gains or defends career capital in those fields, or to win the agreement and flattery of their peers, they have to avoid acknowledging that AGI is important, because if it’s important, then none of them are important.
But, I think this dam will start to break, generally. Economists know better than the other specializations, they have the background in decision theory to know what superintelligence will mean, and they see what’s happening in industry. Military is also capable of sometimes recognizing and responding to emerging risks. They’re going to start to speak up, and then maybe the rest of the elite will have to face it.