Nice, thanks! (I gave examples of charities/work where you’re kinda agnostic because of a crux other than AI timelines, but this was just to illustrate.)
Assuming that saving human lives increases welfare, I agree doing it earlier increases welfare more if TAI happens earlier.
I had no doubts you thought this! :) I’m just curious as to whether you see reasons for someone to optimize assuming long AI timelines, despite low resilience in their high credence in long AI timelines.
I agree greater uncertainty, and therefore less resilience, about the time until TAI is a reason for prioritising interventions whose effects are expected to materialise earlier. At a high level, I would model the impact of TAI as increasing the discount rate. For a 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile time until TAI of 100, 300, and 1 k years, I would not care about the uncertainty because I expect effects after 300 years to be negligible anyway, even without accounting for the additional discounting caused by TAI. However, for a 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile time until TAI of 3, 10, and 30 years, I would care a lot about the uncertainty because I expect effects after 10 years to be significant for many interventions.
Nice, thanks! (I gave examples of charities/work where you’re kinda agnostic because of a crux other than AI timelines, but this was just to illustrate.)
I had no doubts you thought this! :) I’m just curious as to whether you see reasons for someone to optimize assuming long AI timelines, despite low resilience in their high credence in long AI timelines.
I agree greater uncertainty, and therefore less resilience, about the time until TAI is a reason for prioritising interventions whose effects are expected to materialise earlier. At a high level, I would model the impact of TAI as increasing the discount rate. For a 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile time until TAI of 100, 300, and 1 k years, I would not care about the uncertainty because I expect effects after 300 years to be negligible anyway, even without accounting for the additional discounting caused by TAI. However, for a 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile time until TAI of 3, 10, and 30 years, I would care a lot about the uncertainty because I expect effects after 10 years to be significant for many interventions.