This Robin Hanson quote is perhaps also evidence for a shift in views on AI risk, somewhat contra my above comment, though neutral on the “people changed their minds vs. new people have different views” and “when exactly did it happen?” questions:
Back when my ex-co-blogger Eliezer Yudkowsky and I discussed his AI risk concerns here on this blog (concerns that got much wider attention via Nick Bostrom’s book), those concerns were plausibly about a huge market failure. Just as there’s an obvious market failure in letting someone experiment with nuclear weapons in their home basement near a crowded city (without holding sufficient liability insurance), there’d be an obvious market failure from letting a small AI team experiment with software that might, in a weekend, explode to become a superintelligence that enslaved or destroyed the world. [...]
But when I read and talk to people today about AI risk, I mostly hear people worried about local failures to control local AIs, in a roughly competitive world full of many AI systems with reasonably strong property rights. [...]
(I expect many people worried about AI risk think that Hanson, in the above quote and elsewhere, misunderstands current concerns. But perceiving some change seems easier than correctly describing the target of the change, so arguably the quote is evidence for change even if you think it misunderstands current concerns.)
This Robin Hanson quote is perhaps also evidence for a shift in views on AI risk, somewhat contra my above comment, though neutral on the “people changed their minds vs. new people have different views” and “when exactly did it happen?” questions:
(I expect many people worried about AI risk think that Hanson, in the above quote and elsewhere, misunderstands current concerns. But perceiving some change seems easier than correctly describing the target of the change, so arguably the quote is evidence for change even if you think it misunderstands current concerns.)