The key difference is that I don’t think orthogonality thesis, instrumental convergence or progress being eventually fast are wrong—you just need extra assumptions in addition to them to get to the expectation that AI will cause a catastrophe.
Quick belated follow-up: I just wanted to clarify that I also don’t think that the orthogonality thesis or instrumental convergence thesis are incorrect, as they’re traditionally formulated. I just think they’re not nearly sufficient to establish a high level of risk, even though, historically, many presentations of AI risk seemed to treat them as nearly sufficient. Insofar as there’s a mistake here, the mistake concerns way conclusions have been drawn from these theses; I don’t think the mistake is in the theses themselves. (I may not stress this enough in the interview/slides.)
On the other hand, progress/growth eventually becoming much faster might be wrong (this is an open question in economics). The ‘classic arguments’ also don’t just predict that growth/progress will become much faster. In the FOOM debate, for example, both Yudkowsky and Hanson start from the position that growth will become much faster; their disagreement is about how sudden, extreme, and localized the increase will be. If growth is actually unlikely to increase in a sudden, extreme, and localized fashion, then this would be a case of the classic arguments containing a “mistaken” (not just insufficient) premise.
Quick belated follow-up: I just wanted to clarify that I also don’t think that the orthogonality thesis or instrumental convergence thesis are incorrect, as they’re traditionally formulated. I just think they’re not nearly sufficient to establish a high level of risk, even though, historically, many presentations of AI risk seemed to treat them as nearly sufficient. Insofar as there’s a mistake here, the mistake concerns way conclusions have been drawn from these theses; I don’t think the mistake is in the theses themselves. (I may not stress this enough in the interview/slides.)
On the other hand, progress/growth eventually becoming much faster might be wrong (this is an open question in economics). The ‘classic arguments’ also don’t just predict that growth/progress will become much faster. In the FOOM debate, for example, both Yudkowsky and Hanson start from the position that growth will become much faster; their disagreement is about how sudden, extreme, and localized the increase will be. If growth is actually unlikely to increase in a sudden, extreme, and localized fashion, then this would be a case of the classic arguments containing a “mistaken” (not just insufficient) premise.