I want to push back against this, from one of your slides:
If we’ve failed to notice important issues with classic arguments until recently, we should also worry about our ability to assess new arguments
I feel like the LW community did notice many important issues with the classic arguments. Personally, I was/am pessimistic about AI risk, but thought my reasons were not fully or most captured by the those arguments, and I saw various issues/caveats with them that I talked about on LW. I’m going to just cite my own posts/comments because they’re the easiest to find, but I’m sure there were lots of criticisms from others too. 1234
Of course I’m glad that you thought about and critiqued those arguments in a more systematic and prominent way, but it seems wrong to say or imply that nobody noticed their issues until now.
I didn’t mean to imply that no one had noticed any issues until now. I talk about this a bit more in the podcast, where I mention people like Robin Hanson and Katja Grace as examples of people who wrote good critiques more than a decade ago, and I believe mention you as someone who’s had a different take on AI risk.
Over the past 2-3 years, it seems like a lot of people in the community (myself included) have become more skeptical of the classic arguments. I think this has at least partly been the result of new criticisms or improved formulations of old criticisms surfacing. For example, Paul’s 2018 post arguing against a “fast takeoff” seems to have been pretty influential in shifting views within the community. But I don’t think there’s any clear reason this post couldn’t have been written in the mid-2000s.
I want to push back against this, from one of your slides:
I feel like the LW community did notice many important issues with the classic arguments. Personally, I was/am pessimistic about AI risk, but thought my reasons were not fully or most captured by the those arguments, and I saw various issues/caveats with them that I talked about on LW. I’m going to just cite my own posts/comments because they’re the easiest to find, but I’m sure there were lots of criticisms from others too. 1 2 3 4
Of course I’m glad that you thought about and critiqued those arguments in a more systematic and prominent way, but it seems wrong to say or imply that nobody noticed their issues until now.
Hi Wei,
I didn’t mean to imply that no one had noticed any issues until now. I talk about this a bit more in the podcast, where I mention people like Robin Hanson and Katja Grace as examples of people who wrote good critiques more than a decade ago, and I believe mention you as someone who’s had a different take on AI risk.
Over the past 2-3 years, it seems like a lot of people in the community (myself included) have become more skeptical of the classic arguments. I think this has at least partly been the result of new criticisms or improved formulations of old criticisms surfacing. For example, Paul’s 2018 post arguing against a “fast takeoff” seems to have been pretty influential in shifting views within the community. But I don’t think there’s any clear reason this post couldn’t have been written in the mid-2000s.