Peter—good post; these all seem reasonable as comments.
However, let me offer a counter-point, based on my pretty active engagement on Twitter about AI X-risk over the last few weeks: it’s often very hard to predict which public outreach strategies, messages, memes, and points will resonate with the public, until we try them out. I’ve often been very surprised about which ideas really get traction, and which don’t. I’ve been surprised that meme accounts such as @AISafetyMemes have been pretty influential. I’ve also been amazed at how (unwittingly) effective Yann LeCun’s recklessly anti-safety tweets have been at making people wary of the AI industry and its hubris.
This unpredictability of public responses might seriously limit the benefits of carefully planned, centrally organized activism about AI risk. It might be best just to encourage everybody who’s interested to try out some public arguments, get feedback, pay attention to what works, identify common misunderstandings and pain points, share tactics with like-minded others, and iterate.
Also, lack of formal central organization limits many of the reputational risks of social media activism. If I say something embarrassing or stupid as my Twitter persona @primalpoly, that’s just a reflection on that persona (and to some extent, me), not on any formal organization. Whereas if I was the grand high vice-invigilator (or whatever) in some AI safety group, my bad tweets could tarnish the whole safety group.
My hunch is that a fast, agile, grassroots, decentralized campaign of raising AI X risk awareness could be much more effective than the kind of carefully-constructed, clearly-missioned, reputationally-paranoid organizations that EAs have traditionally favored.
Peter—good post; these all seem reasonable as comments.
However, let me offer a counter-point, based on my pretty active engagement on Twitter about AI X-risk over the last few weeks: it’s often very hard to predict which public outreach strategies, messages, memes, and points will resonate with the public, until we try them out. I’ve often been very surprised about which ideas really get traction, and which don’t. I’ve been surprised that meme accounts such as @AISafetyMemes have been pretty influential. I’ve also been amazed at how (unwittingly) effective Yann LeCun’s recklessly anti-safety tweets have been at making people wary of the AI industry and its hubris.
This unpredictability of public responses might seriously limit the benefits of carefully planned, centrally organized activism about AI risk. It might be best just to encourage everybody who’s interested to try out some public arguments, get feedback, pay attention to what works, identify common misunderstandings and pain points, share tactics with like-minded others, and iterate.
Also, lack of formal central organization limits many of the reputational risks of social media activism. If I say something embarrassing or stupid as my Twitter persona @primalpoly, that’s just a reflection on that persona (and to some extent, me), not on any formal organization. Whereas if I was the grand high vice-invigilator (or whatever) in some AI safety group, my bad tweets could tarnish the whole safety group.
My hunch is that a fast, agile, grassroots, decentralized campaign of raising AI X risk awareness could be much more effective than the kind of carefully-constructed, clearly-missioned, reputationally-paranoid organizations that EAs have traditionally favored.