I think this is straightforwardly a good sign (especially how much he focused on AI). I also think the negatives you pointed to aren’t as bad as you’re interpreting them.
Sitting in the audience, the people around me were smirking and giggling throughout the x-risk portion of Santos’ speech.
To be fair, his phrasing was kinda goofy and hyperbolic in places (eg emphasis on the doomsday clock, referring to AI risk as “the tech giants… are creating a monster that might very well devour us”), so it’s understandable that people would giggle.
Afterward, I overheard people joking about the AI part and how they thought it was inappropriate to talk about such morbid material in a commencement address.
But “morbid” doesn’t mean “absurd”. If anything, it implies the topic is too serious for the venue.
Very fair points. I guess since I agreed with the general gist of Santos’ message (and was generally just surprised that he was talking about this stuff in the first place) I looked past the presentation at the time. Looking back, Santos definitely used some language that makes his arguments more difficult to take seriously.
I think this is straightforwardly a good sign (especially how much he focused on AI). I also think the negatives you pointed to aren’t as bad as you’re interpreting them.
To be fair, his phrasing was kinda goofy and hyperbolic in places (eg emphasis on the doomsday clock, referring to AI risk as “the tech giants… are creating a monster that might very well devour us”), so it’s understandable that people would giggle.
But “morbid” doesn’t mean “absurd”. If anything, it implies the topic is too serious for the venue.
Very fair points. I guess since I agreed with the general gist of Santos’ message (and was generally just surprised that he was talking about this stuff in the first place) I looked past the presentation at the time. Looking back, Santos definitely used some language that makes his arguments more difficult to take seriously.