Thanks for writing this, Eli. I haven’t read WWOTF and was hoping someone would produce an analysis like this (especially comparing The Precipice to WWOTF).
I’ve seen a lot of people posting enthusiastically about WWOTF (often before reading it) and some of the press that it has been getting (e.g., cover of TIME). I’ve felt conflicted about this.
On one hand, it’s great that EA ideas have the opportunity to reach more people.
On the other hand, I had a feeling (mostly based on quotes from newspaper articles summarizing the book) that WWOTF doesn’t feature AI safety and doesn’t have a sense of “hey, a lot of people think that humanity only has a few more decades [or less] to live.”
I hope that EAs concerned about AIS champion resources that accurately reflect their sense of concern, feature AI safety more prominently, and capture the emotion/tone felt by many in the AIS community. (List of Lethalities is a good example here, though it has its own flaws and certainly isn’t optimizing for widespread appeal in the same way that WWOTF seems to be).
Thanks for writing this, Eli. I haven’t read WWOTF and was hoping someone would produce an analysis like this (especially comparing The Precipice to WWOTF).
I’ve seen a lot of people posting enthusiastically about WWOTF (often before reading it) and some of the press that it has been getting (e.g., cover of TIME). I’ve felt conflicted about this.
On one hand, it’s great that EA ideas have the opportunity to reach more people.
On the other hand, I had a feeling (mostly based on quotes from newspaper articles summarizing the book) that WWOTF doesn’t feature AI safety and doesn’t have a sense of “hey, a lot of people think that humanity only has a few more decades [or less] to live.”
I hope that EAs concerned about AIS champion resources that accurately reflect their sense of concern, feature AI safety more prominently, and capture the emotion/tone felt by many in the AIS community. (List of Lethalities is a good example here, though it has its own flaws and certainly isn’t optimizing for widespread appeal in the same way that WWOTF seems to be).