In principle, of course, but how? There are various practical obstacles such as:
Are such bets legal?
How do you compel people to pay up?
Why would someone on the other side of the bet want to take it?
I don’t have spare money to be throwing at Internet stunts where there’s a decent chance that, e.g. someone will just abscond with my money and I’ll have no recourse (or at least nothing cost-effective)
If it’s a bet that takes a form where if AGI isn’t invented by January 1, 2036, people have to pay me a bunch of money (and vice versa), of course I’ll accept such bets gladly in large sums.
I would also be willing to take bets of that form for good intermediate proxies for AGI, which would take a bit of effort to figure out, but that seems doable. The harder part is figuring out how to actually structure the bet and ensure payment (if this is even legal in the first place).
From my perspective, it’s free money, and I’ll gladly take free money (at least from someone wealthy enough to have money to spare — I would feel bad taking it from someone who isn’t financially secure). But even though similar bets have been made before, people still don’t have good solutions to the practical obstacles.
I wouldn’t want to accept an arrangement that would be financially irrational (or illegal, or not legally enforceable), though, and that would amount to essentially burning money to prove a point. That would be silly, I don’t have that kind of money to burn.
Also, if I were on the low probability end of a bet, I’d be more worried about the risk of measurement or adjudicator error where measuring the outcome isn’t entirely clear cut. Maybe a ruleset could be devised that is so objective and so well captures whether AGI exists that this concern isn’t applicable. But if there’s an adjudication/error error risk of (say) 2 percent and the error is equally likely on either side, it’s much more salient to someone betting on (say) under 1 percent odds.
Is this something you’re willing to bet on?
In principle, of course, but how? There are various practical obstacles such as:
Are such bets legal?
How do you compel people to pay up?
Why would someone on the other side of the bet want to take it?
I don’t have spare money to be throwing at Internet stunts where there’s a decent chance that, e.g. someone will just abscond with my money and I’ll have no recourse (or at least nothing cost-effective)
If it’s a bet that takes a form where if AGI isn’t invented by January 1, 2036, people have to pay me a bunch of money (and vice versa), of course I’ll accept such bets gladly in large sums.
I would also be willing to take bets of that form for good intermediate proxies for AGI, which would take a bit of effort to figure out, but that seems doable. The harder part is figuring out how to actually structure the bet and ensure payment (if this is even legal in the first place).
From my perspective, it’s free money, and I’ll gladly take free money (at least from someone wealthy enough to have money to spare — I would feel bad taking it from someone who isn’t financially secure). But even though similar bets have been made before, people still don’t have good solutions to the practical obstacles.
I wouldn’t want to accept an arrangement that would be financially irrational (or illegal, or not legally enforceable), though, and that would amount to essentially burning money to prove a point. That would be silly, I don’t have that kind of money to burn.
Also, if I were on the low probability end of a bet, I’d be more worried about the risk of measurement or adjudicator error where measuring the outcome isn’t entirely clear cut. Maybe a ruleset could be devised that is so objective and so well captures whether AGI exists that this concern isn’t applicable. But if there’s an adjudication/error error risk of (say) 2 percent and the error is equally likely on either side, it’s much more salient to someone betting on (say) under 1 percent odds.