I have thought something similar (without having read about it before), given the large percentage of people who were willing to change their minds. But I think the exact percentage of the shift, if there was one at all, isn’t really important. I think you could say that since there wasn’t a major shift towards x-risk, the debate wasn’t going very well from an x-risk perspective.
Imagine you’re telling people that the building you’re in is on fire, the alarm didn’t go off because of some technical problem, and they should leave the building immediately. If you then have a discussion and afterwards even just a small fraction of people decides to stay in the building, you have “lost” the debate.
In this case, though I was disappointed, I don’t think the outcome is “bad”, because it is an opportunity to learn. We’re just at the beginning of the “battle” about the public opinion on AI x-risk, so we should use this opportunity to fine-tune our communications. That’s why I wrote the post. There’s also this excellent piece by Steven Byrnes about the various arguments.
I have thought something similar (without having read about it before), given the large percentage of people who were willing to change their minds. But I think the exact percentage of the shift, if there was one at all, isn’t really important. I think you could say that since there wasn’t a major shift towards x-risk, the debate wasn’t going very well from an x-risk perspective.
Imagine you’re telling people that the building you’re in is on fire, the alarm didn’t go off because of some technical problem, and they should leave the building immediately. If you then have a discussion and afterwards even just a small fraction of people decides to stay in the building, you have “lost” the debate.
In this case, though I was disappointed, I don’t think the outcome is “bad”, because it is an opportunity to learn. We’re just at the beginning of the “battle” about the public opinion on AI x-risk, so we should use this opportunity to fine-tune our communications. That’s why I wrote the post. There’s also this excellent piece by Steven Byrnes about the various arguments.