I agree with you Nick, when you say that we should present AI risks in a much more human way, I just don’t think that it’s the path taken by the loudest voices concerning AI risks right now, and that’s a shame. And I see no incompatibility between good epistemics and wanting to make the field of AI safety more inclusive and kind so that it includes everybody and not just software engineers who went into EA because there was money (see the post on the great amount of funding going to AI safety positions that are paid x3 compared to researchers working in hospitals etc), and prestige (they’ve been into ML for so long and now is their chance to get opportunities and recognition). I want to dive deeper into how much EA-oriented are these new EAs if we talk about the core-values that have created the EA movement.
On a constructive note, as a community builder, I am raising projects from the ground whose aim to focus on the role of AI risks in regards to soaring inequalities or possibility of increasing the likelihood of AI being used by a tyrannic power, themes that have a clear signalling into impact for everyone, rather than staying in the realm of singletons and other abstract figures because it’s just intellectually satisfying to think about these things.
Yeah I love that, I agree that communicating well about the inequality, authoritarian and violence risks that AI could present is another potentially great angle, even if it that doesn’t describe the X-risk we are most worry about
I agree with you Nick, when you say that we should present AI risks in a much more human way, I just don’t think that it’s the path taken by the loudest voices concerning AI risks right now, and that’s a shame. And I see no incompatibility between good epistemics and wanting to make the field of AI safety more inclusive and kind so that it includes everybody and not just software engineers who went into EA because there was money (see the post on the great amount of funding going to AI safety positions that are paid x3 compared to researchers working in hospitals etc), and prestige (they’ve been into ML for so long and now is their chance to get opportunities and recognition). I want to dive deeper into how much EA-oriented are these new EAs if we talk about the core-values that have created the EA movement.
On a constructive note, as a community builder, I am raising projects from the ground whose aim to focus on the role of AI risks in regards to soaring inequalities or possibility of increasing the likelihood of AI being used by a tyrannic power, themes that have a clear signalling into impact for everyone, rather than staying in the realm of singletons and other abstract figures because it’s just intellectually satisfying to think about these things.
Yeah I love that, I agree that communicating well about the inequality, authoritarian and violence risks that AI could present is another potentially great angle, even if it that doesn’t describe the X-risk we are most worry about
Classic x-risk concerns (the murder of all humans) seem pretty violent to me.
For sure, that’s mainly my point in that the communication line could be more about preventing “death and violence” rather than “mitigating x risk”.
And yeah I was talking about a different context of AI enabled violence than x risk, but my point is about how we communicate, not the outcome.