For what it’s worth, I found this post and the ensuing comments very illuminating. As a person relatively new to both EA and the arguments about AI risk, I was a little bit confused as to why there was not much push back on the very high confidence beliefs about AI doom within the next 10 years. My assumption had been that there was a lot of deference to EY because of reverence and fealty stemming from his role in getting the AI alignment field started not to mention the other ways he has shaped people’s thinking. I also assumed that his track record on predictions was just ambiguous enough for people not to question his accuracy. Given that I don’t give much credence to the idea that prophets/oracles exist, I thought it unlikely that the high confidence on his predictions were warranted on the count that there doesn’t seem to be much evidence supporting the accuracy of long range forecasts. I did not think that there were such glaring mispredictions made by EY in the past so thank you for highlighting them.
For what it’s worth, I found this post and the ensuing comments very illuminating. As a person relatively new to both EA and the arguments about AI risk, I was a little bit confused as to why there was not much push back on the very high confidence beliefs about AI doom within the next 10 years. My assumption had been that there was a lot of deference to EY because of reverence and fealty stemming from his role in getting the AI alignment field started not to mention the other ways he has shaped people’s thinking. I also assumed that his track record on predictions was just ambiguous enough for people not to question his accuracy. Given that I don’t give much credence to the idea that prophets/oracles exist, I thought it unlikely that the high confidence on his predictions were warranted on the count that there doesn’t seem to be much evidence supporting the accuracy of long range forecasts. I did not think that there were such glaring mispredictions made by EY in the past so thank you for highlighting them.