Crucially, p(doom)=1% isn’t the claim PauseAI protesters are making. Discussed outcomes should be fairly distributed over probable futures, if only to make sure your preferred policy is an improvement on most or all of those (this is where I would weakly agree with @Matthew_Barnett’s comment).
1% is very conservative (and based on broad surveys of AI researchers, who mostly are building the very technology causing the risk, so are obviously biased against it being high). The point I’m making is that even a 1% chance of death by collateral damage is totally unacceptable coming from any other industry. Supporting a Pause should therefore be a no brainer. (Or to be consistent we should be dismantling ~all regulation of ~all industry.)
Industry regulations tend to be based on statistical averages (i.e., from a global perspective, on certainties), not multiplications of subjective-Bayesian guesses. I don’t think the general public accepting any industry regulations commit them to Pascal-mugging-adjacent views. After all, 1% of existential risk (or at least global catastrophic risk) due to climate change, biodiversity collapse, or zoonotic pandemics seem plausible too. If you have any realistic amount of risk aversion, whether the remaining 99% of the futures (even from a strictly strong-longtermist perspective) are improved upon by pausing (worse, by flippant militant advocacy for pausing on alarmist slogans that will carry extreme reputation costs in the 99% of worlds where no x-risk from LLMs happen) is important!
1% (again, conservative[1]) is not a Pascal’s Mugging. 1%(+) catastrophic (not extinction) risk is plausible for climate change, and a lot is being done there (arguably, enough that we are on track to avert catastrophe if action[2] keeps scaling).
flippant militant advocacy for pausing on alarmist slogans that will carry extreme reputation costs in the 99% of worlds where no x-risk from LLMs happen
It’s anything but flippant[3]. And x-risk isn’t from LLMs alone. “System 2” architecture, and embodiment, two other essential ingredients, are well ontrack too. I’m happy to bear any reputation costs in the event we live through this. It’s unfortunate, but if there is no extinction, then of course people will say we were wrong. But there might well only be no extinction because of our actions![4]
To be clear, my point is that 1/ even inside the environmental movement calling for an immediate pause on all industry from the same argument you’re using is extremely fringe, 2/ the reputation costs in 99% of worlds will themselves increase existential risk in the (far more likely) case that AGI happens when (or after) most experts think it will happen.
1/ Unaligned ASI existing at all is equivalent to “doom-causing levels of CO2 over a doom-causing length of time”. We need an immediate pause on AGI development to prevent unaligned ASI. We don’t need an immediate pause on all industry to prevent doom-causing levels of CO2 over a doom-causing length of time.
The first of those has a weird resolution criteria of 30% year-on-year world GDP growth (“transformative” more likely means no humans left, after <1 year, to observe GDP imo; I would give the 30+% growth over a whole year scenario little credence because of this). For the second one, I think you need to include “AI Dystopia” as doom as well (sounds like an irreversible catastrophe for the vast majority of people), so 27%. (And again re LLMs, x-risk isn’t from LLMs alone. “System 2” architecture, and embodiment, two other essential ingredients of AGI, are well ontrack too.)
If there’s no humans left after AGI, then that’s also true for “weak general AI”. Transformative AI is also a far better target for what we’re talking about than “weak general AI”.
The “AI Dystopia” scenario is significantly different from what PauseAI rhetoric is centered about.
The PauseAI rhetoric is also very much centered on just scaling LLMs, not acknowledging other ingredients of AGI.
Crucially, p(doom)=1% isn’t the claim PauseAI protesters are making. Discussed outcomes should be fairly distributed over probable futures, if only to make sure your preferred policy is an improvement on most or all of those (this is where I would weakly agree with @Matthew_Barnett’s comment).
1% is very conservative (and based on broad surveys of AI researchers, who mostly are building the very technology causing the risk, so are obviously biased against it being high). The point I’m making is that even a 1% chance of death by collateral damage is totally unacceptable coming from any other industry. Supporting a Pause should therefore be a no brainer. (Or to be consistent we should be dismantling ~all regulation of ~all industry.)
Industry regulations tend to be based on statistical averages (i.e., from a global perspective, on certainties), not multiplications of subjective-Bayesian guesses. I don’t think the general public accepting any industry regulations commit them to Pascal-mugging-adjacent views. After all, 1% of existential risk (or at least global catastrophic risk) due to climate change, biodiversity collapse, or zoonotic pandemics seem plausible too. If you have any realistic amount of risk aversion, whether the remaining 99% of the futures (even from a strictly strong-longtermist perspective) are improved upon by pausing (worse, by flippant militant advocacy for pausing on alarmist slogans that will carry extreme reputation costs in the 99% of worlds where no x-risk from LLMs happen) is important!
1% (again, conservative[1]) is not a Pascal’s Mugging. 1%(+) catastrophic (not extinction) risk is plausible for climate change, and a lot is being done there (arguably, enough that we are on track to avert catastrophe if action[2] keeps scaling).
It’s anything but flippant[3]. And x-risk isn’t from LLMs alone. “System 2” architecture, and embodiment, two other essential ingredients, are well on track too. I’m happy to bear any reputation costs in the event we live through this. It’s unfortunate, but if there is no extinction, then of course people will say we were wrong. But there might well only be no extinction because of our actions![4]
I actually think it’s more like 50%, and can argue this case if you think it’s a crux.
Including removing CO₂ from the atmosphere and/or deflecting solar radiation.
Please read the PauseAI website.
Or maybe we will just luck out [footnote 10 on linked post].
To be clear, my point is that 1/ even inside the environmental movement calling for an immediate pause on all industry from the same argument you’re using is extremely fringe, 2/ the reputation costs in 99% of worlds will themselves increase existential risk in the (far more likely) case that AGI happens when (or after) most experts think it will happen.
1/ Unaligned ASI existing at all is equivalent to “doom-causing levels of CO2 over a doom-causing length of time”. We need an immediate pause on AGI development to prevent unaligned ASI. We don’t need an immediate pause on all industry to prevent doom-causing levels of CO2 over a doom-causing length of time.
2/ It’s really not 99% of worlds. That is way too conservative. Metaculus puts 25% chance on weak AGI happening within 1 year and 25% on strong AGI happening within 3 years.
Metaculus puts (being significantly more bullish than actual AI/ML experts and populated with rationalists/EAs) <25% chance on transformative AI happening by the end of the decade and <8% chance of this leading to the traditional AI-go-foom scenario, so <2% p(doom) by the end of the decade. I can’t find a Metaculus poll on this but I would halve that to <1% for whether such transformative AI would be reached by simply scaling LLMs.
The first of those has a weird resolution criteria of 30% year-on-year world GDP growth (“transformative” more likely means no humans left, after <1 year, to observe GDP imo; I would give the 30+% growth over a whole year scenario little credence because of this). For the second one, I think you need to include “AI Dystopia” as doom as well (sounds like an irreversible catastrophe for the vast majority of people), so 27%. (And again re LLMs, x-risk isn’t from LLMs alone. “System 2” architecture, and embodiment, two other essential ingredients of AGI, are well on track too.)
If there’s no humans left after AGI, then that’s also true for “weak general AI”. Transformative AI is also a far better target for what we’re talking about than “weak general AI”.
The “AI Dystopia” scenario is significantly different from what PauseAI rhetoric is centered about.
The PauseAI rhetoric is also very much centered on just scaling LLMs, not acknowledging other ingredients of AGI.