I agree with large chunks of this post, but I’m weakly confident (75ish%) that the claim about how newspapers work is wrong. Most newspapers that I am familiar with give their reporters specified beats (topics that they focus on), to at least some extent, although I think there are also reporters that don’t have specific beats. So if there’s an important tech story that needs covered, like AI x-risk, some of that is going to be as a replacement for other tech stories and some of that is going to be taken from people who write on pretty much anything. That still might mean more AI present-risk coverage, because it’s hard to talk about one without talking about the other, and because there’s a lot of other room in tech to take away stories from, but I don’t think it’s as simple as it appears.
However, I’m basing this mostly off info from newspapers that wouldn’t write important AI x-risk stories. Maybe they behave differently? Some other people here probably know more than I do.
That might be true in the very short term but I don’t believe it in general. For example, how many reporters were on the Ukraine beat before Russia invaded in February 2022? And how many reporters were on the Ukraine beat after Russia invaded? Probably a lot more, right?
I agree with large chunks of this post, but I’m weakly confident (75ish%) that the claim about how newspapers work is wrong. Most newspapers that I am familiar with give their reporters specified beats (topics that they focus on), to at least some extent, although I think there are also reporters that don’t have specific beats. So if there’s an important tech story that needs covered, like AI x-risk, some of that is going to be as a replacement for other tech stories and some of that is going to be taken from people who write on pretty much anything. That still might mean more AI present-risk coverage, because it’s hard to talk about one without talking about the other, and because there’s a lot of other room in tech to take away stories from, but I don’t think it’s as simple as it appears.
However, I’m basing this mostly off info from newspapers that wouldn’t write important AI x-risk stories. Maybe they behave differently? Some other people here probably know more than I do.
That might be true in the very short term but I don’t believe it in general. For example, how many reporters were on the Ukraine beat before Russia invaded in February 2022? And how many reporters were on the Ukraine beat after Russia invaded? Probably a lot more, right?