I sympathise with others who have particular concerns about the details of this letter, and most especially the fact that signatures were unverified (though the link now includes an email validation at the bottom). A good discussion from a sceptical perspective can be found in this thread by Matthew Barnett. However, I think on balance I support FLI releasing this letter, mostly for reasons that Nate states here. I think that if you’re pessimistic about the current direction of AI research, and the balance between capabilities/​safety, then one of the major actors who would have the ability to step in and co-ordinate those in a race and buy more time would be the U.S. Government.
Again, I sympathise with scepticism about Government intentions/​track record/​capability to regulate but I think I’m a lot more sympathetic to it than the LessWrong commenters. That might be a US/​UK cultural difference, but I don’t think the counterfactual of no public letter and no government action leads to anywhere good, and I simply don’t share the same worldview of Neo-Realism in International Relations and Public Choice in Domestic Politics that makes any move in that direction appear to be net-negative ¯\_(ツ)_/​¯
Finally, I hope that this letter can serve as a push for AI Governance to be viewed as something that goes hand-in-hand with Technical AI Safety Research. I think that both are very important parts of making this century go well, and I think that the letter is a directional step that we can get behind and improve upon, rather than dismiss.
I sympathise with others who have particular concerns about the details of this letter, and most especially the fact that signatures were unverified (though the link now includes an email validation at the bottom). A good discussion from a sceptical perspective can be found in this thread by Matthew Barnett. However, I think on balance I support FLI releasing this letter, mostly for reasons that Nate states here. I think that if you’re pessimistic about the current direction of AI research, and the balance between capabilities/​safety, then one of the major actors who would have the ability to step in and co-ordinate those in a race and buy more time would be the U.S. Government.
Again, I sympathise with scepticism about Government intentions/​track record/​capability to regulate but I think I’m a lot more sympathetic to it than the LessWrong commenters. That might be a US/​UK cultural difference, but I don’t think the counterfactual of no public letter and no government action leads to anywhere good, and I simply don’t share the same worldview of Neo-Realism in International Relations and Public Choice in Domestic Politics that makes any move in that direction appear to be net-negative ¯\_(ツ)_/​¯
Finally, I hope that this letter can serve as a push for AI Governance to be viewed as something that goes hand-in-hand with Technical AI Safety Research. I think that both are very important parts of making this century go well, and I think that the letter is a directional step that we can get behind and improve upon, rather than dismiss.
I wonder if this is a consequence of the embargo being broken and hence their not being fully ready.