I’m not sure your answer is very helpful. You act like OPs question isn’t meaningful, but I think it is. If you want to, interpret it as “why are we still here”?
One can answer we haven’t been destroyed by a nuclear apocalypse because of safeguards or game theoretic considerations for example. Just as one can answer why we haven’t been destroyed by power-seeking AI through explanations such as life is very rare and so AI hasn’t been created yet. Not saying those are correct answers, just saying that providing a useful answer seems possible.
On the one hand yes, but on the other hand it seems crucial to at least mention these observer effects (edit: probably the wrong term, rather anthropic principle). There’s a somewhat thin line between asking “why haven’t we been wiped out?” and using the fact that we haven’t been wiped out yet as evidence that this kind of scenario is generally unlikely. Of course it makes sense to discuss the question, but the “real” answer could well be “random chance” without having further implications about the likelihood of power-seeking AGI.
I agree that my answer isn’t very useful by itself, without any object-level explanations, but I do think it is useful to bring up the anthropic principle if it hasn’t been mentioned already. In hindsight, I think my answer comes off as unnecessarily dismissive.
Same reason we haven’t been destroyed by a nuclear apocalypse yet: if we had, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.
As for the question “why haven’t we encountered a power-seeking AGI from elsewhere in the universe who didn’t destroy us”, I don’t know.
I’m not sure your answer is very helpful. You act like OPs question isn’t meaningful, but I think it is. If you want to, interpret it as “why are we still here”?
One can answer we haven’t been destroyed by a nuclear apocalypse because of safeguards or game theoretic considerations for example. Just as one can answer why we haven’t been destroyed by power-seeking AI through explanations such as life is very rare and so AI hasn’t been created yet. Not saying those are correct answers, just saying that providing a useful answer seems possible.
On the one hand yes, but on the other hand it seems crucial to at least mention these observer effects (edit: probably the wrong term, rather anthropic principle). There’s a somewhat thin line between asking “why haven’t we been wiped out?” and using the fact that we haven’t been wiped out yet as evidence that this kind of scenario is generally unlikely. Of course it makes sense to discuss the question, but the “real” answer could well be “random chance” without having further implications about the likelihood of power-seeking AGI.
I agree that my answer isn’t very useful by itself, without any object-level explanations, but I do think it is useful to bring up the anthropic principle if it hasn’t been mentioned already. In hindsight, I think my answer comes off as unnecessarily dismissive.