The economic behavior analysis falls short. People usually do not expect to have a significant impact on the survival of humanity. If in the past centuries people had saved a large part of their income for “future generations” (including for us) this would likely have had almost no impact on the survival of humanity, probably not even significantly on our present quality of life. The expected utility of saving money for future generations is simply too low compared to spending the money in the present for themselves. This does just mean that people (reasonably) expect to have little influence on the survival of humanity, not that they are relatively okay with humanity going extinct. If people could somehow directly influence, via voting perhaps, whether to trade a few extra years of life against a significant increase in the likelihood of humanity going extinct, I think the outcome would be predictable.
Though I’m indeed not specifically commenting here on what delaying AI could realistically achieve. My main point was only that the preferences for humanity not going extinct are significant and that they easily outweigh any preferences for future AI coming into existence, without relying on immoral speciesism.
The economic behavior analysis falls short. People usually do not expect to have a significant impact on the survival of humanity. If in the past centuries people had saved a large part of their income for “future generations” (including for us) this would likely have had almost no impact on the survival of humanity, probably not even significantly on our present quality of life. The expected utility of saving money for future generations is simply too low compared to spending the money in the present for themselves. This does just mean that people (reasonably) expect to have little influence on the survival of humanity, not that they are relatively okay with humanity going extinct. If people could somehow directly influence, via voting perhaps, whether to trade a few extra years of life against a significant increase in the likelihood of humanity going extinct, I think the outcome would be predictable.
Though I’m indeed not specifically commenting here on what delaying AI could realistically achieve. My main point was only that the preferences for humanity not going extinct are significant and that they easily outweigh any preferences for future AI coming into existence, without relying on immoral speciesism.