Yeah, I think it probably depends on your specific credence that artificial minds will dominate in the future. I assume that most people don’t place a value of 100% on that (especially if they think x-risks are possible prior to the invention of self-replicating digital minds, because necessarily that decreases your credence that artificial minds will dominate). I think if your credence in this claim is relatively low, which seems reasonable, it is really unclear to me that the expected value of working on human-focused x-risks is higher than that of working on animal-focused ones. There hasn’t been any attempt that I know of to compare the two, so I can’t say this with confidence though. But it is clear that saying “there might be tons of digital minds” isn’t a strong enough claim on its own, without specific credences in specific numbers of digital minds.
Yeah, I think it probably depends on your specific credence that artificial minds will dominate in the future. I assume that most people don’t place a value of 100% on that (especially if they think x-risks are possible prior to the invention of self-replicating digital minds, because necessarily that decreases your credence that artificial minds will dominate). I think if your credence in this claim is relatively low, which seems reasonable, it is really unclear to me that the expected value of working on human-focused x-risks is higher than that of working on animal-focused ones. There hasn’t been any attempt that I know of to compare the two, so I can’t say this with confidence though. But it is clear that saying “there might be tons of digital minds” isn’t a strong enough claim on its own, without specific credences in specific numbers of digital minds.