I would dispute this. Possibilities of AGI and global disaster were discussed by pioneers like Turing, von Neumann, Good, Minsky and others from the founding of the field of AI.
Thanks, I’ve updated on this since writing the post and think my original claim was at least too strong, and probably just wrong. I don’t currently have a good sense of, say, if I were living in the 1950s, how likely I would be to figure out AI as the thing, rather than focus on something else that turned out not to be as important (e.g. the focus on nanotech by the Foresight Institute (a group of idealistic futurists) in the late 80s could be a relevant example).
I’d guess a longtermist altruist movement would have wound up with a flatter GCR porfolio at the time. It might have researched nuclear winter and dirty bombs earlier than in OTL (and would probably invest more in nukes than today’s EA movement), and would have expedited the (already pretty good) reaction to the discovery of asteroid risk. I’d also guess it would have put a lot of attention on the possibility of stable totalitarianism as lock-in.
Thanks, I’ve updated on this since writing the post and think my original claim was at least too strong, and probably just wrong. I don’t currently have a good sense of, say, if I were living in the 1950s, how likely I would be to figure out AI as the thing, rather than focus on something else that turned out not to be as important (e.g. the focus on nanotech by the Foresight Institute (a group of idealistic futurists) in the late 80s could be a relevant example).
I’d guess a longtermist altruist movement would have wound up with a flatter GCR porfolio at the time. It might have researched nuclear winter and dirty bombs earlier than in OTL (and would probably invest more in nukes than today’s EA movement), and would have expedited the (already pretty good) reaction to the discovery of asteroid risk. I’d also guess it would have put a lot of attention on the possibility of stable totalitarianism as lock-in.