I think a more important reason is the additional value of the information and the option value. Itâs very likely that the change resulting from AI development will be irreversible. Since weâre still able to learn about AI as we study it, taking additional time to think and plan before training the most powerful AI systems seems to reduce the likelihood of being locked into suboptimal outcomes. Increasing the likelihood of achieving âutopiaâ rather than landing into âmediocrityâ by 2 percent seems far more important than speeding up utopia by 10 years.
Itâs very likely that whatever change that comes from AI development will be irreversible.
I think all actions are in a sense irreversible, but large changes tend to be less reversible than small changes. In this sense, the argument you gave seems reducible to âwe should generally delay large changes to the world, to preserve option valueâ. Is that a reasonable summary?
In this case I think itâs just not obvious that delaying large changes is good. Would it have been good to delay the industrial revolution to preserve option value? I think this heuristic, if used in the past, would have generally demanded that we âpauseâ all sorts of social, material, and moral progress, which seems wrong.
I donât think we would have been able to use the additional information we would have gained from delaying the industrial revolution but I think if we could have the answer might be âyesâ. Itâs easy to see in hindsight that it went well overall, but that doesnât mean that the correct ex ante attitude shouldnât have been caution!
I think a more important reason is the additional value of the information and the option value. Itâs very likely that the change resulting from AI development will be irreversible. Since weâre still able to learn about AI as we study it, taking additional time to think and plan before training the most powerful AI systems seems to reduce the likelihood of being locked into suboptimal outcomes. Increasing the likelihood of achieving âutopiaâ rather than landing into âmediocrityâ by 2 percent seems far more important than speeding up utopia by 10 years.
I think all actions are in a sense irreversible, but large changes tend to be less reversible than small changes. In this sense, the argument you gave seems reducible to âwe should generally delay large changes to the world, to preserve option valueâ. Is that a reasonable summary?
In this case I think itâs just not obvious that delaying large changes is good. Would it have been good to delay the industrial revolution to preserve option value? I think this heuristic, if used in the past, would have generally demanded that we âpauseâ all sorts of social, material, and moral progress, which seems wrong.
I donât think we would have been able to use the additional information we would have gained from delaying the industrial revolution but I think if we could have the answer might be âyesâ. Itâs easy to see in hindsight that it went well overall, but that doesnât mean that the correct ex ante attitude shouldnât have been caution!