I am surprised you did not mention climate since this is the one major risk where we are doing a good job (i.e. if we paying as much attention to AI as to future pandemics and nuclear risk this isn’t very reassuring, as it seems these are major risks there are not well addressed / massively underresourced compared to importance).
I, for one, think that it is good that climate change was not mentioned. Not necessarily because there are no analogies and lessons to be drawn, but rather because it can more easily be misinterpreted. I think that the kind of actions and risks are much more similar to bio and nuclear, in that there are way less actors and, at least for now, it is much less integrated to day-to-day life. Moreover, in many scenarios, the risk itself is of more abrupt and binary nature (though of course not completely so), rather than a very long and gradual process. I’d be worried that comparing AI safety to climate change would be easily misinterpreted or dismissed by irrelevant claims.
At least in the US, I’d worry that comparisons to climate change will get you attacked by ideologues from both of the main political sides (vitriol from the left because they’ll see it as evidence that you don’t care enough about climate change, vitriol from the right because they’ll see it as evidence that AI risk is as fake/political as climate change).
IMO it was tactically correct to not mention climate. The point of the letter is to get wide support, and I think many people would not be willing to put AI X-Risk on par with climate
climate since this is the one major risk where we are doing a good job
Perhaps (at least in the United States) we haven’t been doing a very good job on the communication front for climate change, as there are many social circles where climate change denial has been normalized and the issue has become very politically polarized with many politicians turning climate change from an empirical scientific problem into a political “us vs them” problem.
Not a current major risk, but also turned out to be trivially easy to solve with minimal societal resources (technological substitution was already available when regulated, only needed regulating a couple of hundred factories in select countries), so does not feel like it belongs in the class of major risks.
I disagree, I think major risks should be defined in terms of their potential impact sans intervention, rather than taking tractability into account (negatively).
Incidentally there was some earlier speculation of what counterfactually might happen if we had invented CFCs a century earlier, which you might find interesting.
While I also disagree that we should ignore tractability for the purpose you indicate, the main point here is more “if we’d chose the ozone layer as an analogy we are suggesting the problem is trivially easy” which doesn’t really help with solving the problem and it already seems extremely likely that AI risk is much trickier than ozone layer depletion.
Very cool!
I am surprised you did not mention climate since this is the one major risk where we are doing a good job (i.e. if we paying as much attention to AI as to future pandemics and nuclear risk this isn’t very reassuring, as it seems these are major risks there are not well addressed / massively underresourced compared to importance).
I, for one, think that it is good that climate change was not mentioned. Not necessarily because there are no analogies and lessons to be drawn, but rather because it can more easily be misinterpreted. I think that the kind of actions and risks are much more similar to bio and nuclear, in that there are way less actors and, at least for now, it is much less integrated to day-to-day life. Moreover, in many scenarios, the risk itself is of more abrupt and binary nature (though of course not completely so), rather than a very long and gradual process. I’d be worried that comparing AI safety to climate change would be easily misinterpreted or dismissed by irrelevant claims.
At least in the US, I’d worry that comparisons to climate change will get you attacked by ideologues from both of the main political sides (vitriol from the left because they’ll see it as evidence that you don’t care enough about climate change, vitriol from the right because they’ll see it as evidence that AI risk is as fake/political as climate change).
IMO it was tactically correct to not mention climate. The point of the letter is to get wide support, and I think many people would not be willing to put AI X-Risk on par with climate
Yeah, I can see that though it is a strange world where we treat nuclear and pandemics as second-order risks.
Perhaps (at least in the United States) we haven’t been doing a very good job on the communication front for climate change, as there are many social circles where climate change denial has been normalized and the issue has become very politically polarized with many politicians turning climate change from an empirical scientific problem into a political “us vs them” problem.
What about ozone layer depletion?
Not a current major risk, but also turned out to be trivially easy to solve with minimal societal resources (technological substitution was already available when regulated, only needed regulating a couple of hundred factories in select countries), so does not feel like it belongs in the class of major risks.
I disagree, I think major risks should be defined in terms of their potential impact sans intervention, rather than taking tractability into account (negatively).
Incidentally there was some earlier speculation of what counterfactually might happen if we had invented CFCs a century earlier, which you might find interesting.
I think we’re talking past each other.
While I also disagree that we should ignore tractability for the purpose you indicate, the main point here is more “if we’d chose the ozone layer as an analogy we are suggesting the problem is trivially easy” which doesn’t really help with solving the problem and it already seems extremely likely that AI risk is much trickier than ozone layer depletion.