1. I interpreted the original claim—“wouldn’t you expect”—as being basically one in which observation X was evidence against hypothesis Y. Not conclusive evidence, just an update. I didn’t interpret it as “ruling things out” (in a strong way) or saying that there aren’t any unknown risks without common mini-versions (just that it’s less likely that there are than one would otherwise think). Note that his point seemed to be in defence of “Ord’s estimates seem too high to me”, rather than “the risks are 0″.
2. I do think that Tobias’s point, even interpreted that way, was probably too strong, or missing a key detail, in that the key sources of risks are probably emerging or new things, so we wouldn’t expect to have observed their mini-versions yet. Though I do tentatively think I’d expect to see mini-versions before the “full thing”, once the new things do start arising. (I’m aware this is all pretty hand-wavey phrasing.)
3i. As I went into more in my other comment, I think the general expectation that we’ll expect to see very small versions before and more often than small ones, which we expect to see before and more often than medium, which we expect to see before and more often than large, etc., probably would’ve served well in the past. There was progressively more advanced tech before AI, and AI is progressively advancing more. There were progressively more advanced weapons, progressively more destructive wars, progressively larger numbers of nukes, etc. I’d guess the biggest pandemics and asteroid strikes weren’t the first, because the biggest are rare.
3ii. AI is the least clear of those examples, because:
(a) it seems like destruction from AI so far has been very minimal (handful of fatalities from driverless cars, the “flash crash”, etc.), yet it seems plausible major destruction could occur in future
(b) we do have specific arguments, though of somewhat unclear strength, that the same AI might actively avoid causing any destruction for a while, and then suddenly seize decisive strategic advantage etc.
But on (a), I do think most relevant researchers would say the risk this month from AI is extremely low; the risks will rise in future as systems become more capable. So there’s still time in which we may see mini-versions.
And on (b), I’d consider that a case where a specific argument updates us away from a generally pretty handy prior that we’ll see small things earlier and more often than extremely large things. And we also don’t yet have super strong reason to believe that those arguments are really painting the right picture, as far as I’m aware.
3iii. I think if we interpreted Tobias’s point as something like “We’ll never see anything that’s unlike the past”, then yes, of course that’s ridiculous. So as I mentioned elsewhere, I think it partly depends on how we carve up reality, how we define things, etc. E.g., do we put nukes in a totally new bucket, or consider it a part of trends in weaponry/warfare/explosives?
But in any case, my interpretation of Tobias’s point, where it’s just about it being unlikely to see extreme things before smaller versions, would seem to work with e.g. nukes, even if we put them in their own special category—we’d be surprise by the first nuke, but we’d indeed see there’s one nuke before there are thousands, and there are two detonations on cities before there’s a full-scale nuclear war (if there ever is one, which hopefully and plausibly there won’t be).
In general I think you’ve thought this through more carefully than me so without having read all your points I’m just gonna agree with you.
So yeah, I think the main problem with Tobias’ original point was that unknown risks are probably mostly new things that haven’t arisen yet and thus the lack of observed mini-versions of them is no evidence against them. But I still think it’s also true that some risks just don’t have mini-versions, or rather are as likely or more likely to have big versions than mini-versions. I agree that most risks are not like this, including some of the examples I reached for initially.
1. I interpreted the original claim—“wouldn’t you expect”—as being basically one in which observation X was evidence against hypothesis Y. Not conclusive evidence, just an update. I didn’t interpret it as “ruling things out” (in a strong way) or saying that there aren’t any unknown risks without common mini-versions (just that it’s less likely that there are than one would otherwise think). Note that his point seemed to be in defence of “Ord’s estimates seem too high to me”, rather than “the risks are 0″.
2. I do think that Tobias’s point, even interpreted that way, was probably too strong, or missing a key detail, in that the key sources of risks are probably emerging or new things, so we wouldn’t expect to have observed their mini-versions yet. Though I do tentatively think I’d expect to see mini-versions before the “full thing”, once the new things do start arising. (I’m aware this is all pretty hand-wavey phrasing.)
3i. As I went into more in my other comment, I think the general expectation that we’ll expect to see very small versions before and more often than small ones, which we expect to see before and more often than medium, which we expect to see before and more often than large, etc., probably would’ve served well in the past. There was progressively more advanced tech before AI, and AI is progressively advancing more. There were progressively more advanced weapons, progressively more destructive wars, progressively larger numbers of nukes, etc. I’d guess the biggest pandemics and asteroid strikes weren’t the first, because the biggest are rare.
3ii. AI is the least clear of those examples, because:
(a) it seems like destruction from AI so far has been very minimal (handful of fatalities from driverless cars, the “flash crash”, etc.), yet it seems plausible major destruction could occur in future
(b) we do have specific arguments, though of somewhat unclear strength, that the same AI might actively avoid causing any destruction for a while, and then suddenly seize decisive strategic advantage etc.
But on (a), I do think most relevant researchers would say the risk this month from AI is extremely low; the risks will rise in future as systems become more capable. So there’s still time in which we may see mini-versions.
And on (b), I’d consider that a case where a specific argument updates us away from a generally pretty handy prior that we’ll see small things earlier and more often than extremely large things. And we also don’t yet have super strong reason to believe that those arguments are really painting the right picture, as far as I’m aware.
3iii. I think if we interpreted Tobias’s point as something like “We’ll never see anything that’s unlike the past”, then yes, of course that’s ridiculous. So as I mentioned elsewhere, I think it partly depends on how we carve up reality, how we define things, etc. E.g., do we put nukes in a totally new bucket, or consider it a part of trends in weaponry/warfare/explosives?
But in any case, my interpretation of Tobias’s point, where it’s just about it being unlikely to see extreme things before smaller versions, would seem to work with e.g. nukes, even if we put them in their own special category—we’d be surprise by the first nuke, but we’d indeed see there’s one nuke before there are thousands, and there are two detonations on cities before there’s a full-scale nuclear war (if there ever is one, which hopefully and plausibly there won’t be).
In general I think you’ve thought this through more carefully than me so without having read all your points I’m just gonna agree with you.
So yeah, I think the main problem with Tobias’ original point was that unknown risks are probably mostly new things that haven’t arisen yet and thus the lack of observed mini-versions of them is no evidence against them. But I still think it’s also true that some risks just don’t have mini-versions, or rather are as likely or more likely to have big versions than mini-versions. I agree that most risks are not like this, including some of the examples I reached for initially.