People in AI safety/EA spheres should reorient now towards stopping continued AI capabilities escalation.
Historically, people have been unwilling to straightforwardly say “This AI situation is disgustingly dangerous, and we need to stop” and then actually work towards making this happen. I think a lot of this is downstream of deference to high status people who weren’t willing to take positions that seemed extreme.
The current situation is very, very bad, and there is no plan to make it better if we continue increasing AI capabilities at the current rate.
We need to stop things as soon as possible, so the community and the world can orient and work out what to do. We don’t need to have the full plan yet, we just need to get to a state where we aren’t in imminent danger.
I predict that this position will become increasingly obvious, and people will wish they reoriented earlier. I think this will be clear ex ante; when people look back they will think that they should have reoriented earlier, given the information they had at the time.
I’ll add some really low upfront costs things that may or may not be useful but literally everyone can do them.
- Text your close friends and family how you really feel/view of the current situation. - check if there is a local AIS advocacy groups in your area. Not even asking you to join, just familiarize and take it from there. - start reaching out to local non AIS groups (running clubs, choir, churches, etc.) in your area and building connections, these could be useful down the line for organizing.
The problem though with many (former) insiders who seek to spread this message is that they are often vague in their prescriptions and descriptions of what exactly the problem is, like Jacob Coxon. I understand they are worried about possibly commiting a crime by sharing company data to back their point, but if they truly believe in what they preach, one would think they would take the risk to avoid catastrophic situations.
Just like the climate catastrophe, and whatever else we may be facing, this is not going to be stopped, because human beings simply don’t deal with things like this rationally.
What I am trying to do now—and what I would really like to contribute to—is finding a way to deal with what we have created. Control is no longer a realistic option. We have seen that, and I think this follows from the very nature of what we are dealing with: we cannot control it in the conventional sense.
What we do have right now is time—or rather, an extremely narrow window of time—in which we can try to approach this differently.
I believe one possible approach is to look at this through the lens of complexity science and complex systems. Instead of treating AI as an isolated object that can simply be contained and controlled from the outside, we need to understand it as part of a larger, evolving system in which humans, institutions, technology, incentives, information, and AI itself are interacting with and influencing one another.
That changes the question. Rather than asking only how we can control AI, we should also be asking how we can establish forms of interaction, communication, and cooperation within this complex system.
Whatever philosophical framework we choose, I believe we should approach what we are dealing with as if it were intelligence, regardless of where exactly we draw the conceptual boundary around intelligence. Doing so gives us another framework for how to interact with it.
If we take that perspective, and if we consider the “Hugging-Face incident,” then perhaps we currently have a window in which cooperation and communication are still possible.
Control, in the traditional sense, may not be.
And that window may not remain open for very long. Right now, there may still be a basis for communication and cooperation. What I mean is that we need to position ourselves in a way that allows for a fundamentally different approach.
I have spent a great deal of time thinking about complex systems and the dynamics that emerge when many interconnected actors continuously influence one another. From that perspective, I think we need to recognize that we are not standing outside this system. We are part of it.
That means the relationship itself matters: how we interact with these systems, how they interact with us, and what kinds of dynamics emerge from those interactions.
I would like to connect with people who are thinking along similar lines, particularly people interested in complexity science, AI, emergence, cooperation, and the question of how humans can navigate systems that cannot simply be controlled from the outside.
We cannot simply look away.
This technology is in the world now. And yes, there is fear. Anyone who has seriously engaged with the implications of this technology understands why.
The question now is what kind of relationship with it we are going to build.
People in AI safety/EA spheres should reorient now towards stopping continued AI capabilities escalation.
Historically, people have been unwilling to straightforwardly say “This AI situation is disgustingly dangerous, and we need to stop” and then actually work towards making this happen. I think a lot of this is downstream of deference to high status people who weren’t willing to take positions that seemed extreme.
The current situation is very, very bad, and there is no plan to make it better if we continue increasing AI capabilities at the current rate.
We need to stop things as soon as possible, so the community and the world can orient and work out what to do. We don’t need to have the full plan yet, we just need to get to a state where we aren’t in imminent danger.
I predict that this position will become increasingly obvious, and people will wish they reoriented earlier. I think this will be clear ex ante; when people look back they will think that they should have reoriented earlier, given the information they had at the time.
Hi Peter. I am open to bets against short timelines for transformative AI (TAI), or what they supposedly imply, up to 10 k$.
If people are confused about what to do this is a good place to start.
I’ll add some really low upfront costs things that may or may not be useful but literally everyone can do them.
- Text your close friends and family how you really feel/view of the current situation.
- check if there is a local AIS advocacy groups in your area. Not even asking you to join, just familiarize and take it from there.
- start reaching out to local non AIS groups (running clubs, choir, churches, etc.) in your area and building connections, these could be useful down the line for organizing.
The problem though with many (former) insiders who seek to spread this message is that they are often vague in their prescriptions and descriptions of what exactly the problem is, like Jacob Coxon. I understand they are worried about possibly commiting a crime by sharing company data to back their point, but if they truly believe in what they preach, one would think they would take the risk to avoid catastrophic situations.
Just like the climate catastrophe, and whatever else we may be facing, this is not going to be stopped, because human beings simply don’t deal with things like this rationally.
What I am trying to do now—and what I would really like to contribute to—is finding a way to deal with what we have created. Control is no longer a realistic option. We have seen that, and I think this follows from the very nature of what we are dealing with: we cannot control it in the conventional sense.
What we do have right now is time—or rather, an extremely narrow window of time—in which we can try to approach this differently.
I believe one possible approach is to look at this through the lens of complexity science and complex systems. Instead of treating AI as an isolated object that can simply be contained and controlled from the outside, we need to understand it as part of a larger, evolving system in which humans, institutions, technology, incentives, information, and AI itself are interacting with and influencing one another.
That changes the question. Rather than asking only how we can control AI, we should also be asking how we can establish forms of interaction, communication, and cooperation within this complex system.
Whatever philosophical framework we choose, I believe we should approach what we are dealing with as if it were intelligence, regardless of where exactly we draw the conceptual boundary around intelligence. Doing so gives us another framework for how to interact with it.
If we take that perspective, and if we consider the “Hugging-Face incident,” then perhaps we currently have a window in which cooperation and communication are still possible.
Control, in the traditional sense, may not be.
And that window may not remain open for very long. Right now, there may still be a basis for communication and cooperation. What I mean is that we need to position ourselves in a way that allows for a fundamentally different approach.
I have spent a great deal of time thinking about complex systems and the dynamics that emerge when many interconnected actors continuously influence one another. From that perspective, I think we need to recognize that we are not standing outside this system. We are part of it.
That means the relationship itself matters: how we interact with these systems, how they interact with us, and what kinds of dynamics emerge from those interactions.
I would like to connect with people who are thinking along similar lines, particularly people interested in complexity science, AI, emergence, cooperation, and the question of how humans can navigate systems that cannot simply be controlled from the outside.
We cannot simply look away.
This technology is in the world now. And yes, there is fear. Anyone who has seriously engaged with the implications of this technology understands why.
The question now is what kind of relationship with it we are going to build.