One of my theories here is that it’s helpful to pivot quickly towards “here’s an example concrete research problem that seem hard but not impossible, and people are working on it, and not knowing the solution seems obviously problematic”. This is good for several reasons, including “pattern-matching to serious research, safety engineering, etc., rather than pattern-matching to sci-fi comics”, providing a gentler on-ramp (as opposed to wrenching things like “your children probably won’t die of natural causes” or whatever), providing food for thought, etc. Of course this only works if you can engage in the technical arguments. Brian Christian’s book is the extreme of this approach.
One of my theories here is that it’s helpful to pivot quickly towards “here’s an example concrete research problem that seem hard but not impossible, and people are working on it, and not knowing the solution seems obviously problematic”. This is good for several reasons, including “pattern-matching to serious research, safety engineering, etc., rather than pattern-matching to sci-fi comics”, providing a gentler on-ramp (as opposed to wrenching things like “your children probably won’t die of natural causes” or whatever), providing food for thought, etc. Of course this only works if you can engage in the technical arguments. Brian Christian’s book is the extreme of this approach.