One data point here (I’m unsure how much weight to give it, probably not very much) is the 1983 movie The Day After, which is about the aftermath of nuclear war.
He [President Reagan] wrote in his diary that the film [The Day After] was “very effective and left me greatly depressed”, and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a “nuclear war”. The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer’s, told him: “If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone.” In 1987, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which resulted in the banning and reducing of their nuclear arsenal. In Reagan’s memoirs, he drew a direct line from the film to the signing.
I think this Wikipedia claim is from Reagan’s autobiography. But according to The Dead Hand, written by a third-party historian, Reagan was already very concerned about nuclear war by this time, and had been at least since his campaign in 1980. It’s pretty interesting — apparently this concern led to both his interest in nuclear weapon abolition (which he mostly didn’t talk about) and in his unrealistic and harmful missile defense plans.
So according to this book, The Day After wasn’t actually any kind of turning point.
and in his unrealistic and harmful missile defense plans.
Some people argue that Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense plan did succeed at it’s real goal, convincing the Soviets that they would never be able to keep up with America’s R&D, so it was better to make peace. From this point of view, whether SDI was realistic or not misses the point, that Reagan succeeded in creating the impression that it was realistic. That is, from this point of view, he succeeded in bluffing the Soviets.
Other factors contributed, like the collapsing Soviet economy, Russian defeat in Afghanistan, etc. SDI was a kind of economic war, we can out spend you etc.
Someone posted a short story along these lines to the EA Forum or maybe LessWrong a few months ago. I can’t find it—does anyone remember the link?
From memory: a programmer pressed enter and let things run over night… the AI reached some threshhold, then quickly hacked its way onto the internet and computers around the world, then started getting up to no good...
The probability of any one story being “successful” is very low, and basically up to luck, though connections to people with the power to move stories (ex. publishers, directors) would significantly help.
Most ex-risk scenarios are perfect material for compelling and entertaining stories. They tap into common tropes (hubris of humans and scientists), are near-future disaster scenarios, and can have opposed hawk and dove characters. I imagine that a successful ex-risk movie could have a narrative shaped like Jurassic Park or The Day After Tomorrow.
My actionable advice is that EA writers and potential EA writers should write EA fiction alongside their other fiction and we should explore connections with publishers.
As a side-note, I wrote an AI-escapes-the-box story the other week, and have since used Midjourney to illustrate it, as is fitting: https://twitter.com/Ideopunk/status/1553003805091979265. If anybody would like to read the first draft, message me!
One data point here (I’m unsure how much weight to give it, probably not very much) is the 1983 movie The Day After, which is about the aftermath of nuclear war.
Yes, yes, yes and yes. That’s a great example. That was an amazing movie. I’m a nuclear weapons junkie, and I couldn’t even finish the movie that last time I watched it a couple of years ago. Seen it ten times, freaks me out every time.
Finally, even if someone created fiction which made a large number of people take AI risk more seriously, would this help much to reduce AI risk?
Fiction, articles, books etc all exist in the realm of abstraction, which is typically a pretty weak medium for persuasion.
What might work better is an ongoing documentary series which highlights real world problems with AI as they unfold. You know, if you were to obtain footage of a driverless semi truck crashing in to a family car, some things like that.
Or, just sit back, wait for these things to happen, and watch them on the news. Let existing media do the work, they love drama and tragedy etc.
One way to to try to solve this problem might be to create fiction presenting some of the biggest threats posed by advances in AI (e.g. unaligned superintelligence, perpetual dystopia maintained using AI, etc.) in a very “realistic” manner.
If you want to further demolish the audience for your art project, change the subject to the knowledge explosion machinery which is generating AI, and all the other emerging technological threats. Instead of talking about symptoms like AI, talk about root causes, like the knowledge explosion.
People will hate it, your investors will pull out, the box office will collapse, the reviews will be ruthless, your career as a film maker will be over. :-)
Seriously now, AI doesn’t matter. If AI were to magically vanish and all AI threats were thus removed....
The knowledge explosion will just keep whirring along, putting out ever larger benefits and threats, at an ever faster pace. If you want to make a realistic monster movie, that could be it.
One data point here (I’m unsure how much weight to give it, probably not very much) is the 1983 movie The Day After, which is about the aftermath of nuclear war.
I think this Wikipedia claim is from Reagan’s autobiography. But according to The Dead Hand, written by a third-party historian, Reagan was already very concerned about nuclear war by this time, and had been at least since his campaign in 1980. It’s pretty interesting — apparently this concern led to both his interest in nuclear weapon abolition (which he mostly didn’t talk about) and in his unrealistic and harmful missile defense plans.
So according to this book, The Day After wasn’t actually any kind of turning point.
Some people argue that Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense plan did succeed at it’s real goal, convincing the Soviets that they would never be able to keep up with America’s R&D, so it was better to make peace. From this point of view, whether SDI was realistic or not misses the point, that Reagan succeeded in creating the impression that it was realistic. That is, from this point of view, he succeeded in bluffing the Soviets.
Other factors contributed, like the collapsing Soviet economy, Russian defeat in Afghanistan, etc. SDI was a kind of economic war, we can out spend you etc.
Someone posted a short story along these lines to the EA Forum or maybe LessWrong a few months ago. I can’t find it—does anyone remember the link?
From memory: a programmer pressed enter and let things run over night… the AI reached some threshhold, then quickly hacked its way onto the internet and computers around the world, then started getting up to no good...
I think you’re referring to “It Looks Like You’re Trying To Take Over The World” by Gwern: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a5e9arCnbDac9Doig/it-looks-like-you-re-trying-to-take-over-the-world
Note that in context of OP’s original question, this story demonstrates that discussion of realistic depiction may increase chances of risk!
Gwern elaborates on this idea here .
That’s it, thank you!
The probability of any one story being “successful” is very low, and basically up to luck, though connections to people with the power to move stories (ex. publishers, directors) would significantly help.
Most ex-risk scenarios are perfect material for compelling and entertaining stories. They tap into common tropes (hubris of humans and scientists), are near-future disaster scenarios, and can have opposed hawk and dove characters. I imagine that a successful ex-risk movie could have a narrative shaped like Jurassic Park or The Day After Tomorrow.
My actionable advice is that EA writers and potential EA writers should write EA fiction alongside their other fiction and we should explore connections with publishers.
As a side-note, I wrote an AI-escapes-the-box story the other week, and have since used Midjourney to illustrate it, as is fitting: https://twitter.com/Ideopunk/status/1553003805091979265. If anybody would like to read the first draft, message me!
Yes, yes, yes and yes. That’s a great example. That was an amazing movie. I’m a nuclear weapons junkie, and I couldn’t even finish the movie that last time I watched it a couple of years ago. Seen it ten times, freaks me out every time.
I think this is the full movie on YouTube:
Fiction, articles, books etc all exist in the realm of abstraction, which is typically a pretty weak medium for persuasion.
What might work better is an ongoing documentary series which highlights real world problems with AI as they unfold. You know, if you were to obtain footage of a driverless semi truck crashing in to a family car, some things like that.
Or, just sit back, wait for these things to happen, and watch them on the news. Let existing media do the work, they love drama and tragedy etc.
If you want to further demolish the audience for your art project, change the subject to the knowledge explosion machinery which is generating AI, and all the other emerging technological threats. Instead of talking about symptoms like AI, talk about root causes, like the knowledge explosion.
People will hate it, your investors will pull out, the box office will collapse, the reviews will be ruthless, your career as a film maker will be over. :-)
Seriously now, AI doesn’t matter. If AI were to magically vanish and all AI threats were thus removed....
The knowledge explosion will just keep whirring along, putting out ever larger benefits and threats, at an ever faster pace. If you want to make a realistic monster movie, that could be it.