Yeah, I haven’t thought about this question previously and am not very familiar with AI safety research/debates (even though I occasionally skim stuff), but one objection that came to my mind when reading the original post/question was “If you aren’t working on it, does that actually mean there will be one whole less person working on it?” Of course, I suppose it’s possible that AI safety is somewhat weird/niche enough (in comparison to e.g., nursing, teaching) where the person-replacement ratio is moderate or low and/or the relative marginal returns of an additional worker are still fairly high, e.g., your individual choice to get a job in AI safety may have the expected average effect of increasing the total amount of people working on the project by, say, 0.75. I don’t have the field knowledge to answer that question, and it’s only one of many factors to consider, but if it is the case that the replaceability ratio is relatively high (e.g., your net average effect is <0.25) then that immediately has a big reduction on the potential for “I am increasing the number of people working on AI which increases the likelihood of bad AI occurring.”
That being said, I’m confident there are much better counterarguments that draw on more knowledge of how working on AI safety can reduce the risk you are talking about without also contributing to this blob concept of “more people working on AI” which you worry could increase the likelihood of AGI, which increases the likelihood of bad AGI.
Yeah, I haven’t thought about this question previously and am not very familiar with AI safety research/debates (even though I occasionally skim stuff), but one objection that came to my mind when reading the original post/question was “If you aren’t working on it, does that actually mean there will be one whole less person working on it?” Of course, I suppose it’s possible that AI safety is somewhat weird/niche enough (in comparison to e.g., nursing, teaching) where the person-replacement ratio is moderate or low and/or the relative marginal returns of an additional worker are still fairly high, e.g., your individual choice to get a job in AI safety may have the expected average effect of increasing the total amount of people working on the project by, say, 0.75. I don’t have the field knowledge to answer that question, and it’s only one of many factors to consider, but if it is the case that the replaceability ratio is relatively high (e.g., your net average effect is <0.25) then that immediately has a big reduction on the potential for “I am increasing the number of people working on AI which increases the likelihood of bad AI occurring.”
That being said, I’m confident there are much better counterarguments that draw on more knowledge of how working on AI safety can reduce the risk you are talking about without also contributing to this blob concept of “more people working on AI” which you worry could increase the likelihood of AGI, which increases the likelihood of bad AGI.