I really appreciate the sentiment behind this—I get the sense that working on AI safety can feel very doom-y at times, and appreciate any efforts to alleviate that mental stress.
But I also worry that leaning into these specific reasons may lead to intellectual blindspots. E.g., Believing that aligned AI will make every other cause redundant leads me to emotionally discount considerations such as temporal discount rate or tractability. If you can justify your work as a silver bullet, then how much longer would you be willing to work on that, even when it seems impossible? Where does one draw the line?
My main point here is that these reasons can be great motivators, but should only be called upon after someone has intellectually mapped out the reasons why they are working on AI and what would need to change for them to stop working on it.
I really appreciate the sentiment behind this—I get the sense that working on AI safety can feel very doom-y at times, and appreciate any efforts to alleviate that mental stress.
But I also worry that leaning into these specific reasons may lead to intellectual blindspots. E.g., Believing that aligned AI will make every other cause redundant leads me to emotionally discount considerations such as temporal discount rate or tractability. If you can justify your work as a silver bullet, then how much longer would you be willing to work on that, even when it seems impossible? Where does one draw the line?
My main point here is that these reasons can be great motivators, but should only be called upon after someone has intellectually mapped out the reasons why they are working on AI and what would need to change for them to stop working on it.