I agree with @Linch. People find ways of rationalising what they do being OK, whether it is working for oil companies, or tobacco companies, or arms dealers, or AI capabilities. I don’t consider anyone a “low-life” really, but perhaps aren’t acting rationally if we assume doing net good for the world is an important goal for them (which it isn’t for a lot of people as well)
I also agree I don’t see a huge difference between the practical outworking 5% and 50% probablity of doom. Both probabilities should cause anyone who even thinks there is a small possibility that their work could contribute to that disaster to immediately stop and do something else. Given we are talking about existential risk, if those OpenAI or DeepMind people even believe the probability is 0.1% then they should probably lay down their tools and reconsider.
But we are human, and have specific skills, and pride, and families to feed so we justify to ourselves doing things which are bad all the time. This doesn’t make us “low-lifes”, just flawed humans.
I agree with @Linch. People find ways of rationalising what they do being OK, whether it is working for oil companies, or tobacco companies, or arms dealers, or AI capabilities. I don’t consider anyone a “low-life” really, but perhaps aren’t acting rationally if we assume doing net good for the world is an important goal for them (which it isn’t for a lot of people as well)
I also agree I don’t see a huge difference between the practical outworking 5% and 50% probablity of doom. Both probabilities should cause anyone who even thinks there is a small possibility that their work could contribute to that disaster to immediately stop and do something else. Given we are talking about existential risk, if those OpenAI or DeepMind people even believe the probability is 0.1% then they should probably lay down their tools and reconsider.
But we are human, and have specific skills, and pride, and families to feed so we justify to ourselves doing things which are bad all the time. This doesn’t make us “low-lifes”, just flawed humans.