I don’t disagree with you that rich countries are likely to have disproportionate influence; but I think that the presence or absence of extreme poverty in the world they’re living in will have more influence on their implicit decision algorithms than you’re suggesting. I think eliminating global poverty would have a significantly bigger effect reducing the risk of AI catastrophe than would eliminating factory farming.
I do think I hadn’t properly considered the impact of potentially-short AI timelines on this question, and that pushes in favour of animals (since there’s more room for value shifts to happen quickly than economic fundamentals to shift quickly).
I’m skeptical of this link between eradicating poverty and reducing AI risk. Generally richer countries’ governments are not very concerned about extreme poverty. To the extent that they are, it is the remit of certain departments like USAID that have little if any link to AI development. If we have an AI catastrophe it is probably going to be the fault of a leading AI lab like OpenAI and/or the relevant regulators or legislators not doing their job well enough. I just don’t see why these actors would do any better just because there is no extreme poverty halfway across the world—as I say, global poverty is way down their priority list if it is on it at all.
This isn’t about the ways they explicitly care and work on global poverty. This is a holistic sense that the existence of extreme poverty in the world is a driver of a feeling of fraughtness, nationalism, and poor decision-making in rich countries (cf. attitudes towards immigration today; and how past eras with more extreme poverty tended to have more war). If we could choose a world without extreme poverty to develop AGI, compared to one with extreme poverty, I wouldn’t be confident, but I definitely would think it was a meaningful edge (enough to bet on). I think the corresponding effects for factory farming are quite a bit weaker (though for sure there are still effects there).
OK thanks for your perspective, although it doesn’t seem convincing to me. I could be more convinced by an argument that inequality / poverty in rich countries results in poor decision-making in those same rich countries.
I don’t disagree with you that rich countries are likely to have disproportionate influence; but I think that the presence or absence of extreme poverty in the world they’re living in will have more influence on their implicit decision algorithms than you’re suggesting. I think eliminating global poverty would have a significantly bigger effect reducing the risk of AI catastrophe than would eliminating factory farming.
I do think I hadn’t properly considered the impact of potentially-short AI timelines on this question, and that pushes in favour of animals (since there’s more room for value shifts to happen quickly than economic fundamentals to shift quickly).
I’m skeptical of this link between eradicating poverty and reducing AI risk. Generally richer countries’ governments are not very concerned about extreme poverty. To the extent that they are, it is the remit of certain departments like USAID that have little if any link to AI development. If we have an AI catastrophe it is probably going to be the fault of a leading AI lab like OpenAI and/or the relevant regulators or legislators not doing their job well enough. I just don’t see why these actors would do any better just because there is no extreme poverty halfway across the world—as I say, global poverty is way down their priority list if it is on it at all.
This isn’t about the ways they explicitly care and work on global poverty. This is a holistic sense that the existence of extreme poverty in the world is a driver of a feeling of fraughtness, nationalism, and poor decision-making in rich countries (cf. attitudes towards immigration today; and how past eras with more extreme poverty tended to have more war). If we could choose a world without extreme poverty to develop AGI, compared to one with extreme poverty, I wouldn’t be confident, but I definitely would think it was a meaningful edge (enough to bet on). I think the corresponding effects for factory farming are quite a bit weaker (though for sure there are still effects there).
OK thanks for your perspective, although it doesn’t seem convincing to me. I could be more convinced by an argument that inequality / poverty in rich countries results in poor decision-making in those same rich countries.