Raising the voices that actually count
Feeling disenfrachised? Is everything going too fast? Are you being asked to absorb complex information about heady topics that sound surreal? Are you an average person with too many demands on your time and energy to get your head around all this and act, even if it didn’t feel like everyone is shouting at once and your voice will just get lost? And what exactly can you even do? Is anybody giving you an option?
Well, hello friend. I actually didn’t expect to find you in this space. That’s the problem. Apparently the world is at risk of being utterly destroyed by a threat you’d been told was going to bring great improvements to the world, just a few months ago. Apparently, the people racing to build it didn’t actually think they’d succeed and so they paid almost no attention to safety. Apparently that same community has no plans to include you in the response unless you are willing to spend hours ‘educating yourself’. They are afraid you will over react. About the possible end of the world. Yep.
Seriously, where the hell is the broad media campaign that always—always—accompanies issues of such importance and imminence? Why have the orgs devoted to avoiding cataclysmic disaster from AI done nothing at all to include ordinary people, other than doing rounds of new interviews? Why does it feel like you aren’t even supposed to sign their open letters? Who’s organizing the flyers, the marches, the PSA ads, the sit-ins, the days of action, all of those things that are always done? The only group I’ve found is Pause AI, bless them, and they have one upcoming protest in the Netherlands, and they have a small budget and not many people. Nobody in the halls of power has raced to support them. And yet there is no sign anyone else is handling this.
It honestly makes me angry, especially since it’s this same community that gave me this gift of constant background anxiety the world might all end, because of stuff they did. But they are the smart ones, they’ll handle this. How, by regulating everything really, really well, super fast? Um, actually no, they suspect that won’t work. By fixing the problem they created in the possibly short time we have left. Do they expect that to work? Well, actually, no....
Ok. Ok.
I’m begging the aristocracy who hang out here, give ordinary people a chance. Give us the voice we deserve. It’s our world too. We’ve done great things in the past, including when you least expected it. Haven’t you noticed that? I’m not going to make a list, this shouldn’t be news.
Make the PSAs and get them in front of eyeballs with an actual ad campaign. Fund the marches, the flyers, and all those good good things. Let us buy you the time you need. Let us put this on the front burner of politics with the only method that really works. Get us angry. God knows, it won’t take much once you tell us what’s really going on. What are you afraid of?
The end of the world?
Thank you for voicing your concerns and frustrations. I think many in the EA Community need to hear this sort of thing, even if they don’t like it. To give an idea of why I think EAs have responded this way, I think it’s because many are stuck in certain defense mechanisms that make them think they need a certain PR face at all times. We’re used to being criticized, slammed by the media, and have our views either not taken seriously, or have them depicted as dangerous or cultish. In a sense, I think the branding of ‘EA’ inhibits many from being willing to act quickly. They like the longterm strategy. The calculated, carefully built strategies, where every piece is carefully added on top of the other. But I agree with you that the situation has changed. We may not have much time to act, and most of the progress made toward getting the public’s attention on taking AI Risk seriously has happened outside of EA. I think EA has an ivory tower problem, and needs to provide channels for people outside it to take action.
I’m a fan of EA in general, though, as is implied in my post, I don’t feel I have a role here. And you can’t do everything here. This kind of campaign belongs somewhere else. But the funding? This seems like the best place to try, in order to quickly build out the infrastructure needed. And a lot of the talent needed to get that done is also widely present here.
A lot of what I say is directed at the AI community, because this is the only place where there is some chance of reaching a decent number of them with a post like this—here, or Less Wrong, where it fits even less.
Thanks for voicing support. I started off wanting to post about something else, but the frustration just flowed out. It scares me how little has been done on this.
This comment and its OP strike me as a good explanation why.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zzar6BWML555xSt6Z/the-dial-of-progress?commentId=dg5iBNKRAJTjjSrP3