Maybe I’m Haidt- and Humane Tech-pilled, but to me, the widespread addiction of new generations to the present-form social media is a massive problem which could contribute substantially to how the AI transition eventually plays out, because social media directly affects social cohesion, i.e., the ability of society to work out responses to big questions concerning the AI (such as, should we build AGI at all? Should we try to build conscious AIs that are moral subjects? How the post-scarcity economy should look like?), and, indeed, the level of interest and engagement of people in these questions at all.
The “meh” attitude of the EA community towards the issues surrounding social media, digital addiction, and AI romance is still surprising to me, I still don’t understand the underlying factors or deeply held disagreements which elicit such different responses to these issues in me (for example) and most EAs. Note that this is not because I’m a “conservative who doesn’t understand new things”: for example, I think much more favourably of AR and VR, I mostly agree with Chalmers’ “Reality Plus”, etc.
nowhere near the scale of other problems to do with digital minds if they have equal moral value to people and you don’t discount lives in the far future.
I agree with this, but by this token, most issues which EAs concern with are nowhere near the scale of S-risks and other potential problems to do with future digital minds. Also, these problems only become relevant if we decide to build conscious AIs and there is no widespread legal and cultural opposition to that, which is a big “if”.
Maybe I’m Haidt- and Humane Tech-pilled, but to me, the widespread addiction of new generations to the present-form social media is a massive problem which could contribute substantially to how the AI transition eventually plays out, because social media directly affects social cohesion, i.e., the ability of society to work out responses to big questions concerning the AI (such as, should we build AGI at all? Should we try to build conscious AIs that are moral subjects? How the post-scarcity economy should look like?), and, indeed, the level of interest and engagement of people in these questions at all.
The “meh” attitude of the EA community towards the issues surrounding social media, digital addiction, and AI romance is still surprising to me, I still don’t understand the underlying factors or deeply held disagreements which elicit such different responses to these issues in me (for example) and most EAs. Note that this is not because I’m a “conservative who doesn’t understand new things”: for example, I think much more favourably of AR and VR, I mostly agree with Chalmers’ “Reality Plus”, etc.
I agree with this, but by this token, most issues which EAs concern with are nowhere near the scale of S-risks and other potential problems to do with future digital minds. Also, these problems only become relevant if we decide to build conscious AIs and there is no widespread legal and cultural opposition to that, which is a big “if”.