My sense is it was driven largely by a perception of faster-than-expected progress in deep learning along with (per Carl’s comment) a handful of key people prominently becoming more concerned with it.
There might also just have been a natural progression. Toby Ord was always concerned about it, and 80,000 Hours made it a focus from very early on. At one relatively early point I had the impression that they considered shifting someone from almost any career path into AI-related work as their primary metric for success. I couldn’t justify that impression now, and suspect it’s an unfair one, but I note it mainly as an anecdote that someone was able to form that impression, well before the ‘longtermist turn’.
My sense is it was driven largely by a perception of faster-than-expected progress in deep learning along with (per Carl’s comment) a handful of key people prominently becoming more concerned with it.
There might also just have been a natural progression. Toby Ord was always concerned about it, and 80,000 Hours made it a focus from very early on. At one relatively early point I had the impression that they considered shifting someone from almost any career path into AI-related work as their primary metric for success. I couldn’t justify that impression now, and suspect it’s an unfair one, but I note it mainly as an anecdote that someone was able to form that impression, well before the ‘longtermist turn’.