ThanksâI only read this linkpost and Haydnâs comment quoting your summary, not the linked post as a whole, but this seems to me like probably useful work.
One nitpick:
It seems likely to me that the US is currently much more likely to create transformative AI before China, especially under short(ish) timelines (next 5-15 years) â 70%.
I feel like itâd be more useful/âclearer to say âIt seems x% likely that the US will create transformative AI before China, and y% likely if TAI is developed in short(ish) timelines (next 5-15 years)â. Because:
At the moment, youâre saying itâs 70% likely that the US will be âmuch more likelyâ, i.e. giving a likelihood of a qualitatively stated (hence kind-of vague) likelihood.
And that claim itself seems to be kind-of but not exactly conditioned on short timelines worlds. Or maybe instead itâs a 70% chance of the conjunction of âthe US is much more likely (not conditioning on timelines)â and âthis is especially so if there are short timelinesâ. Itâs not really clear which one.
And if itâs the conjunction, that seems less useful than knowing what odds you assign to each of the two claims separately.
Yeah, fair point. When I wrote this, I roughly followed this process:
Write article
Summarize overall takes in bullet points
Add some probabilities to show roughly how certain I am of those bullet points, where this process was something like âokay Iâll re-read this and see how confident I am that each bullet is trueâ
I think it wouldâve been more informative if I wrote the bullet points with an explicit aim to add probabilities to them, rather than writing them and thinking after âah yeah, I should more clearly express my certainty with theseâ.
ThanksâI only read this linkpost and Haydnâs comment quoting your summary, not the linked post as a whole, but this seems to me like probably useful work.
One nitpick:
I feel like itâd be more useful/âclearer to say âIt seems x% likely that the US will create transformative AI before China, and y% likely if TAI is developed in short(ish) timelines (next 5-15 years)â. Because:
At the moment, youâre saying itâs 70% likely that the US will be âmuch more likelyâ, i.e. giving a likelihood of a qualitatively stated (hence kind-of vague) likelihood.
And that claim itself seems to be kind-of but not exactly conditioned on short timelines worlds. Or maybe instead itâs a 70% chance of the conjunction of âthe US is much more likely (not conditioning on timelines)â and âthis is especially so if there are short timelinesâ. Itâs not really clear which one.
And if itâs the conjunction, that seems less useful than knowing what odds you assign to each of the two claims separately.
Yeah, fair point. When I wrote this, I roughly followed this process:
Write article
Summarize overall takes in bullet points
Add some probabilities to show roughly how certain I am of those bullet points, where this process was something like âokay Iâll re-read this and see how confident I am that each bullet is trueâ
I think it wouldâve been more informative if I wrote the bullet points with an explicit aim to add probabilities to them, rather than writing them and thinking after âah yeah, I should more clearly express my certainty with theseâ.