I’d recommend the full paper to anyone who’s unsure about reading it. Bostrom’s writing is as engaging as always, and he uses a couple of catchy phrases that could become common in the field of X-risk (“semi-anarchic default condition”, “the apocalyptic residual”).
I think one particular section should be reconsidered before this goes from a working paper into publication (if that’s the final goal). Bostrom’s “high-tech panopticon” segment, which suggests a way in which we could protect ourselves from individuals destroying civilization if “everybody is fitted with a ‘freedom tag’” and monitored by “freedom officers”, is clearly meant as an extreme hypothetical situation rather than a policy recommendation. But it seems destined to be picked up and reported as though it were, in fact, a policy recommendation, especially because he goes on to estimate costs and ponder potential benefits of the program.
I appreciate the idea, and the section that it’s a part of (which includes considerations about “preemptive assassination” of people who seem likely to attempt a “city-destroying act”), as the sorts of things that really are worth considering if the future goes in certain directions. But it seems worthwhile to find a way to write about the same ideas without putting them in a format that will be quite as easy for the media to attack. (Making the section a bit more dry and boring might do the trick; the Panopticon example is highly vivid and visual.)
I have similar worries about making the high-tech panopticon too sticky a meme. I’ve updated slightly against this being a problem since there’s been very little reporting on the paper. The only thing I’ve seen so far is this article from Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/dda3537e-01de-11e9-99df-6183d3002ee1. It reports on the paper in a very nuanced way.
Your link is broken, but it looks like the paper came out in September 2019, well after my comment (though my reservations still apply if those sections of the paper were unchanged).
Thanks for the update on media reporting! Vox also did a long piece on the working-paper version in Future Perfect, but with the nuance and understanding of EA that one would expect from Kelsey Piper.
I’d recommend the full paper to anyone who’s unsure about reading it. Bostrom’s writing is as engaging as always, and he uses a couple of catchy phrases that could become common in the field of X-risk (“semi-anarchic default condition”, “the apocalyptic residual”).
I think one particular section should be reconsidered before this goes from a working paper into publication (if that’s the final goal). Bostrom’s “high-tech panopticon” segment, which suggests a way in which we could protect ourselves from individuals destroying civilization if “everybody is fitted with a ‘freedom tag’” and monitored by “freedom officers”, is clearly meant as an extreme hypothetical situation rather than a policy recommendation. But it seems destined to be picked up and reported as though it were, in fact, a policy recommendation, especially because he goes on to estimate costs and ponder potential benefits of the program.
I appreciate the idea, and the section that it’s a part of (which includes considerations about “preemptive assassination” of people who seem likely to attempt a “city-destroying act”), as the sorts of things that really are worth considering if the future goes in certain directions. But it seems worthwhile to find a way to write about the same ideas without putting them in a format that will be quite as easy for the media to attack. (Making the section a bit more dry and boring might do the trick; the Panopticon example is highly vivid and visual.)
Actually, the paper has already been published in Global Policy (and in a very similar form to the one linked above): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1758-5899.12718.
I have similar worries about making the high-tech panopticon too sticky a meme. I’ve updated slightly against this being a problem since there’s been very little reporting on the paper. The only thing I’ve seen so far is this article from Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/dda3537e-01de-11e9-99df-6183d3002ee1. It reports on the paper in a very nuanced way.
Your link is broken, but it looks like the paper came out in September 2019, well after my comment (though my reservations still apply if those sections of the paper were unchanged).
Thanks for the update on media reporting! Vox also did a long piece on the working-paper version in Future Perfect, but with the nuance and understanding of EA that one would expect from Kelsey Piper.