It seems like it can just overpower/lock-in humans without obtaining these competencies (it doesn’t even need to be AGI to be extremely dangerous).
Ideally, I think WAW would consider all the different AI timelines. TAI that just increases our industrial capacity might be enough to seriously threaten wild animals if it makes us even more capable of shaping their lives and we don’t have considered values about how to look out for them.
So it’s possible that relatively simple tools are sufficient to improve WAW, or at least the sophistication is orthogonal to AGI?
I agree! Personally, I don’t think it’s lack of ntelligence per se holding us back from complex WAW intervention (by which I mean interventions that have to compensate for ripple effects on the ecosystem or require lots of active monitoring). I think we’re more limited by the number of monitoring measurements we can take and our ability to deliver specific, measured intervention at specific places and times. I think we could conceivably gain this ability with hardware upgrades alone and no further improvement in algorithms.
I think we’re more limited by the number of monitoring measurements we can take and our ability to deliver specific, measured intervention at specific places and times.
This seems a bit surprising to me, as currently we don’t even have a good understanding of biology/ecology in general, and of welfare biology in particular. (which means that we need intelligence to solve these)
So, did you mean that engineering capabilities (e.g. the minotoring measurements that you mentioned) are more of a bottleneck to WAW than theoretical understanding (into welfare biology) is? If yes, could you explain the reason?
One plausible reason I can think of: When developping WAW interventions, we could use a SpaceX-style approach, i.e. doing many small-scale experiments, iterating rapidly, and learn from tight feedback loops, in a trial-and-error manner. Is that what you were having in mind?
Ideally, I think WAW would consider all the different AI timelines. TAI that just increases our industrial capacity might be enough to seriously threaten wild animals if it makes us even more capable of shaping their lives and we don’t have considered values about how to look out for them.
I agree! Personally, I don’t think it’s lack of ntelligence per se holding us back from complex WAW intervention (by which I mean interventions that have to compensate for ripple effects on the ecosystem or require lots of active monitoring). I think we’re more limited by the number of monitoring measurements we can take and our ability to deliver specific, measured intervention at specific places and times. I think we could conceivably gain this ability with hardware upgrades alone and no further improvement in algorithms.
This seems a bit surprising to me, as currently we don’t even have a good understanding of biology/ecology in general, and of welfare biology in particular. (which means that we need intelligence to solve these)
So, did you mean that engineering capabilities (e.g. the minotoring measurements that you mentioned) are more of a bottleneck to WAW than theoretical understanding (into welfare biology) is? If yes, could you explain the reason?
One plausible reason I can think of: When developping WAW interventions, we could use a SpaceX-style approach, i.e. doing many small-scale experiments, iterating rapidly, and learn from tight feedback loops, in a trial-and-error manner. Is that what you were having in mind?