On the “AI as normal technology” perspective—I don’t think it involves a strong belief that AI won’t change the world much. The authors restate their thesis in a later post:
There is a long causal chain between AI capability increases and societal impact. Benefits and risks are realized when AI is deployed, not when it is developed. This gives us (individuals, organizations, institutions, policymakers) many points of leverage for shaping those impacts. So we don’t have to fret as much about the speed of capability development; our efforts should focus more on the deployment stage both from the perspective of realizing AI’s benefits and responding to risks. All this is not just true of today’s AI, but even in the face of hypothetical developments such as self-improvement in AI capabilities. Many of the limits to the power of AI systems are (and should be) external to those systems, so that they cannot be overcome simply by having AI go off and improve its own technical design.
The idea of focusing more on the deployment stage seems pretty consistent with Will MacAskill’s latest forum post about making the transition to a post-AGI society go well. There are other aspects of the “AI as normal technology” worldview that I expect will conflict more with Forethought’s, but I’m not sure that conflict would necessarily be frustrating and unproductive—as you say, it might depend on the person’s characteristics like openness and willingness to update, etc.
On the “AI as normal technology” perspective—I don’t think it involves a strong belief that AI won’t change the world much. The authors restate their thesis in a later post:
The idea of focusing more on the deployment stage seems pretty consistent with Will MacAskill’s latest forum post about making the transition to a post-AGI society go well. There are other aspects of the “AI as normal technology” worldview that I expect will conflict more with Forethought’s, but I’m not sure that conflict would necessarily be frustrating and unproductive—as you say, it might depend on the person’s characteristics like openness and willingness to update, etc.