But I don’t think you learn all that much about how ‘concrete and near mode’ researchers who expect slower takeoff are being, from them not having given much thought to what to do in this (from their perspective) unlikely edge case.
I’m not sure how many researchers assign little enough credence to fast takeoff that they’d describe it as an unlikely edge case, which sounds like <=10%? e.g in Paul’s blog post he writes “I’m around 30% of fast takeoff”
ETA: One proxy could be what percentage researchers assigned to “Superintelligence” in this survey
I don’t think what Paul means by fast takeoff is the same thing as the sort of discontinous jump that would enable a pivotal act. I think fast for Paul just means the negation of Paul-slow: ‘no four year economic doubling before one year economic doubling’. But whatever Paul thinks the survey respondents did give at least 10% to scenarios where a pivotal act is possible.
Even so, ‘this isn’t how I expect things to to on the mainline so I’m not going to focus on what to do here’ is far less of a mistake than ‘I have no plan for what to do on my mainline’, and I think the researchers who ignored pivotal acts are mostly doing the first one
I’m not sure how many researchers assign little enough credence to fast takeoff that they’d describe it as an unlikely edge case, which sounds like <=10%? e.g in Paul’s blog post he writes “I’m around 30% of fast takeoff”
ETA: One proxy could be what percentage researchers assigned to “Superintelligence” in this survey
I don’t think what Paul means by fast takeoff is the same thing as the sort of discontinous jump that would enable a pivotal act. I think fast for Paul just means the negation of Paul-slow: ‘no four year economic doubling before one year economic doubling’. But whatever Paul thinks the survey respondents did give at least 10% to scenarios where a pivotal act is possible.
Even so, ‘this isn’t how I expect things to to on the mainline so I’m not going to focus on what to do here’ is far less of a mistake than ‘I have no plan for what to do on my mainline’, and I think the researchers who ignored pivotal acts are mostly doing the first one