Global moratorium on AGI, now (Twitter). Founder of CEEALAR (née the EA Hotel; ceealar.org)
Greg_Colbourn
No. I can only get crypto-backed loans (e.g. Aave). Currently on ~10% interest; no guarantee they won’t go above 15% over 5 years + counterparty risk to my collateral.
But I don’t even think it’s negative financial EV (see above—because I’m 50% on not having to pay it back at all because doom, and I also think the EV of my investments is >2x over the timeframe).
I mean, in terms of signalling it’s not great to bet people (or people from a community) who are basically on your side, i.e. think AI x-risk is a problem, but just not that big a problem; as opposed to people who think the whole thing is nonsense and are actively hostile to you and dismissive of your concerns.
I’ve been getting a few offers from EAs recently. I might accept some. What I’d really like to do though is bet against an e/acc.
Unless you plan to spend all of your money before you would owe money back
This would not be good for you unless you were an immoral sociopath with no concern for the social opprobrium that results from not honouring the bet.
Or unless you’re betting on high rates of returns to capital
There is some element of this for me (I hope to more than 2x my capital in worlds where we survive). But it’s not the main reason.
The main reason it’s good for me is that it helps reduce the likelihood of doom. That is my main goal for the next few years. If the interest this is getting gets even one more person to take near-term AI doom as seriously as I do, then that’s a win. Also the $x to PauseAI now is worth >>$2x to PauseAI in 2028.
you can probably borrow cheaply. E.g. if you have $2X in investments, you can sell them, invest $X at 2X leverage, and effectively borrow the other $X.
This is not without risk (of being margin called in a 50% drawdown)[1]. Else why wouldn’t people be doing this as standard? I’ve not really heard of anyone doing it.
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And it could also be costly in borrowing fees for the leverage.
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Unfortunately it seems as though bets like this[1] (for significant sums of money) might be truly unprecedented. Still working on trying to establish workable mechanisms for trust / ensuring the payout (but I think having it in terms of donations makes things easier).
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Peer-to-peer, between people who don’t know each other.
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Yes. Also another consideration is that I expect my high risk investing strategy to return >200% over the time in question, in worlds where we survive (all it would take is 1⁄10 of my start-up investments to blow up, for example, or crypto going up another >2x).
Note that I made an exception on timelines for this bet, to get it to happen as the first of it’s kind. I’d be more comfortable making it 5 years from the date of the bet. Anyway, open to doing $10k, especially if it’s done in terms of donations (makes things easier in terms of trust, I think). But I’m also going to say that I think the signalling value would be higher if it was against someone who wasn’t EA or concerned about AI x-risk.
Do you know a way of securing such a bet against a house in a water-tight way? I’ve been told by someone who’s consulted a lawyer that such a civil contract would not be enforceable if it came down to enforcement being necessary.
So far I am in discussion with a couple of others for similar amounts to the bet in OP, but the problem of guaranteeing my payout is proving quite a difficult one[1]. I guess making it direct donations makes things a lot easier.
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My preferred method is trading on my public reputation (which I value higher than the bet amounts); but I can’t expect people to take my word for it.
It could also be done by drawing up a contract with my house as collateral, but I’ve been told that this likely wouldn’t be enforceable.
Then there is using escrow (but the escrow needs to be trusted; and the funds tied up in the escrow—and I prefer to hold crypto, which complicates things).
Then there are crypto smart contracts, but these need to be trusted, and also massively overcollateralised to factor in deep market drawdowns (with the opportunity cost that brings).
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Yes (see comments above in this thread). I think a smaller amount would not have the same impact (there is already Caplan’s bet with Yudkowsky) - it needs to be actually a significant amount of money. I have actually offered to go up to $250k (worst case I can sell my rental house to pay off the bet; and I do have significant other investments).
Yes, this. The major motivation is signalling, or “putting my money where my mouth is”. But also, the loans available to me (e.g. Aave) might not have that much better interest rates over the timescale.
Yes, I would go ahead regardless of the other party’s plans for their winnings (but for the record I very much approve of Vasco’s valuing of animal welfare).
Thanks for these. I’ll note though that personally, I have ~0 stock market exposure (majority of my wealth is in crypto and startups).
Do you expect that between now and TAI that would kill everyone, AI stocks won’t outperform?
No, I expect they will, but it might be only a matter of months before doom in those cases (i.e. AI capabilities continue to advance at a rapid pace, AI capable of automating most work tasks happens, stocks skyrocket; but AI is also turned on AI development, and recursive-self improvement kicks in, doom follows shortly after).
If you find some edge, let us know!
Are you in the HSEACA fb group? Here’s a tip[1]: the relatively new crypto, WART. Heuristics: recommended by same guy that picked the 1000x (KASPA) and 200x (CLORE); geniuinely new algo (CPU/GPU combined mining; working on an in-browser node); fair launch and tokenomics (no premine); enthusiastic developers who are crypto enthusiasts doing it for fun (currently worth very little); enthusiastic community; bad at marketing (this is an advantage at this stage; more focus on product). Given it has only a ~$1.5M marketcap now, there is a lot of potential upside. I’d say >10% chance of >100x; 1000x not out of the question. Timeframe: 6-18 months.
Another: Equator Therapeutics[2].
I would encourage EAs to go even further against the EMH than buying AI stocks. EAs have been ahead of the curve on lots of things, so we should be able to make even better returns elsewhere, especially given how crowded AI is now. It’s worth looking at the track record of the HSEACA investing group[1], but, briefly, I have had 2 cryptos that I learnt about in there in the last couple of years go up 1000x and 200x respectively (realising 100x and 50x gains respectively, so far in the case of the second). Lots of people also made big money shorting stock markets before the Covid crash, and there have been various other highly profitable plays, and promising non-AI start-ups posted about. There are plenty of other opportunities out there that are better than investing in AI, even from a purely financial perspective. More EAs should be spending time seeking them out, rather than investing in ethically questionable companies that go against their mission to prevent x-risk, and are very unlikely to provide significant profits that are actually usable before the companies they come from cause doom, or collapse in value from being regulated to prevent doom.
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Would actually be great if someone did an analysis of this sometime!
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@EliezerYudkowsky