This response is very late since I only just came across this post, but I was wondering if the author had any more details on what the backlash against EA that they mentioned specifically entailed? I haven’t been able to find any information about this on the web, unless it’s specifically related to the backlash against Esvelt’s arguments regarding DNA synthesis screening or those discussing the effects of LLMs? Is the biosecurity community also, for example, undergoing a backlash against the arguments for plausible biological existential risk that EAs are making?
Isaac Heron
Karma: 60
Thanks Oscar. I appreciate your comment about genetic sequences, which I have now edited throughout to refer to ‘physical genetic sequences’. Yes I have reached out to Braden Leach, once in the middle of my research and again once I had finished the dissertation, although I haven’t heard from him since. I have been thinking about getting in contact with Piers Millet about my ideas for IBBIS for a while, so an introduction with him would probably be a good idea.
Thanks Tessa. I actually came to this post and asked this question because it was quoted in the ‘Exaggerating the risks’ series, but then this post didn’t give any examples to back up this claim, which Thorstad has then quoted. I had come across this article by Undark which includes statements by some experts that are quite critical of Kevin Esvelt’s advocacy regarding nucleic acid synthesis. I think the Lentzos article is the kind of example I was wondering about—although I’m still not sure if it directly shows that the failure to justify their position on the details of the source of risk itself is the problem. (Specifically, I think the key thing Lentzos is saying is the risks Open Phil is worrying about are extremely unlikely in the near-term—which is true, they just think it’s more important for longtermist reasons and are therefore 1) more worried about what happens in the medium and long term and 2) still worried about low risk, high harm events. So the dispute doesn’t seem to me to be necessarily related to the details of catastrophic biorisk itself.)