My experience is that it’s more that group leaders & other students in EA groups might reward poor epistemics in this way.
And that when people are being more casual, it ‘fits in’ to say AI risk & people won’t press for reasons in those contexts as much, but would push if you said something unusual.
Agree my experience with senior EAs in the SF Bay was often the opposite–I was pressed to explain why I’m concerned about AI risk & to respond to various counterarguments.
Very cool!
random thought: could include some of Yoshua Bengio’s or Geoffrey Hinton’s writings/talks on AI risks concerns in week 10 (& could include Lecun for counterpoint to get all 3), since they’re very-well cited academics & Turing Award Winners for deep learning
I haven’t looked through their writings/talks to find the most directly relevant, but some examples: https://yoshuabengio.org/2023/05/22/how-rogue-ais-may-arise/ https://yoshuabengio.org/2023/06/24/faq-on-catastrophic-ai-risks/