I have been interested in effective altruism since the early 2010s. I am also interested in transhumanism, rationality, and artificial intelligence.
Raphaël Lévy
Sure, the audience reaction wasn’t great, but it’s a start. New ideas can take time to sink in, especially the big, scary ones. Maybe a few of those grads will think it over later and get curious.
I totally agree with Dr. Miller. When we talk about AI risks, it’s really important to find some balance between staying rational and acknowledging our emotions. Indeed feeling down or hopeless can make us passive, but being angry or morally outraged can push us to face challenges together. The trick being to use these emotions in a productive way while still sticking to our values and rational thinking.
The link you just posted seems broken? Hilary Greaves’ Discounting for public policy: A survey is available in full at the following URL.
First, there is strong scientific support for attributions of conscious experience to other mammals and to birds.
I’m interested in the scientific arguments because, as far as I know, we don’t have a good model of consciousness, and many models involve higher-level structures that we don’t see in animals with very small brains. I know that some models of consciousness seem to imply that many small animals (or even LLMs!) with “integrated information” are conscious, but it’s unclear enough not to pretend that there’s a consensus on whether a hummingbird with 100 million neurons is able to instantiate subjective experience! I agree that when in doubt we must take steps to minimise any risk of causing suffering, but this should not lead us to assume an epistemologically questionable perspective. So maybe I’m wrong, and since I’m not a specialist in consciousness, I’m interested in why experts endorse such a statement.
The image is probably being blocked by Cloudflare. Direct link
It’s an encouraging signal that existential risks are starting to penetrate the mainstream policy dialogue, moving beyond academia and niche think-tanks.