I’m not exactly sure what this job actually is based on the forum post. Based on a link in the form the duties might be:
Oversee operational aspects of the FutureTech research project.
Manage project timelines, resources, and deliverables.
Help researchers to facilitate their work and overcome logistical challenges.
Coordinate with team members and external stakeholders.
Contribute to events, research, grant writing, project planning, budgeting, and other administrative tasks.
I only skimmed it but this looks like a great article, thanks for sharing!
I think you’ve understood me!
I hadn’t, that’s an interesting idea, thanks!
Hello, to clarify #1 I would say:
It could be the case that future AI systems are conscious by default, and that it is difficult to build them without them being conscious.
Let me try to spell out my intuition here:
If many organisms have property X, and property X is rare amongst non-organisms, then property X is evolutionarily advantageous.
Consciousness meets this condition, so it is likely evolutionarily advantageous.
The advantage that consciousness gives us is most likely something to do with our ability to reason, adapt behaviour, control our attention, compare options, and so on. In other words, it’s a “mental advantage” (as opposed to e.g. a physical or metabolic advantage).
We will put a lot of money into building AI that can reason, problem solve, adapt behaviour appropriately, control attention, compare options and so on. Given that many organisms employ consciousness to efficiently achieve these tasks, there is a non-trivial chance that AI will too.
To be clear, I don’t know that I would say “it’s more likely than not that AI will be conscious by default”.
I think that AI welfare should be an EA priority, and I’m also working on it. I think this post is a good illustration of what that means, 5% seems reasonable to me. I also appreciate this post, as it has many of the core motivations for me. I recently spent several months thinking hard about the most effective philosophy PhD project I could work on, and ended up thinking that it was to work on AI consciousness.
I feel like this post is missing discussion of two reasons to build conscious AI:
1. It may be extremely costly or difficult to avoid (this may not be a good reason, but it seems plausibly like why we would do it).
2. Digital minds could have morally valuable conscious experiences, and if there is very many of them, this could be extremely good (at least on some, admittedly controversial ethical theories).
I am a wizard. I have magically transported you back to June 15th 2024. You will have all your progress so far. The essays are due in one month.
I’m working on this problem!
Why on earth did someone downvote this comment?
Fantastic!
I hadn’t seen this until now, but it’s good to see that you’ve come to the same conclusion I have. I’ve just started my DPhil in Philosophy and plan on working on AI mental states and welfare.
I suspect a lot of the disagreement here is about whether the singularity hypothesis is along the lines of:
1. AI becomes capable enough to do lots or most economically useful tasks.
2. AI becomes capable enough to directly manipulate and overpower all humans, regardless of our efforts to resist and steer the future in a directions that good for us.
Looking at this paper now, I’m not convinced that Erdil and Besiroglu offer a good counter argument. Let me try to explain why and see if you disagree.
Their claim is about economic growth. It seems that they are exploring considerations for and against the claim that future AI systems will accelerate economic growth by an order of magnitude or more. But even if this was true, it doesn’t seem like it would result in a significant chance of extinction.
The main reason for believing the claim about economic growth doesn’t apply to stronger versions of the singularity hypothesis. As far as I can tell, the main reason to believe that the economic growth will happen is that AI might be able to automate most or all of the work done by human workers today. However, it seems like further argument is needed to claim that AI will also be smart enough to overpower us.
They give additional considerations against the singularity hypothesis. While the strongest arguments in favour of rapid economic growth don’t apply to the stronger singularity hypothesis, I think they present arguments against which do apply. The most interesting ones for me were that regulation could slow down AI development, we may not deploy powerful AI systems due to concerns about alignment, and previous seemingly revolutionary technologies like computers, electricity, cars and aeroplanes arguably didn’t lead to large accelerations in economic growth.
This is a cool idea, I upvoted (from −1 to 0). I’d really like to see more detailed analysis and well-documented sources to answer this question. I couldn’t really tell from the post whether the numbers were about right or not.
I worked on a report with others at Longview. We calculated that severely reducing the burden of HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis would be around $219 billion. Essentially, we adjusted numbers from a variety of reports from e.g. the WHO to estimate these numbers (possibly some of the same sources, it’s hard to tell). This is already quite a bit more than the $10 billion estimate you have. I think the main difference is due to adjusting for inflation and in-kind medicine donations.
However, this wouldn’t allow us to eradicate these diseases in all likelihood. In fact, the target for Tuberculosis was to reduce deaths by about 90%. It is plausible that the last 10% is actually much more expensive to target, because the low hanging fruit has been picked, so to speak. (I’m not an expert in this area, and this could be completely wrong).
This makes me think that the cost of eliminating these diseases is likely well over $100 billion each.
(We also estimated the costs of severely reducing the burden of disease from neglected tropical diseases, and that was lower per disease.)
I just want to add that even if people treat you different, ultimately it’s a line on your CV that says “completed this degree, in this year”. I don’t think it makes a material difference to your opportunities at the point of completion if it took you much longer to complete.
I’m sorry to hear treatments generally haven’t helped in the past.
I sometimes find it useful to think about these things in the following way. It feels like a lot to sacrifice energy to do therapy when you’re already limited in terms of energy. But if it works particularly well, maybe you’ll have something like an extra day of energy a week for… well for your whole life. It might be worth doing even if it takes a lot now, and even if the odds of success are low. (Of course, in some cases the odds are so low that it isn’t worth it).
I don’t know much about the specifics here, my own experience has been with anxiety, depression and adhd.
One piece of advice is this: try all of the things that might help with anxiety, depression, and ME/CFS. This was mentioned by @John Salter in another comment, but it doesn’t just apply to starting organisations. It is a worthwhile investment to try a range of things that might work on almost any future career path you would pursue. (So long as you don’t pay severe costs if they fail).
These lists are okay as a starting point for anxiety and depression.
There are other goals you could adopt.
To learn and develop your own thinking. If that’s your goal, it doesn’t matter as much whether you share it, or the reception it gets.
To share important ideas. If you’re absorbing a lot of your content from the EA forum, try writing somewhere else. Other people may not have been exposed to these ideas, so you might be able to do more to improve the average quality.
My personal hot-take is that most people should write for a different audience than than themselves. My own ideas often feel stale and obvious to me, while what I consume is fresh and interesting. But occasionally others’ have commented that they love my writing (and I don’t hear from the one’s that don’t like it all that much).
That’s great, thank you for clarifying Peter!