This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
My personal guidance has long been that faith in individuals (and small groups) is almost always misplaced. Faith in principles can do pretty well, but IRL humans are quite fallible and rarely live up to our expectations. There is no living person whose word I would treat as sacrosanct without a willingness to do my own research.
IMO nobody has satisfactorily explained why AI risk outweighs, say, the existential risk of an extinction event by anthropogenic (nuclear war or catastrophic ecological disaster) or other (asteroid, supervolcano, nearby supernova). I don't think we have good handles on the relative magnitudes of risk on these. At some point you're really just acting on your priors.
Many people within EA are also not convinced that AI risk outweighs all other risks. This is more of a strawman that gets heaped on EA because the most visible EA detractors latch onto the wackiest part of the movement.
More options
Context Copy link
Humans 'took over the planet' and displaced billions of other animals just by being smarter. Why wouldn't AI agents do the same? Our intelligence relates to physical mechanisms somehow, and computers are a much faster and more efficient way of implementing similar things, so why wouldn't computers be able to do so better? Look how rapidly technology is integrated into human life and the economy, won't that just continue to accelerate as it has over the past 300 years? What does a human do, what happens to the economy, when complex AI interactions drive more and more of it?
There's some debate on that, there's a competing theory that we "took over the planet" because we had language and could thus learn from events that we ourselves did not witness.
Transformers and large neural nets generally are universal ML system that can do moderately-intelligent tasks like create images, play games, optimize all sorts of real-world tasks, and also understand language. Human intelligence is similar - use and understanding of language depends and is made of general intelligence. If dogs could talk, they wouldn't be smarter. And - they can talk, sort of, they have verbal and body-language signals that mean things, they just can't do larger-scale things with that.
This feels like affirming the consequent/assuming the conclusion.
If dogs could talk would they need to be smarter? How much rougher would the lions' life be if the Buffalos and Gazelles could collude?
yes, dogs can't play sports (even if they had the right physical form factor) or compose music as well as humans despite neither requiring language. buffalos can communicate, and do, the ability to understand complex communications wold require intelligence, and even if they had that minimal intelligence that doesn't get them to toolmaking, let alone physics or military planning. is this a bit?
No, because it seems equally clear that intelligence doesn't get you that far on it's own.
... sure, and humans minus hands wouldn't get anywhere, same for humans without eyes, humans without mouths, humans without livers, humans without an epidermis, or humans without collagen, but it's quite clear that intelligence is a more significant, harder to evolve factor than language or any of those. Plus, as neural networks hint at and should be somewhat clear, intelligence means that language is relatively easy to get to, whereas w/o intelligence language is not that useful because nothing too interesting can be said!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I feel like we actually DO have a pretty good handle on these existential risks. Definitely we can model the likelihood of extinction level asteroids and supernovas. The base rate here is very low, and we're improving our odds by tracking asteroids. Supervolcanoes are not extinction level events.
Nuclear war or ecological disaster seem unlikely to be extinction level events. Nuclear weapons are just not powerful enough, although they could potentially reduce the population by a lot. Global warming is centuries away from being an existential concern.
Rogue AI on the other hand has the potential to kill all humans. We can argue about whether the chances are 1% or 99%. And we can argue about whether it will happen in 10 years or 50 years. But if we're drafting talent in the NBA draft of extinction events, AI gets drafted #1, and it's not even close. It combines high likelihood in the near-term with the potential to kill ALL humans, not just 5% of them or whatever.
Yeah, but that's not the Drowning Child, is it? They charity-mugged everyone with that nugget from Singer: if you saw a child drowning right now, in front of your very own eyes, wouldn't you save it? What kind of heartless monster would not? And so if you accept that you should save the drowning child, then you must accept that you should save the children who will die without malaria nets.
I know the malaria nets projects have now got more money than they know what to do with, so it's not hypocritical for EA to move to a new good cause. But it is hypocritical to move to a cause where the advice now is "Forget about that drowning child, if you jump into the pond you might catch a cold and be home from work sick and then your contribution to stopping AI from paperclipping us all will be lost for that valuable period of a week! Sure, we don't know if the AI is coming in ten or fifty years, and the kid is drowning right now, but imagine all the kids in fifty years time instead!"
More options
Context Copy link
There are people who also argue that it will happen "never". Anyway I'd say this is a threat in similar ballpark as "being invaded by alien species". What is a chance that humanity's technological progress woke up some Von Neumann probe from some ancient civilization somewhere in Oort cloud which is now ramping up self-replication capacities and building up an invasion spacefleet set to destroy Earth? Existence of such probes throughout the galaxy could definitely be one answer for Fermi paradox, whatever the chance you assign to such a possibility multiply it with existential threat and you are Pascal mugged toward giving it a lot of thought.
But similarly to the AI problem, it is hard to conceive what to do about it. Maybe not search for ancient civilization by Active SETI and maybe increase manufacturing of nuclear rockets capable of targeting things on our orbit?
Going back to AI, I have yet to see any material results of the supposed "friendly AI" research. We do not even know what technology will lead to such an AI which means it may be hard or even impossible to imbue it with certain morality. Not to even talk if EA people and affiliated researchers are the best people for that job given their own morality. In fact if one is as serious as you are here about it, probably the best course of action would be to go full Terminator 2 and assassinate all leading AI researchers and bomb all the research laboratories with hope that we will eventually land upon some form of AI Inquisition type government banning all research into the area under severe penalties. Of course this looks too crazy even for AI types, but it would be logical conclusion here.
Well they're not serious thinkers, are they? Where is the law of physics that says it's impossible to make a rogue AI? Even if such a law did exist, never is a very strong word. I'd be cautious before saying we would 'never' find some way around thermodynamics, the most solid foundation we have. Who knows what could be achieved 500,000 years after the Scientific Revolution? We're only 300 or so years in, there may be a few revolutions to come.
It's outrageously silly to say 'never' when we have so many questions still unanswered, when AI is advancing at such a rapid pace.
More options
Context Copy link
I almost put aliens in my comment. The threat from extraterrestrials is similar to AI in that it is difficult to quantify but at the same time the potential damage is 100% extinction. And since, in either case, we have no base rate we have to make assumptions of likelihood from first principles. This is what some people have difficultly accepting, probably the same type who weren't worried about nuclear weapons in the 1940s.
I also agree that there is not much that can be done. Although actively trying to get aliens to find us does seem uniquely stupid. I guess I just get frustrated when people conflate "minor" threats such as climate change or supervolcanoes with things that are much more serious.
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, huge amounts of talent and capital are being poured into building AGI, and we know it's physically possible (because human brains exist). So to be sure that it'll never happen seems like a stretch.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not really. At least we know those other things are actually within the realm of possibility. We have no reason to even believe (yet) we can invent an AI that could kill us all, let alone one that would. AI risk is just not worth taking seriously at this point in time.
It seems important to consider before you create something that could (because if you wait it might be too late).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link