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To be honest, I fail to see the step(s) between "database on steroids aces tests made largely to test people remembering various shit" and "my daughter would be murdered before reaching adulthood".
I am not arguing about the likelihood of AI outcomes. Yud seems hysterical to me. But what do I know either way.
I am making the (apparently controversial) claim that I like the idea of someone who has the future of their children as a weight on their decision making algorithm when pursuing transformative technologies.
Well, it's not about being a prophet. Sure, maybe tomorrow a new pandemic sweeps the globe, or the Sweet Meteor of Death finally arrives, or those angels finally get to their musical exercises on their trumpets. I don't see how one could avoid such things, or predict them - unless one is a prophet, and those are rare nowdays. And I am not against "having the future of the children" as a weight. In fact, I am no longer spring chicken, but I plan to have (barring unpredictable accidents) several good decades ahead of me myself, so I also have some stake in the future. I just don't how we got from this to "my children are going to be murdered before adulthood". And while we're at that, if they are serious about it, why are they having children and why all they doing about it is bloviating? I am not advocating anything, Heavens forbid, but I mean, if they sincerely believe their children will not survive to adulthood, the intensity of their belief does not seem to match the intensity of their action. I guess it's a good thing for us, but still confusing for me.
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tens of billions of dollars of capital and lots of top talent spend the next 5-10 years making these systems more and more capable.
They get deployed everywhere because they are way easier to work with than humans.
Humans have little economic power.
The world becomes more complex, and full of agents smarter than humans, working full-time to manipulate them.
Humans are eventually stripped of power, just like we gradually came to dominate every species less smart than us.
Let me guess - you are thinking you have tons of economic power right now? And nothing in the current events makes you question this assumption? Or maybe you think you don't depend right now on a myriad of complex machines (though you probably don't understand them as machines, yet they are) and if any of them goes haywire - e.g. for some reason, some CIA analyst decides you are Bin Laden confidante, or your credit rating file gets deleted by a freak accident, or you criticize your government one time too many at a wrong time - your life wouldn't suddenly become very hard and complicated? So yes, the list of these machines becomes a bit different. That's it?
The world will become more complex - try to explain modern law to an ancient Sumerian, and he'd probably laugh at you and then declare you and all your brethren a society of insane masochists. Complexity of human affairs is raising for millenia. We are learning to deal with it, though it's not always easy (thus existential angst is to popular). Still don't see how this means that all children going to be murdered in less than 20 years.
I'm not claiming all children are going to be murdered in less than 20 years. I also don't think I have tons of economic power right now, and I agree I already depend on complex machines that I already can't understand or control.
I'm saying we're probably giving up what little control we had over the future of human civilization. Maybe a good analogy is: we're inviting unlimited immigration from a country with unlimited population, willing to work 24h/d for cents per hour, and are far more capable, loyal, and dependable than almost any human. Once we start, we'll never be able to stop.
Well, you personally aren't, but Yudkowski is. Or at least this is implied since there's no special reason to select his child from others to be murdered, one can reasonably conclude whatever applies to his child also applies to all other children.
I don't think so. At least not anything we have. I am also not sure who is in control "over the future of human civilization" right now, because so far whoever they are, they're not doing spectacular job. I mean, 18-th century war in the middle of Europe? Dudes, you were supposed to be so past that. Our only response to a threat like pandemic seems to be "let's try fascism, whatever will happen it'd be better with fascism, right?" Our solution to raising energy needs seems to be "let's try to shut down our most effective ways of getting energy and then invest heavily into ways that we know for a fact wouldn't satisfy our needs, and then let's shame each other for having needs. Oh, and destroying classical cultural artifacts on the way doesn't hurt too, just for fun". I'm not feeling there's any entity or entities that do anything that can be reasonably called "in control", but if they are - I certainly have no input into that and no reasonable way to ever get any close to having any input into that. So tell me again what I should be afraid of losing?
We're not able to stop writing, or using electricity, or modern medicine. But that doesn't mean any of those lead us to catastrophic consequences.
That's a good point. I'd like to spend more time thinking about in which senses this is true. However, I do still think we have a lot to lose. I.e. I'd still much rather live in the West than in North Korea, even if neither place has "humanity" in the driver's seat.
Okay, but I'm claiming that AGI will have disastrous consequences, and that the next 6 months or so are probably our only chance to stop using it (just like, as you point out, almost any other technology).
To me, it sounds a bit like those people that tell us AGW will kill us in the next 10 years, since early 1980s. Oh, interesting thought, maybe if in 6 months we'll all be doomed due to AGI, we can stop being worried about being doomed due to AGW?
I mean, I do think we can stop being worried about being doomed due to AGW. I realize there have been lots of false alarms by people that are hard to distinguish from each other in terms of credibility. From my POV, all I can do is check my own sanity, and then continue to cry wolf (legitimately, in my mind). I might be wrong and you might be right to dismiss me.
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In the ragged parlance of the youth: "human government has been tested and found wanting time and again" is not the own you think it is.
To be less mod-aggravating: just because you feel you have little control over the direction of human society, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be worried about something even more distant and ineffable making your existence look like a burden on the universe. The AI has a more plausible shot at Total World Domination than the slapdash great power competition that we've been under for a few centuries.
I don't think it's the "own". I think if you say "it will kill us all because X would happen" and I say "X is already happening and we are not dead yet" then it's pretty good argument that the direct casual link between X and killing us all is not established.
I am worried about a lot of things. Death, disease, government turning fascist, that kind of thing. If AI ever reaches the level of being worry-worthy, sure, I'd worry about that part too. I am just not seeing the "my child won't survive to adulthood" part.
That needs to be established. High IQ nerds think being able to do some tasks fast means total power, but somehow I don't see too many high IQ nerds in power. Even among people having Tons of Money not everyone at all is high IQ nerds, and the percentage of billionaires among high IQ nerds is not as large as they'd likely wish. So even imagining they'd build an electronic super-high-IQ nerd - which so far isn't proven at all, though seems more plausible than before - I am not sure it is established this means Total World Domination.
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