We’d maybe be at our current capability level in 2018, [...] the world would have had more time to respond to the looming risk, and we would have done more good safety research.
It’s pretty hard to predict the outcome of “raising awareness of problem X” ahead of time. While it might be net good right now because we’re in a pretty bad spot, we have plenty of examples from the past where greater awareness of AI risk has arguably led to strongly negative outcomes down the line, due to people channeling their interest in the problem into somehow pushing capabilities even faster and harder.
It’s pretty hard to predict the outcome of “raising awareness of problem X” ahead of time. While it might be net good right now because we’re in a pretty bad spot, we have plenty of examples from the past where greater awareness of AI risk has arguably led to strongly negative outcomes down the line, due to people channeling their interest in the problem into somehow pushing capabilities even faster and harder.