I’ve read leaked emails from people in similar situations before that made a couple things apparent:
Power talk happens on the phone for paper trail reasons
There is no meeting where an actual rational discussion of considerations and theories of change happens, everything really is people flying by the seat of their pants even at highest level. Talk of ethics usually just gets you excluded from the power talk.
I concluded this from the lack of any such talk in meeting minutes that are recorded, and the lack of any reference to such considerations in ‘previous conversations’ or requests to set up such meetings.
There is no meeting where an actual rational discussion of considerations and theories of change happens, everything really is people flying by the seat of their pants even at highest level. Talk of ethics usually just gets you excluded from the power talk.
This seems overstated. E.g. Musk and Altman both read Superintelligence, and they both met Bostrom at least once in 2015. Sam published reflective blog posts on AGI in 2015, and it’s clear that the OpenAI founders had lengthy, reflective discussions from the YC Research days onwards.
I’ve read leaked emails from people in similar situations before that made a couple things apparent:
Power talk happens on the phone for paper trail reasons
There is no meeting where an actual rational discussion of considerations and theories of change happens, everything really is people flying by the seat of their pants even at highest level. Talk of ethics usually just gets you excluded from the power talk.
I concluded this from the lack of any such talk in meeting minutes that are recorded, and the lack of any reference to such considerations in ‘previous conversations’ or requests to set up such meetings.
This seems overstated. E.g. Musk and Altman both read Superintelligence, and they both met Bostrom at least once in 2015. Sam published reflective blog posts on AGI in 2015, and it’s clear that the OpenAI founders had lengthy, reflective discussions from the YC Research days onwards.
My personal experience was that superintelligence made it harder to think clearly about AI by making lots of distinctions and few claims.