My understanding (which may be factually incorrect) of the Grace et al. survey is that the respondents who were asked about “all occupations are fully automatable” were also asked a long series of questions about when increasingly difficult occupations will be automatable. My default hypothesis is that the huge difference between the 121 vs 44 years was more caused by the self-consistency motivation to make each task be sufficiently later than the previous one, and not by the politicization implied by adding connotations of unemployment.
This is still strong evidence that the responders did not think for 5 minutes before taking the survey, but it is not quite as extreme as you make it sound.
Scott’s understanding of the survey is correct. They were asked about four occupations (with three probability-by-year, or year-reaching-probability numbers for each), then for an occupation that they thought would be fully automated especially late, and the timing of that, then all occupations. (In general, survey details can be found at https://aiimpacts.org/2016-expert-survey-on-progress-in-ai/)
My understanding (which may be factually incorrect) of the Grace et al. survey is that the respondents who were asked about “all occupations are fully automatable” were also asked a long series of questions about when increasingly difficult occupations will be automatable. My default hypothesis is that the huge difference between the 121 vs 44 years was more caused by the self-consistency motivation to make each task be sufficiently later than the previous one, and not by the politicization implied by adding connotations of unemployment.
This is still strong evidence that the responders did not think for 5 minutes before taking the survey, but it is not quite as extreme as you make it sound.
Scott’s understanding of the survey is correct. They were asked about four occupations (with three probability-by-year, or year-reaching-probability numbers for each), then for an occupation that they thought would be fully automated especially late, and the timing of that, then all occupations. (In general, survey details can be found at https://aiimpacts.org/2016-expert-survey-on-progress-in-ai/)