“Should orangutans have felt save inventing humans” is an unnecessarily abstract question, why not just ask whether orangutans have benefited from the existence of humans or not.
I’m not sure I can model what a lay person would think, but, fwiw I think the “should orangatans have invented humans?” much more direct as an intuition pump here. Yes it’s a bit abstract, but, it more directly prompts me to think “we may be inventing AI that is powerful relative to us the way we’re powerful relative to chimps.”
It probably depends on whom are communicating to. I guess there are people not used to using such analogies or thought experiments, and would immediately think: “This is a silly question, orangutans cannot invent humans!”, and the same people would still think about the question in the way you intend if you break it down into several steps.
I actually agree with the normal person here, though I’d rephrase it to “This is a silly question, orangutans did not invent humans!”, primarily because of the many disanalogies between the evolution of some chimps/gorillas/orangutans into humans, and the ways AI companies train/invent their AIs, and I’d have a similar reaction if chimpanzees or gorillas were used as the examples.
The evolution of humans from chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans provides ~0 bits of evidence for AI outcomes, and whatever happens on AI, it will be for very different reasons than the second species argument gives us.
I’m not sure I can model what a lay person would think, but, fwiw I think the “should orangatans have invented humans?” much more direct as an intuition pump here. Yes it’s a bit abstract, but, it more directly prompts me to think “we may be inventing AI that is powerful relative to us the way we’re powerful relative to chimps.”
It probably depends on whom are communicating to. I guess there are people not used to using such analogies or thought experiments, and would immediately think: “This is a silly question, orangutans cannot invent humans!”, and the same people would still think about the question in the way you intend if you break it down into several steps.
I actually agree with the normal person here, though I’d rephrase it to “This is a silly question, orangutans did not invent humans!”, primarily because of the many disanalogies between the evolution of some chimps/gorillas/orangutans into humans, and the ways AI companies train/invent their AIs, and I’d have a similar reaction if chimpanzees or gorillas were used as the examples.
The evolution of humans from chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans provides ~0 bits of evidence for AI outcomes, and whatever happens on AI, it will be for very different reasons than the second species argument gives us.