S-risks can cover quite a lot of things. There are arguably s-risks which are less bad than x-risks, because although there is astronomical amounts of suffering, it may be dwarfed by the amount of happiness. Using common definitions of s-risks, if we simply took Earth and multiplied it by 1000 so that we have 1000 Earths, identical to ours with the same amount of organisms, it would be an s-risk. This is because the amount of suffering would be 1000 times greater. It seems to me that when people talk about s-risks they often mean somewhat different things. S-risks are not just “I have no mouth and I must scream” scenarios, they can also be things like the fear that we spread wild animal suffering to multiple planets through space colonisation. Because of the differences in definitions people seem to have for s-risks, it is hard to tell what they mean when they talk about the probability of them occurring. This is made especially difficult when they compare them to the likelihood of x-risks, as people have very different opinions on the likelihood of x-risks.
Lucas: Right, cool. At least my understanding is, and you can correct me on this, is that the way that FRI sort of leverages what it does is that … Within the effective altruism community, suffering risks are very large in scope, but it’s also a topic which is very neglected, but also low in probability. Has FRI really taken this up due to that framing, due to its neglectedness within the effective altruism community?
Kaj: I wouldn’t say that the decision to take it up was necessarily an explicit result of looking at those considerations, but in a sense, the neglectedness thing is definitely a factor, in that basically no one else seems to be looking at suffering risks. So far, most of the discussion about risks from AI and that kind of thing has been focused on risks of extinction, and there have been people within FRI who feel that risks of extreme suffering might actually be very plausible, and may be even more probable than risks of extinction. But of course, that depends on a lot of assumptions.
Part of the article focuses on the probability of s-risks, which starts by saying “I’ll argue that s-risks are not much more unlikely than AI-related extinction risk. I’ll explain why I think this is true and will address two objections along the way.”
There is also a subreddit for s-risks. In this post, UHMWPE-UwU (who created the subreddit) has a comment which says “prevalent current assumption in the alignment field seems to be that their likelihood is negligible, but clearly not the case especially with near-miss/failed alignment risks
S-risks can cover quite a lot of things. There are arguably s-risks which are less bad than x-risks, because although there is astronomical amounts of suffering, it may be dwarfed by the amount of happiness. Using common definitions of s-risks, if we simply took Earth and multiplied it by 1000 so that we have 1000 Earths, identical to ours with the same amount of organisms, it would be an s-risk. This is because the amount of suffering would be 1000 times greater. It seems to me that when people talk about s-risks they often mean somewhat different things. S-risks are not just “I have no mouth and I must scream” scenarios, they can also be things like the fear that we spread wild animal suffering to multiple planets through space colonisation. Because of the differences in definitions people seem to have for s-risks, it is hard to tell what they mean when they talk about the probability of them occurring. This is made especially difficult when they compare them to the likelihood of x-risks, as people have very different opinions on the likelihood of x-risks.
Here are some sources:
From an episode of the AI alignment podcast called “Astronomical future suffering and superintelligence with Kaj Sotala”: https://futureoflife.org/podcast/podcast-astronomical-future-suffering-and-superintelligence-with-kaj-sotala/
Lucas: Right, cool. At least my understanding is, and you can correct me on this, is that the way that FRI sort of leverages what it does is that … Within the effective altruism community, suffering risks are very large in scope, but it’s also a topic which is very neglected, but also low in probability. Has FRI really taken this up due to that framing, due to its neglectedness within the effective altruism community?
Kaj: I wouldn’t say that the decision to take it up was necessarily an explicit result of looking at those considerations, but in a sense, the neglectedness thing is definitely a factor, in that basically no one else seems to be looking at suffering risks. So far, most of the discussion about risks from AI and that kind of thing has been focused on risks of extinction, and there have been people within FRI who feel that risks of extreme suffering might actually be very plausible, and may be even more probable than risks of extinction. But of course, that depends on a lot of assumptions.
From an article (and corresponding talk) given by Max Daniel called “S risks: Why they are the worst existential risks, and how to prevent them”: https://longtermrisk.org/s-risks-talk-eag-boston-2017/
Part of the article focuses on the probability of s-risks, which starts by saying “I’ll argue that s-risks are not much more unlikely than AI-related extinction risk. I’ll explain why I think this is true and will address two objections along the way.”
Here are some more related sources: https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/research/intro/
https://longtermrisk.org/reducing-risks-of-astronomical-suffering-a-neglected-priority/#IIIII_Astronomical_suffering_as_a_likely_outcome
There is also a subreddit for s-risks. In this post, UHMWPE-UwU (who created the subreddit) has a comment which says “prevalent current assumption in the alignment field seems to be that their likelihood is negligible, but clearly not the case especially with near-miss/failed alignment risks
https://www.reddit.com/r/SufferingRisk/comments/10uz5fn/general_brainstormingdiscussion_post_next_steps/