I would have liked to write a post that offers one weird trick to avoid being confused by which areas of AI are more or less safe to advance, but I can’t write that post. As far as I know, the answer is simply that you have to model the social landscape around you and how your research contributions are going to be applied.
Another thing that can’t be ignored is the threat of Social Balkanization, Divide-and-conquer tactics have been prevalent among military strategists for millennia, and the tactic remains prevalent and psychologically available among the people making up corporate factions and many subcultures (likely including leftist and right-wing subcultures).
It is easy for external forces to notice opportunities to Balkanize a group, to make it weaker and easier to acquire or capture the splinters, which in turn provides further opportunity for lateral movement and spotting more exploits. Since awareness and exploitation of this vulnerability is prevalent, social systems without this specific hardening are very brittle and have dismal prospects.
Sadly, Balkanization can also emerge naturally, as you helpfully pointed out in Consciousness as a Conflationary Alliance Term, so the high base rates make it harder to correctly distinguishing attacks from accidents. Inadequately calibrated autoimmune responses are not only damaging, but should be assumed to be automatically anticipated and misdirected by default, including as part of the mundane social dynamics of a group with no external attackers.
Another thing that can’t be ignored is the threat of Social Balkanization, Divide-and-conquer tactics have been prevalent among military strategists for millennia, and the tactic remains prevalent and psychologically available among the people making up corporate factions and many subcultures (likely including leftist and right-wing subcultures).
It is easy for external forces to notice opportunities to Balkanize a group, to make it weaker and easier to acquire or capture the splinters, which in turn provides further opportunity for lateral movement and spotting more exploits. Since awareness and exploitation of this vulnerability is prevalent, social systems without this specific hardening are very brittle and have dismal prospects.
Sadly, Balkanization can also emerge naturally, as you helpfully pointed out in Consciousness as a Conflationary Alliance Term, so the high base rates make it harder to correctly distinguishing attacks from accidents. Inadequately calibrated autoimmune responses are not only damaging, but should be assumed to be automatically anticipated and misdirected by default, including as part of the mundane social dynamics of a group with no external attackers.
There is no way around the loss function.