I wonder if work on AI for epistemics could be great for mitigating the “gradually cede control of the Earth to AGI” threat model. A large majority of economic and political power is held by people who would strongly oppose human extinction, so I expect that “lack of political support for stopping human extinction” would be less of a bottleneck than “consensus that we’re heading towards human extinction” and “consensus on what policy proposals will solve the problem”. Both of these could be significantly accelerated by AI. Normally, one of my biggest concerns about “AI for epistemics” is that we might not have much time to get good use of the epistemic assistance before the end — but if the idea is that we’ll have AGI for many years (as we’re gradually heading towards extinction) then there will be plenty of time.
I wonder if work on AI for epistemics could be great for mitigating the “gradually cede control of the Earth to AGI” threat model. A large majority of economic and political power is held by people who would strongly oppose human extinction, so I expect that “lack of political support for stopping human extinction” would be less of a bottleneck than “consensus that we’re heading towards human extinction” and “consensus on what policy proposals will solve the problem”. Both of these could be significantly accelerated by AI. Normally, one of my biggest concerns about “AI for epistemics” is that we might not have much time to get good use of the epistemic assistance before the end — but if the idea is that we’ll have AGI for many years (as we’re gradually heading towards extinction) then there will be plenty of time.