It’s possible for someone to believe “Timelines are short because the path to AGI is (blah blah)”, in which case they might hesitate to publicly justify their timelines, and this might indirectly bleed into a hesitation to bring it up in the first place. I agree that merely stating a belief about timelines publicly on LW, per se, seems pretty harmless right now, unless there’s something I’m not thinking of.
(Update: if you’re a famous AI person or politician publishing a high-profile op-ed that it’s feasible for a focused project to make AGI today, that would be a bit different, that would require some thought about whether you’re contributing to a worldwide competitive sprint to AGI. But a LW post today wouldn’t move the needle on that, I think.)
Timelines are short because the path to AGI is (blah blah)
This requires a high degree of precision about your knowledge of the path to AGI, which makes it seem not that plausible, unless timelines are very short no matter what you say because others will stumble their way through the path you’ve identified soon anyway.
It’s possible for someone to believe “Timelines are short because the path to AGI is (blah blah)”, in which case they might hesitate to publicly justify their timelines, and this might indirectly bleed into a hesitation to bring it up in the first place. I agree that merely stating a belief about timelines publicly on LW, per se, seems pretty harmless right now, unless there’s something I’m not thinking of.
(Update: if you’re a famous AI person or politician publishing a high-profile op-ed that it’s feasible for a focused project to make AGI today, that would be a bit different, that would require some thought about whether you’re contributing to a worldwide competitive sprint to AGI. But a LW post today wouldn’t move the needle on that, I think.)
This requires a high degree of precision about your knowledge of the path to AGI, which makes it seem not that plausible, unless timelines are very short no matter what you say because others will stumble their way through the path you’ve identified soon anyway.