Yes, I think there are many, many more possibilities as these systems get more advanced. A number of us are working to flesh out possible stable endpoints. One class of world states are comprised of humans, AIs, and provable infrastructure (including manufacturing and datacenters). In that world, humans have total freedom and abundance as long as they don’t harm other humans or the infrastructure. In those worlds, it appears possible to put absolute limits on the total world compute, on AI agency, on Moloch-like economic competition, on harmful evolution, on uncontrolled self-improvement, on uncontrolled nanotech, and on many other of today’s risks.
But everything depends on how we get from the present state to that future state. I think the Aschenbrenner timelines are plausible for purely technological development. But the social reality may change them drastically. For example, if the social upheaval leads to extensive warfare, I would imagine that GPU datacenters and chip fabs would be likely targets. That could limit the available compute sufficiently to slow down AI development dramatically.
I’ve spoken about some of the future possibilities in different talks like this one:
but I think it’s easier for most people to think about the more immediate issues before considering the longer term consequences.
Given this lower level of ambition, I fail to see how this approach or agenda can be positioned as an alternative to pausing AI.
Oh, any low level of ambition is just for this initial stage, without which the more advanced solutions can’t be created. For example, without a provably unbreakable hardware layer supporting provably correct software, you can’t have social contracts which everyone can absolutely trust to be carried out as specified.
And I think pausing would be great if it were possible! I signed the Pause letter and I think it generated good and important discussion, but I don’t think it slowed down AI development. And the instability of pausing means that at best we get a short extension of the AI development timeline. For that to be of long term value, humanity needs to use the extra time to do something! What should it do? It should flesh out all the pieces needed to effectively implement provable safety!
Yes, I think there are many, many more possibilities as these systems get more advanced. A number of us are working to flesh out possible stable endpoints. One class of world states are comprised of humans, AIs, and provable infrastructure (including manufacturing and datacenters). In that world, humans have total freedom and abundance as long as they don’t harm other humans or the infrastructure. In those worlds, it appears possible to put absolute limits on the total world compute, on AI agency, on Moloch-like economic competition, on harmful evolution, on uncontrolled self-improvement, on uncontrolled nanotech, and on many other of today’s risks.
But everything depends on how we get from the present state to that future state. I think the Aschenbrenner timelines are plausible for purely technological development. But the social reality may change them drastically. For example, if the social upheaval leads to extensive warfare, I would imagine that GPU datacenters and chip fabs would be likely targets. That could limit the available compute sufficiently to slow down AI development dramatically.
I’ve spoken about some of the future possibilities in different talks like this one:
but I think it’s easier for most people to think about the more immediate issues before considering the longer term consequences.
Oh, any low level of ambition is just for this initial stage, without which the more advanced solutions can’t be created. For example, without a provably unbreakable hardware layer supporting provably correct software, you can’t have social contracts which everyone can absolutely trust to be carried out as specified.
And I think pausing would be great if it were possible! I signed the Pause letter and I think it generated good and important discussion, but I don’t think it slowed down AI development. And the instability of pausing means that at best we get a short extension of the AI development timeline. For that to be of long term value, humanity needs to use the extra time to do something! What should it do? It should flesh out all the pieces needed to effectively implement provable safety!
For example, this came out yesterday showing the sorry state of today’s voting machines: “The nation’s best hackers found vulnerabilities in voting machines — but no time to fix them” https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/12/hackers-vulnerabilities-voting-machines-elections-00173668 And they’ve been working on making voting machines secure for decades!