Setting aside all of my broader views on this post and its content, I want to emphasize one thing:
But in the last few years, we’ve gotten: [...]
AIs that are superhuman at just about any task we can (or simply bother to) define a benchmark, for
I think that this is painfully overstated (or at best, lacks important caveats). But regardless of whether you agree with that, I think it should be clear that this does not send signals of good epistemics to many of the fence-sitters[1] you’d presumably like to persuade.
To go a step further, I think it’s important for people to recognize that you aren’t necessarily just representing your own views; poorly articulated views on AI safety could crucially undermine the efforts of many people who are trying to persuade important decision-makers of these risks. I’m not saying to “shut up,” but I think people need to at least be more careful with regards to quotes like the one I provided above—especially since that last bullet point wasn’t even necessary to get across the broader concern (and, in my view, it was wrong insofar as it tried to legitimize the specific claim).
Setting aside all of my broader views on this post and its content, I want to emphasize one thing:
I think that this is painfully overstated (or at best, lacks important caveats). But regardless of whether you agree with that, I think it should be clear that this does not send signals of good epistemics to many of the fence-sitters[1] you’d presumably like to persuade.
(Note: Sen also addresses the above quote in a separate comment, but I didn’t feel his point and tone was similar to mine, so I wanted to comment this separately.)
I would probably consider myself in this category. Note, however, I am not just talking about skeptics who are very unlikely to change their views.
To go a step further, I think it’s important for people to recognize that you aren’t necessarily just representing your own views; poorly articulated views on AI safety could crucially undermine the efforts of many people who are trying to persuade important decision-makers of these risks. I’m not saying to “shut up,” but I think people need to at least be more careful with regards to quotes like the one I provided above—especially since that last bullet point wasn’t even necessary to get across the broader concern (and, in my view, it was wrong insofar as it tried to legitimize the specific claim).