I suspect that this pledge would be just as “effective” as other pledges, such as the pledge of abstinence, for all the same reasons. The person taking the pledge does not really know him or herself (current or future) well enough to reliably precommit.
But the threat would hover over every AGI project. You’d have a team of people, many of whom took the pledge (or may have done so without everyone knowing), and everyone would know that the project has to rely on everyone continuing to violate their earlier pledge.
Also, since the team would be smart people aware of AGI progress outside their organization, they would know that they are violating a deep deontological norm based on clear consequentalist principles. True, people find justifications for what they do, on the assumption that possibly-successful AGI researchers are smart and also have some rationalism in them, this idea would also cast a shadow.
Not only researchers, but their managers would no this.
And if you think that a leak is valuable—all it takes is one person to do it.
I suspect that this pledge would be just as “effective” as other pledges, such as the pledge of abstinence, for all the same reasons. The person taking the pledge does not really know him or herself (current or future) well enough to reliably precommit.
I agree.
But the threat would hover over every AGI project. You’d have a team of people, many of whom took the pledge (or may have done so without everyone knowing), and everyone would know that the project has to rely on everyone continuing to violate their earlier pledge.
Also, since the team would be smart people aware of AGI progress outside their organization, they would know that they are violating a deep deontological norm based on clear consequentalist principles. True, people find justifications for what they do, on the assumption that possibly-successful AGI researchers are smart and also have some rationalism in them, this idea would also cast a shadow.
Not only researchers, but their managers would no this.
And if you think that a leak is valuable—all it takes is one person to do it.