Worth mentioning that some parts of Superintelligence are already a less contrarian version of many arguments made here in the past.
Also note that although some people do believe that FHI is some sense “contrarian”, when you look at the actual hard data on this the fact is FHI has been able to publish in mainstream journals (within philosophy at least) and reach important mainstream researchers (within AI at least) at rates comparable, if not higher, to excellent “non-contrarian” institutes.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to contradict any of this. I wonder how much a role previous arguments from MIRI and FHI played in changing the zeitgeist and contributing to the way Superintelligence was received. There was a slow increase in uninformed fear-of-AI sentiments over the preceding years, which may have put people in more of a position to consider the arguments in Superintelligence. I think that much of this ultimately traces back to MIRI and FHI; for example many anonymous internet commenters refer to them or use phrasing inspired by them, though many others don’t. I’m more sceptical that this change in zeitgeist was helpful though.
Of course specific people who interacted with MIRI/FHI more strongly, such as Jaan Tallinn and Peter Thiel, were helpful in bring the discourse to where it is today.
Worth mentioning that some parts of Superintelligence are already a less contrarian version of many arguments made here in the past.
Also note that although some people do believe that FHI is some sense “contrarian”, when you look at the actual hard data on this the fact is FHI has been able to publish in mainstream journals (within philosophy at least) and reach important mainstream researchers (within AI at least) at rates comparable, if not higher, to excellent “non-contrarian” institutes.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to contradict any of this. I wonder how much a role previous arguments from MIRI and FHI played in changing the zeitgeist and contributing to the way Superintelligence was received. There was a slow increase in uninformed fear-of-AI sentiments over the preceding years, which may have put people in more of a position to consider the arguments in Superintelligence. I think that much of this ultimately traces back to MIRI and FHI; for example many anonymous internet commenters refer to them or use phrasing inspired by them, though many others don’t. I’m more sceptical that this change in zeitgeist was helpful though.
Of course specific people who interacted with MIRI/FHI more strongly, such as Jaan Tallinn and Peter Thiel, were helpful in bring the discourse to where it is today.