I wouldn’t recommend watching this talk to someone unfamiliar with the AI risk arguments, and I think promoting it would be a mistake. Yudkowsky seemed better on Lex Friedman’s podcast. A few more Rational Animations-style AI risk YouTube videos would be more effective.
“Squiggle Maximizer” and “Paperclip Maximizer” have to go. They’re misleading terms for the orthogonal AI utility function that make the concept seem like a joke when communicating with the general public. Better to use a different term, preferably something that represents a goal that’s valuable to humans. All funny-sounding insider jargon should be avoided cough notkilleveryoneism cough.
Nanotech is too science-fictiony and distracting. More realistic near-term scenarios (hacks of nuclear facilities like Stuxnet to control energy, out-of-control trading causing world economies to crash and leading to a full-on nuclear war, large-scale environmental disaster that’s lethal to humans but not machines, gain-of-function virus engineering, controlling important people through blackmail) would resonate better and emphasize the fragility of human civilization.
The chess analogy (“you will lose but I can’t tell you exactly how”) is effective. It’s also challenging to illustrate to people how something can be significantly more intelligent than them, and this analogy simultaneously helps convey that by reminding people how they easily lose to computers.
I wouldn’t recommend watching this talk to someone unfamiliar with the AI risk arguments, and I think promoting it would be a mistake. Yudkowsky seemed better on Lex Friedman’s podcast. A few more Rational Animations-style AI risk YouTube videos would be more effective.
“Squiggle Maximizer” and “Paperclip Maximizer” have to go. They’re misleading terms for the orthogonal AI utility function that make the concept seem like a joke when communicating with the general public. Better to use a different term, preferably something that represents a goal that’s valuable to humans. All funny-sounding insider jargon should be avoided cough notkilleveryoneism cough.
Nanotech is too science-fictiony and distracting. More realistic near-term scenarios (hacks of nuclear facilities like Stuxnet to control energy, out-of-control trading causing world economies to crash and leading to a full-on nuclear war, large-scale environmental disaster that’s lethal to humans but not machines, gain-of-function virus engineering, controlling important people through blackmail) would resonate better and emphasize the fragility of human civilization.
The chess analogy (“you will lose but I can’t tell you exactly how”) is effective. It’s also challenging to illustrate to people how something can be significantly more intelligent than them, and this analogy simultaneously helps convey that by reminding people how they easily lose to computers.