I agree that “not dying in a base universe” is a more reasonable thing to care about than “proving people right that takeoff is slow” but I feel like both lines of argument that you bring up here are doing something where you take a perspective on the world that is very computationalist, unituitive and therefore takes you to extremely weird places, makes strong assumptions about what a post-singularity humanity will care about, and then uses that to try to defeat an argument in a weird and twisted way that maybe is technically correct, but I think unless you are really careful with every step, really does not actually communicate what is going on.
I agree that common sense morality and common sense views are quite confused about the relevant situation. Indexical selfish perspectives are also pretty confused and are perhaps even more incoherant.
However, I think that under the most straightforward generalization of common sense views or selfishness where you just care about the base universe and there is just one base universe, this scheme can work to save lives in the base universe[1].
I legitimately think that common sense moral views should care less about AI takeover due to these arguments. As in, there is a reasonable chance that a bunch of people aren’t killed due to these arguments (and other different arguments) in the most straightforward sense.
I also think “the AI might leave you alone, but we don’t really know and there seems at least a high chance that huge numbers of people, including you, die” is not a bad summary of the situation.
In some sense they are an argument against any specific human-scale bad thing to happen, because if we do win, we could spend a substantial fraction of our resources with future AI systems to prevent that.
Yes. I think any human-scale bad thing (except stuff needed for the AI to most easily take over and solidify control) can be paid for and this has some chance of working. (Tiny amounts of kindness works in a similar way.)
Humanity will not go extinct, because we are in a simulation.
FWIW, I think it is non-obvious how common sense views interpret these considerations. I think it is probably common to just care about base reality? (Which is basically equivalent to having a measure etc.) I do think that common sense moral views don’t consider it good to run these simulations for this purpose while bailing out aliens who would have bailed us out is totally normal/reasonable under common sense moral views.
It is obviously extremely fucking bad for AI to disempower humanity. I think “literally everyone you know dies” is a much more accurate capture of that, and also a much more valid conclusion from conservative premises
Why not just say what’s more straightforwardly true:
“I believe that AI takeover has a high probability of killing billions and should be strongly avoided, and would be a serious and irreversible decision by our society that’s likely to be a mistake even if it doesn’t lead to billions of deaths.”
I don’t think “literally everyone you know dies if AI takes over” is accurate because I don’t expect that in the base reality version of this universe for multiple reasons. Like it might happen, but I don’t know if it is more than 50% likely.
It’s not crazy to call the resulting scheme “multiverse/simulation shenanigans” TBC (as it involves prediction/simulation and uncertainty over the base universe), but I think this is just because I expect that multiverse/simulation shenanigans will alter the way AIs in base reality act in the common sense straightforward way.
“I believe that AI takeover has a high probability of killing billions and should be strongly avoided, and would be a serious and irreversible decision by our society that’s likely to be a mistake even if it doesn’t lead to billions of deaths.”
I mean, this feels like it is of completely the wrong magnitude. “Killing billions” is just vastly vastly vastly less bad than “completely eradicating humanity’s future”, which is actually what is going on.
Like, my attitude towards AI and x-risk would be hugely different if the right abstraction would be “a few billion people die”. Like, OK, that’s like a few decades of population growth. Basically nothing in the big picture. And I think this is also true by the vast majority of common-sense ethical views. People care about the future of humanity. “Saving the world” is hugely more important than preventing the marginal atrocity. Outside of EA I have never actually met a welfarist who only cares about present humans. People of course think we are supposed to be good stewards of humanity’s future, especially if you select on the people who are actually involved in global scale decisions.
Normal people who are not bought into super crazy computationalist stuff understand that humanity’s extinction is much worse than just a few billion people dying, and the thing that is happening is much more like extinction than it is like a few billion people dying.
(I mostly care about long term future and scope sensitive resource use like habryka TBC.)
Sure, we can amend to:
“I believe that AI takeover would eliminate humanity’s control over its future, has a high probability of killing billions, and should be strongly avoided.”
We could also say something like “AI takeover seems similar to takeover by hostile aliens with potentially unrecognizable values. It would eliminate humanity’s control over its future and has a high probability of killing billions.”
And I think this is also true by the vast majority of common-sense ethical views. People care about the future of humanity. “Saving the world” is hugely more important than preventing the marginal atrocity. Outside of EA I have never actually met a welfarist who only cares about present humans. People of course think we are supposed to be good stewards of humanity’s future, especially if you select on the people who are actually involved in global scale decisions.
Hmmm, I agree with this as stated, but it’s not clear to me that this is scope sensitive. As in, suppose that the AI will eventually leave humans in control of earth and the solar system. Do people typically this is an extremely bad? I don’t think so, though I’m not sure.
And, I think trading for humans to eventually control the solar system is pretty doable. (Most of the trade cost is in preventing an earlier slaughter and violence which was useful for takeover or avoiding delay.)
At a more basic level, I think the situation is just actually much more confusing than human extinction in a bunch of ways.
(Separately, under my views misaligned AI takeover seems worse than human extinction due to (e.g.) biorisk. This is because primates or other closely related seem very likely to re-evolve into an intelligent civilization and I feel better about this civilization than AIs.)
I agree that common sense morality and common sense views are quite confused about the relevant situation. Indexical selfish perspectives are also pretty confused and are perhaps even more incoherant.
However, I think that under the most straightforward generalization of common sense views or selfishness where you just care about the base universe and there is just one base universe, this scheme can work to save lives in the base universe[1].
I legitimately think that common sense moral views should care less about AI takeover due to these arguments. As in, there is a reasonable chance that a bunch of people aren’t killed due to these arguments (and other different arguments) in the most straightforward sense.
I also think “the AI might leave you alone, but we don’t really know and there seems at least a high chance that huge numbers of people, including you, die” is not a bad summary of the situation.
Yes. I think any human-scale bad thing (except stuff needed for the AI to most easily take over and solidify control) can be paid for and this has some chance of working. (Tiny amounts of kindness works in a similar way.)
FWIW, I think it is non-obvious how common sense views interpret these considerations. I think it is probably common to just care about base reality? (Which is basically equivalent to having a measure etc.) I do think that common sense moral views don’t consider it good to run these simulations for this purpose while bailing out aliens who would have bailed us out is totally normal/reasonable under common sense moral views.
Why not just say what’s more straightforwardly true:
“I believe that AI takeover has a high probability of killing billions and should be strongly avoided, and would be a serious and irreversible decision by our society that’s likely to be a mistake even if it doesn’t lead to billions of deaths.”
I don’t think “literally everyone you know dies if AI takes over” is accurate because I don’t expect that in the base reality version of this universe for multiple reasons. Like it might happen, but I don’t know if it is more than 50% likely.
It’s not crazy to call the resulting scheme “multiverse/simulation shenanigans” TBC (as it involves prediction/simulation and uncertainty over the base universe), but I think this is just because I expect that multiverse/simulation shenanigans will alter the way AIs in base reality act in the common sense straightforward way.
I mean, this feels like it is of completely the wrong magnitude. “Killing billions” is just vastly vastly vastly less bad than “completely eradicating humanity’s future”, which is actually what is going on.
Like, my attitude towards AI and x-risk would be hugely different if the right abstraction would be “a few billion people die”. Like, OK, that’s like a few decades of population growth. Basically nothing in the big picture. And I think this is also true by the vast majority of common-sense ethical views. People care about the future of humanity. “Saving the world” is hugely more important than preventing the marginal atrocity. Outside of EA I have never actually met a welfarist who only cares about present humans. People of course think we are supposed to be good stewards of humanity’s future, especially if you select on the people who are actually involved in global scale decisions.
Normal people who are not bought into super crazy computationalist stuff understand that humanity’s extinction is much worse than just a few billion people dying, and the thing that is happening is much more like extinction than it is like a few billion people dying.
(I mostly care about long term future and scope sensitive resource use like habryka TBC.)
Sure, we can amend to:
“I believe that AI takeover would eliminate humanity’s control over its future, has a high probability of killing billions, and should be strongly avoided.”
We could also say something like “AI takeover seems similar to takeover by hostile aliens with potentially unrecognizable values. It would eliminate humanity’s control over its future and has a high probability of killing billions.”
Hmmm, I agree with this as stated, but it’s not clear to me that this is scope sensitive. As in, suppose that the AI will eventually leave humans in control of earth and the solar system. Do people typically this is an extremely bad? I don’t think so, though I’m not sure.
And, I think trading for humans to eventually control the solar system is pretty doable. (Most of the trade cost is in preventing an earlier slaughter and violence which was useful for takeover or avoiding delay.)
At a more basic level, I think the situation is just actually much more confusing than human extinction in a bunch of ways.
(Separately, under my views misaligned AI takeover seems worse than human extinction due to (e.g.) biorisk. This is because primates or other closely related seem very likely to re-evolve into an intelligent civilization and I feel better about this civilization than AIs.)