I strong downvoted, because I think public protest are not a good way of pushing for change.
They are a symmetric weapon.
They lock you in certain positions. There is a lot of momentum in a social movement that is carried through such public displays, which makes it difficult to change or reverse your position (for example, if we learned that for reason X it is much better to speed up the development of AI, which I don’t think is that improbable a priori).
They promote tribalistic, collective mindset. Protests like this are antithetic to the deep, 1-1 dialogue that LW stands for. I feel that the primary motivation for attending a protest is building camadarie and letting out emotions, which has more downsides than upsides, especially long-term. It also suports us-vs-them mentality.
Even if they change anyone’s mind, it is for wrong reasons. Public protests by necessity have to dumb down the message to a point that you can write on a poster. They lump people together present a unified front, and by doing that, lose nuance and diversity of opinions. If anyone changes their mind, it is because of reasons other than its merit.
They are an ineeffective way of using resources. The marginal value of spending time at a protest is negative for most of the people with any background in AI safety. It is much better to think, read papers, write papers, do experiments, chat with people around you, attend research seminars etc., than to picket on a street. Protests signal that you do not have anything more to offer than your presence.
There are some rare situations in which protests are a good choice, but mostly as the option of last resort. A possible counterpoint, that you are mostly advocating for awareness as opssosed to specific points is null, since pretty much everyone is aware of the problem now—both society as a whole, policymakers in particular, and people in AI research and alignment.
A possible counterpoint, that you are mostly advocating for awareness as opssosed to specific points is null, since pretty much everyone is aware of the problem now—both society as a whole, policymakers in particular, and people in AI research and alignment.
I think this specific point is false, especially outside of tech circles. My experience has been that while people are concerned about AI in general, and very open to X-risk when they hear about it, there is zero awareness of X-risk beyond popular fiction. It’s possible that my sample isn’t representative here, but I would expect that to swing in the other direction, given that the folks I interact with are often well-educated New-York-Times-reading types, who are going to be more informed than average.
Even among those aware, there’s also a difference between far-mode “awareness” in the sense of X-risk as some far away academic problem, and near-mode “awareness” in the sense of “oh shit, maybe this could actually impact me.” Hearing a bunch of academic arguments, but never seeing anybody actually getting fired up or protesting, will implicitly cause people to put X-risk in the first bucket. Because if they personally believed it to be big a near-term risk, they’d certainly be angry and protesting, and if other people aren’t, that’s a signal other people don’t really take it seriously. People sense a missing mood here and update on it.
I strong downvoted, because I think public protest are not a good way of pushing for change.
They are a symmetric weapon.
They lock you in certain positions. There is a lot of momentum in a social movement that is carried through such public displays, which makes it difficult to change or reverse your position (for example, if we learned that for reason X it is much better to speed up the development of AI, which I don’t think is that improbable a priori).
They promote tribalistic, collective mindset. Protests like this are antithetic to the deep, 1-1 dialogue that LW stands for. I feel that the primary motivation for attending a protest is building camadarie and letting out emotions, which has more downsides than upsides, especially long-term. It also suports us-vs-them mentality.
Even if they change anyone’s mind, it is for wrong reasons. Public protests by necessity have to dumb down the message to a point that you can write on a poster. They lump people together present a unified front, and by doing that, lose nuance and diversity of opinions. If anyone changes their mind, it is because of reasons other than its merit.
They are an ineeffective way of using resources. The marginal value of spending time at a protest is negative for most of the people with any background in AI safety. It is much better to think, read papers, write papers, do experiments, chat with people around you, attend research seminars etc., than to picket on a street. Protests signal that you do not have anything more to offer than your presence.
There are some rare situations in which protests are a good choice, but mostly as the option of last resort. A possible counterpoint, that you are mostly advocating for awareness as opssosed to specific points is null, since pretty much everyone is aware of the problem now—both society as a whole, policymakers in particular, and people in AI research and alignment.
I think this specific point is false, especially outside of tech circles. My experience has been that while people are concerned about AI in general, and very open to X-risk when they hear about it, there is zero awareness of X-risk beyond popular fiction. It’s possible that my sample isn’t representative here, but I would expect that to swing in the other direction, given that the folks I interact with are often well-educated New-York-Times-reading types, who are going to be more informed than average.
Even among those aware, there’s also a difference between far-mode “awareness” in the sense of X-risk as some far away academic problem, and near-mode “awareness” in the sense of “oh shit, maybe this could actually impact me.” Hearing a bunch of academic arguments, but never seeing anybody actually getting fired up or protesting, will implicitly cause people to put X-risk in the first bucket. Because if they personally believed it to be big a near-term risk, they’d certainly be angry and protesting, and if other people aren’t, that’s a signal other people don’t really take it seriously. People sense a missing mood here and update on it.