“One of the most striking features of the “six-month Pause” plea was how intellectually limited and non-diverse — across fields — the signers were.” [...] Nearly all reasonable discussions of AI x-risk have taken place in the peculiar cultural bubble of rationality and EA.
Some counter-examples that come to mind: Joshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak. Looking at the Pause Giant Experiments Open letter now, I also see several signatories from fields like history, philosophy, some signers identifying as teachers, priests, librarians, psychologists, etc.
(Not that I disagree broadly with your point that the discussion has been strongly weighted in the rationality and EA communities.)
Some counter-examples that come to mind: Joshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak. Looking at the Pause Giant Experiments Open letter now, I also see several signatories from fields like history, philosophy, some signers identifying as teachers, priests, librarians, psychologists, etc.
(Not that I disagree broadly with your point that the discussion has been strongly weighted in the rationality and EA communities.)