Oog and Og are sitting in the forest. Oog says ‘man someone could build a fire and totally destroy this whole place, we need to devote a lot more energy to stove research before that happens.‘. Og says ‘sure, fire, OK, that’s sci-fi stuff, I’m going to go gather some berries while you waste your time with heat flow calculations and the stove safety problem’.
Oog doesn’t like being brushed off, so he decides to try a different tactic. Og returns to see Oog waving a brightly burning torch around in the air, dangerously close to the dry leaves and twigs of their shelter. Og’s reaction is far less skeptical than before: ‘Oog! You will kill us all, stop waving that thing around until we have at least a pit dug!’
So yes, the best thing you can do to popularize the cause of AI safety could be building an obviously unsafe AI and doing something demonstrably dangerous with it.
Oog and Og are sitting in the forest. Oog says ‘man someone could build a fire and totally destroy this whole place, we need to devote a lot more energy to stove research before that happens.‘. Og says ‘sure, fire, OK, that’s sci-fi stuff, I’m going to go gather some berries while you waste your time with heat flow calculations and the stove safety problem’.
Oog doesn’t like being brushed off, so he decides to try a different tactic. Og returns to see Oog waving a brightly burning torch around in the air, dangerously close to the dry leaves and twigs of their shelter. Og’s reaction is far less skeptical than before: ‘Oog! You will kill us all, stop waving that thing around until we have at least a pit dug!’
So yes, the best thing you can do to popularize the cause of AI safety could be building an obviously unsafe AI and doing something demonstrably dangerous with it.