Max—I think your observations are right. The ‘normies’, once they understand AI extinction risk, tend to have much clearer, more decisive, more negative moral reactions to AI than many EAs, rationalists, and technophiles tend to have. (We’ve been conditioned by our EA/Rat subcultures to think we need to ‘play nice’ with the AI industry, no matter how sociopathic it proves to be.)
Whether a moral anti-AI backlash can actually slow AI progress is the Big Question. I think so, but my epistemic confidence on this issue is pretty wide. As an evolutionary psychologist, my inclination is to expect that human instincts for morally stigmatizing behaviors, traits, and people perceived as ‘evil’ have evolved to be very effective in reducing those behaviors, suppressing those traits, and ostracizing those people. But whether those instincts can be organized at a global scale, across billions of people, is the open question.
Of course, we don’t need billions to become anti-AI activists. We only need a few million of the most influential, committed people to raise the alarm—and that would already vastly out-number the people working in the AI industry or actively supporting its hubris.
Max—I think your observations are right. The ‘normies’, once they understand AI extinction risk, tend to have much clearer, more decisive, more negative moral reactions to AI than many EAs, rationalists, and technophiles tend to have. (We’ve been conditioned by our EA/Rat subcultures to think we need to ‘play nice’ with the AI industry, no matter how sociopathic it proves to be.)
Whether a moral anti-AI backlash can actually slow AI progress is the Big Question. I think so, but my epistemic confidence on this issue is pretty wide. As an evolutionary psychologist, my inclination is to expect that human instincts for morally stigmatizing behaviors, traits, and people perceived as ‘evil’ have evolved to be very effective in reducing those behaviors, suppressing those traits, and ostracizing those people. But whether those instincts can be organized at a global scale, across billions of people, is the open question.
Of course, we don’t need billions to become anti-AI activists. We only need a few million of the most influential, committed people to raise the alarm—and that would already vastly out-number the people working in the AI industry or actively supporting its hubris.