Setting aside the question of whether people are overly confident about their claims regarding AI risk, I’d like to talk about how we talk about it amongst ourselves.
We should avoid jokingly saying “we’re all going to die” because I think it will corrode your calibration to risk with respect to P(doom) and it will give others the impression that we are all more confident about P(doom) than we really are.
I think saying it jokingly still ends up creeping into your rational estimates on timelines and P(doom). I expect that the more you joke about high P(doom), the more likely you will end up developing an unjustified high P(doom). And I think if you say it enough, you can even convince yourself that you are more confident in your high P(doom) than you really are.
Joking about it in public also potentially diminishes your credibility. They may or may not know if you are joking, but that doesn’t matter.
For all the reasons above, I’ve been trying to make a conscious effort to avoid this kind of talk.
From my understanding, being careful with the internal and external language you use is something that is recommended in therapy. Would be great if someone could point me to examples of this.
On joking about how “we’re all going to die”
Setting aside the question of whether people are overly confident about their claims regarding AI risk, I’d like to talk about how we talk about it amongst ourselves.
We should avoid jokingly saying “we’re all going to die” because I think it will corrode your calibration to risk with respect to P(doom) and it will give others the impression that we are all more confident about P(doom) than we really are.
I think saying it jokingly still ends up creeping into your rational estimates on timelines and P(doom). I expect that the more you joke about high P(doom), the more likely you will end up developing an unjustified high P(doom). And I think if you say it enough, you can even convince yourself that you are more confident in your high P(doom) than you really are.
Joking about it in public also potentially diminishes your credibility. They may or may not know if you are joking, but that doesn’t matter.
For all the reasons above, I’ve been trying to make a conscious effort to avoid this kind of talk.
From my understanding, being careful with the internal and external language you use is something that is recommended in therapy. Would be great if someone could point me to examples of this.