Taking for granted that AGI will kill everybody, and taking for granted that this is bad, it’s confusing why we would want to mount costly, yet quite weak, and (poorly) symbolic measures to merely (possibly) slow down research.
Israel’s efforts against Iran are a state effort and are not accountable to the law. What is proposed is a ragtag amateur effort against a state orders of magnitude more powerful than Iran. And make no mistake, AGI research is a national interest. It’s hard to overstate the width of the chasm.
Even gaining a few hours is pretty questionable, and a few hours for a billion people may be a big win or it might not. Is a few seconds for a quadrillion people a big win? What happens during that time and after? It’s not clear that extending the existence of the human race by what is mostly a trivial amount of time even in the scope of a single life is a big deal even if it’s guaranteed.
There is also a pretty good chance that efforts along the lines described may backfire, and spur a doubling-down on AGI research.
Overall this smells like a Pascal’s scam. There is a very, very low chance of success against a +EV of debatable size.
I think you’re overstating the width of the chasm. Where are you getting the impression that congress or the state department is so committed to AGI in a non-symbolic way? Most of the research towards AGI capabilities is done at the moment by private actors, staffed almost entirely by the kind of systematizing nerd most often concerned by existential risk. What exactly is the grand difficulty you expect scaling up the kind of outreach I outlined in the post to a slightly more hostile environment?
Taking for granted that AGI will kill everybody, and taking for granted that this is bad, it’s confusing why we would want to mount costly, yet quite weak, and (poorly) symbolic measures to merely (possibly) slow down research.
Israel’s efforts against Iran are a state effort and are not accountable to the law. What is proposed is a ragtag amateur effort against a state orders of magnitude more powerful than Iran. And make no mistake, AGI research is a national interest. It’s hard to overstate the width of the chasm.
Even gaining a few hours is pretty questionable, and a few hours for a billion people may be a big win or it might not. Is a few seconds for a quadrillion people a big win? What happens during that time and after? It’s not clear that extending the existence of the human race by what is mostly a trivial amount of time even in the scope of a single life is a big deal even if it’s guaranteed.
There is also a pretty good chance that efforts along the lines described may backfire, and spur a doubling-down on AGI research.
Overall this smells like a Pascal’s scam. There is a very, very low chance of success against a +EV of debatable size.
I think you’re overstating the width of the chasm. Where are you getting the impression that congress or the state department is so committed to AGI in a non-symbolic way? Most of the research towards AGI capabilities is done at the moment by private actors, staffed almost entirely by the kind of systematizing nerd most often concerned by existential risk. What exactly is the grand difficulty you expect scaling up the kind of outreach I outlined in the post to a slightly more hostile environment?