I agree that the time frame of 5-30 years is more like a marathon than a sprint, but those you are talking about treat it like a sprint. It would make sense if there was a clear low-uncertainly estimate of “we have to finish in 5 years, and we have 10 years worth of work to do” to better get cracking, everything else is on hold. But it seems like a more realistic estimate is “the TAI timeline is between a few years and a few decades, and we have no clue how much work AI Safety entails, or if it is even an achievable goal. Worse, we cannot even estimate the effort required to figure out if the goal is achievable, or even meaningful.” In this latter case, it’s a marathon on unknown length, and one has to pace themselves. I wonder if this message is intentionally minimized to keep the sense of urgency going.
I agree that the time frame of 5-30 years is more like a marathon than a sprint, but those you are talking about treat it like a sprint. It would make sense if there was a clear low-uncertainly estimate of “we have to finish in 5 years, and we have 10 years worth of work to do” to better get cracking, everything else is on hold. But it seems like a more realistic estimate is “the TAI timeline is between a few years and a few decades, and we have no clue how much work AI Safety entails, or if it is even an achievable goal. Worse, we cannot even estimate the effort required to figure out if the goal is achievable, or even meaningful.” In this latter case, it’s a marathon on unknown length, and one has to pace themselves. I wonder if this message is intentionally minimized to keep the sense of urgency going.