This post and the comments are a very interesting read. There is one thing that I find confusing, however. My impression is that in the text and the comments, children are only discussed as means to fulfilling the parents’ “reproductive goals” and traded off against the opportunity cost of saving humanity (though it is also discussed that this dichotomy is false because by saving humanity you also save your children). Probably I am overlooking something, but what I don’t see is a mention whether the expectations of AI timelines, to the extent that you cannot influence them, affect (or should affect) peoples’ decisions of having children. A relevant number of people seem to expect AGI in something like 8 years and low probability of alignment. I am a bit confused about the “animal” arguments, but it sounds a bit like saying “Okay even if you believe the world will end in 8 years, but you are in the age span where your hormones tell you that you want children, you should do that”. As someone who is just an interested (and worried) reader with regards to this topic, I wonder whether people in AI alignment just postpone or give up on having children because they expect disaster.
This post and the comments are a very interesting read. There is one thing that I find confusing, however. My impression is that in the text and the comments, children are only discussed as means to fulfilling the parents’ “reproductive goals” and traded off against the opportunity cost of saving humanity (though it is also discussed that this dichotomy is false because by saving humanity you also save your children). Probably I am overlooking something, but what I don’t see is a mention whether the expectations of AI timelines, to the extent that you cannot influence them, affect (or should affect) peoples’ decisions of having children. A relevant number of people seem to expect AGI in something like 8 years and low probability of alignment. I am a bit confused about the “animal” arguments, but it sounds a bit like saying “Okay even if you believe the world will end in 8 years, but you are in the age span where your hormones tell you that you want children, you should do that”. As someone who is just an interested (and worried) reader with regards to this topic, I wonder whether people in AI alignment just postpone or give up on having children because they expect disaster.