My main predictions on how the AI debate will go over the next several years, assuming that AI progress continues:
There could well a large portion of the public freaked out, and my prediction is that it will range in the 10-50% of people who want to ban AI at any cost.
Polarization will happen along pro/anti-AI lines, and more importantly the bipartisan consensus on AI will likely collapse into polarized camps.
Republicans will shift into being AI accelerationists, while Democrats will shift more into the AI safety camp.
Maybe the AI backlash doesn’t occur, or is far weaker than people think once prices collapse for some goods, and maybe the AI unemployment factor turns out to be tolerable for the public.
I don’t give the 4th scenario a high chance, but it is worth keeping in mind.
(One of my takeaways in the 2024 election results around the world is that people are fine with lots of unemployment, but hate price increases, and this might apply to AGI too.)
I’m particularly concerned with polarization. Becoming a political football was the death knell for sensible discussion on climate change, and it could be the same for AGI x-risk. Public belief in climate change actually fell while the evidence mounted. My older post AI scares and changing public beliefs is actually mostly about polarization.
Having the debate become ideologically/politically motivated seems like it wouldn’t be good. I’m still really hoping to avoid polarization on AGI x-risk. It does seem like “AI safety”, concerns about bias, deepfakes, and harms from interacting with LLMs are already primarily discussed among liberals in the US.
Neither side has started really worrying about job loss, but that would tend to be the liberal side, too, since conservatives are still somewhat more free-market oriented.
While tying concerns about x-risk with calls to slow AI based on mundane harms might seem expedient, I wouldn’t take that bargain if it created worse polarization.
I think this is a common attitude among the x-risk worried, especially since it’s hard to predict whether a slowdown in the US AGI push would be a net good or bad thing for x-risk.
My main predictions on how the AI debate will go over the next several years, assuming that AI progress continues:
There could well a large portion of the public freaked out, and my prediction is that it will range in the 10-50% of people who want to ban AI at any cost.
Polarization will happen along pro/anti-AI lines, and more importantly the bipartisan consensus on AI will likely collapse into polarized camps.
Republicans will shift into being AI accelerationists, while Democrats will shift more into the AI safety camp.
Maybe the AI backlash doesn’t occur, or is far weaker than people think once prices collapse for some goods, and maybe the AI unemployment factor turns out to be tolerable for the public.
I don’t give the 4th scenario a high chance, but it is worth keeping in mind.
(One of my takeaways in the 2024 election results around the world is that people are fine with lots of unemployment, but hate price increases, and this might apply to AGI too.)
Those outcomes sound quite plausible.
I’m particularly concerned with polarization. Becoming a political football was the death knell for sensible discussion on climate change, and it could be the same for AGI x-risk. Public belief in climate change actually fell while the evidence mounted. My older post AI scares and changing public beliefs is actually mostly about polarization.
Having the debate become ideologically/politically motivated seems like it wouldn’t be good. I’m still really hoping to avoid polarization on AGI x-risk. It does seem like “AI safety”, concerns about bias, deepfakes, and harms from interacting with LLMs are already primarily discussed among liberals in the US.
Neither side has started really worrying about job loss, but that would tend to be the liberal side, too, since conservatives are still somewhat more free-market oriented.
While tying concerns about x-risk with calls to slow AI based on mundane harms might seem expedient, I wouldn’t take that bargain if it created worse polarization.
I think this is a common attitude among the x-risk worried, especially since it’s hard to predict whether a slowdown in the US AGI push would be a net good or bad thing for x-risk.