I know it’s not aligned with the current zeitgeist on this forum, but I do feel like “everything is going to be okay” (alignment by default) is a valid position and should be included for completeness.
I think people need to remember one very very important mantra;- “I might be wrong!”. We all love trying to calculate the odds , weighing up the possibilities, and then deciding “Well Im very informed, I must be right!”. But we always have a possibllity of being stonkingly, and hilariously, wrong on every count. There are no soothsayers, the future isn’t here.
For all we know, AGI turns up, out of the blue, and it turns out to be one of those friendly minds out of the old Iain Banks novels, fond by default of their simple mush brained human antecedents and ready and willing to help. I mean, its possible right?
And it might just be like that, because we all did the work. And then you get to tell your grandkids one day “Hey we used to be a bit worried the minds would kill us all. But I helped research a way to make sure that never happens”. And your grandkids will think your somewhat excellent. Isn’t that a good thought.
This is totally possible and valid. I would love for this to be true. It’s just that we can plan for the worst case scenario.
I think it can help to believe that things will turn out ok, we are training the AI on human data. It might adopt some values. Once you believe that, then working on alignment can just be a matter of planning for the worst case scenario.
Just in case. Seem like that would be better for mental health.
Very much so. I think there is also truth to the idea that if you believe you are going to succeed you are much more likely to succeed, and certainly if you believe you will fail, you almost certainly will.
For those who are in the midst of mental health crisis, I think it is important to emphasize that plenty of smart, reasonable people have thought about this and come to the conclusion that all this talk of AI-doom is just silly, because either its going to be okay or because AI is actually centuries away. (For example, Francois Chollet) Predicting the future also has a very poor track record, whether the prediction is doom or bloom. We should put significant credence on the idea that things will mostly continue in the way they have been, for better or worse, and that the future might look a lot like the present.
Also, if you are someone who struggles a lot with ruminating on what might happen, and this causes you significant distress, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audiobooks The Power of Now and A New Earth.
I know it’s not aligned with the current zeitgeist on this forum, but I do feel like “everything is going to be okay” (alignment by default) is a valid position and should be included for completeness.
I think people need to remember one very very important mantra;- “I might be wrong!”. We all love trying to calculate the odds , weighing up the possibilities, and then deciding “Well Im very informed, I must be right!”. But we always have a possibllity of being stonkingly, and hilariously, wrong on every count. There are no soothsayers, the future isn’t here.
For all we know, AGI turns up, out of the blue, and it turns out to be one of those friendly minds out of the old Iain Banks novels, fond by default of their simple mush brained human antecedents and ready and willing to help. I mean, its possible right?
And it might just be like that, because we all did the work. And then you get to tell your grandkids one day “Hey we used to be a bit worried the minds would kill us all. But I helped research a way to make sure that never happens”. And your grandkids will think your somewhat excellent. Isn’t that a good thought.
This is totally possible and valid. I would love for this to be true. It’s just that we can plan for the worst case scenario.
I think it can help to believe that things will turn out ok, we are training the AI on human data. It might adopt some values. Once you believe that, then working on alignment can just be a matter of planning for the worst case scenario.
Just in case. Seem like that would be better for mental health.
Very much so. I think there is also truth to the idea that if you believe you are going to succeed you are much more likely to succeed, and certainly if you believe you will fail, you almost certainly will.
For those who are in the midst of mental health crisis, I think it is important to emphasize that plenty of smart, reasonable people have thought about this and come to the conclusion that all this talk of AI-doom is just silly, because either its going to be okay or because AI is actually centuries away. (For example, Francois Chollet) Predicting the future also has a very poor track record, whether the prediction is doom or bloom. We should put significant credence on the idea that things will mostly continue in the way they have been, for better or worse, and that the future might look a lot like the present.
Also, if you are someone who struggles a lot with ruminating on what might happen, and this causes you significant distress, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audiobooks The Power of Now and A New Earth.