I agree that it is important to be clear about the potential for catastrophic AI risk, and I am somewhat disappointed in the answer above (though I think calling “I don’t know” lying is a bit of a stretch). But on the whole, I think people have been pretty upfront about catastrophic risk, e.g. Dario has given an explicit P(doom) publicly, all the lab heads have signed the CAIS letter, etc.
Notably, though, that’s not what the original post is primarily asking for: it’s asking for people to clearly state that they agree that we should pause/stop AI development, not to clearly state that that they think AI poses a catastrophic risk. I agree that people should clearly state that they think there’s a catastrophic risk, but I disagree that people should clearly state that they think we should pause.
Primarily, that’s because I don’t actually think trying to get governments to enact some sort of a generic pause would make good policy. Analogizing to climate change, I think getting scientists to say publicly that they think climate change is a real risk helped the cause, but putting pressure on scientists to publicly say that environmentalism/degrowth/etc. would solve the problem has substantially hurt the cause (despite the fact that a magic button that halved consumption would probably solve climate change).
I agree that it is important to be clear about the potential for catastrophic AI risk, and I am somewhat disappointed in the answer above (though I think calling “I don’t know” lying is a bit of a stretch). But on the whole, I think people have been pretty upfront about catastrophic risk, e.g. Dario has given an explicit P(doom) publicly, all the lab heads have signed the CAIS letter, etc.
Notably, though, that’s not what the original post is primarily asking for: it’s asking for people to clearly state that they agree that we should pause/stop AI development, not to clearly state that that they think AI poses a catastrophic risk. I agree that people should clearly state that they think there’s a catastrophic risk, but I disagree that people should clearly state that they think we should pause.
Primarily, that’s because I don’t actually think trying to get governments to enact some sort of a generic pause would make good policy. Analogizing to climate change, I think getting scientists to say publicly that they think climate change is a real risk helped the cause, but putting pressure on scientists to publicly say that environmentalism/degrowth/etc. would solve the problem has substantially hurt the cause (despite the fact that a magic button that halved consumption would probably solve climate change).