This has little value other than letting people know of my internal emotional state: but this type of news cheers me up. My personal experience so far has been, around me, an ocean of apathy. People just don’t take the issue / risk that seriously, I think because deep down they are still convinced that AGI (much less ASI) is the stuff of science fiction, that geeks like to talk about as if it was about to become a real thing—but reasonable people know it won’t (“We know that the future will be like the past because the past was normal, and why wouldn’t the future be normal, duh”). So, when I see mainstream media shaking itself out of this apathic failure of imagination—I rejoice.
Also, I derive some optimism from the fact that some of the darker sides of human nature are also some that can be most reliably counted on. When power-hungry people, who tend to run most things, particularly in politics, realize that yes: this could be a real threat to their power (that is: IF it is allowed to become so smart that it cannot be simply thought of as a tool to increase and consolidate their current power position, but as a competitor for said power) they will do their best to prevent its rise.
This has little value other than letting people know of my internal emotional state: but this type of news cheers me up. My personal experience so far has been, around me, an ocean of apathy. People just don’t take the issue / risk that seriously, I think because deep down they are still convinced that AGI (much less ASI) is the stuff of science fiction, that geeks like to talk about as if it was about to become a real thing—but reasonable people know it won’t (“We know that the future will be like the past because the past was normal, and why wouldn’t the future be normal, duh”). So, when I see mainstream media shaking itself out of this apathic failure of imagination—I rejoice.
Also, I derive some optimism from the fact that some of the darker sides of human nature are also some that can be most reliably counted on. When power-hungry people, who tend to run most things, particularly in politics, realize that yes: this could be a real threat to their power (that is: IF it is allowed to become so smart that it cannot be simply thought of as a tool to increase and consolidate their current power position, but as a competitor for said power) they will do their best to prevent its rise.