I think your summary is a good enough quick summary of my beliefs. The minutia that I object to is how confident and specific lots of parts of your summary are. I think many of the claims in the summary can be adjusted or completely changed and still lead to bad outcomes. But it’s hard to add lots of uncertainty and options to a quick summary, especially one you disagree with, so that’s fair enough. (As a side note, that paper you linked isn’t intended to represent anyone else’s views, other than myself and Peter, and we are relatively inexperienced. I’m also no longer working at MIRI).
I’m confused about why your <20% isn’t sufficient for you to want to shut down AI research. Is it because of benefits outweigh the risk, or because we’ll gain evidence about potential danger and can shut down later if necessary?
I’m also confused about why being able to generate practical insights about the nature of AI or AI progress is something that you think should necessarily follow from a model that predicts doom. I believe something close enough to (1) from your summary, but I don’t have much idea (above general knowledge) of how the first company to build such an agent will do so, or when they will work out how to do it. One doesn’t imply the other.
I’m confused about why your <20% isn’t sufficient for you to want to shut down AI research. Is it because of benefits outweigh the risk, or because we’ll gain evidence about potential danger and can shut down later if necessary?
I think the expected benefits outweigh the risks, given that I care about the existing generation of humans (to a large, though not overwhelming degree). The expected benefits here likely include (in my opinion) a large reduction in global mortality, a very large increase in the quality of life, a huge expansion in material well-being, and more generally a larger and more vibrant world earlier in time. Without AGI, I think most existing people would probably die and get replaced by the next generation of humans, in a relatively much poor world (compared to the alternative).
I also think the absolute level risk from AI barely decreases if we globally pause. My best guess is that pausing would mainly just delay adoption without significantly impacting safety. Under my model of AI, the primary risks are long-term, and will happen substantially after humans have already gradually “handed control” over to the AIs and retired their labor on a large scale. Most of these problems—such as cultural drift and evolution—do not seem to be the type of issue that can be satisfactorily solved in advance, prior to a pause (especially by working out a mathematical theory of AI, or something like that).
On the level of analogy, I think of AI development as more similar to “handing off control to our children” than “developing a technology that disempowers all humans at a discrete moment in time”. In general, I think the transition period to AI will be more diffuse and incremental than MIRI seems to imagine, and there won’t be a sharp distinction between “human values” and “AI values” either during, or after the period.
(I also think AIs will probably be conscious in a way that’s morally important, in case that matters to you.)
In fact, I think it’s quite plausible the absolute level of AI risk would increase under a global pause, rather than going down, given the high level of centralization of power required to achieve a global pause, and the perverse institutions and cultural values that would likely arise under such a regime of strict controls. As a result, even if I weren’t concerned at all about the current generation of humans, and their welfare, I’d still be pretty hesitant to push pause on the entire technology.
(I think of technology as itself being pretty risky, but worth it. To me, pushing pause on AI is like pushing pause on technology itself, in the sense that they’re both generically risky yet simultaneously seem great on average. Yes, there are dangers ahead. But I think we can be careful and cautious without completely ripping up all the value for ourselves.)
Would most existing people accept a gamble with 20% of chance of death in the next 5 years and 80% of life-extension and radically better technology? I concede that many would, but I think it’s far from universal, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if half of people or more think this isn’t for them.
I personally wouldn’t want to take that gamble (strangely enough I’ve been quite happy lately and my life has been feeling meaningful, so the idea of dying in the next 5 years sucks).
(Also, I want to flag that I strongly disagree with your optimism.)
For what it’s worth, while my credence in human extinction from AI in the 21st century is 10-20%, I think the chance of human extinction in the next 5 years is much lower. I’d put that at around 1%. The main way I think AI could cause human extinction is by just generally accelerating technology and making the world a scarier and more dangerous place to live. I don’t really buy the model in which an AI will soon foom until it becomes a ~god.
I like this framing. I think the more common statement would be 20% chance of death in 10-30 years , and 80% chance of life extension and much better technology that they might not live to see.
I think the majority of humanity would actually take this bet. They are not utilitarians or longtermists.
So if the wager is framed in this way, we’re going full steam ahead.
I yet another time say that your tech tree model doesn’t make sense to me. To get immortality/mind uploading, you need really overpowered tech, far above the level when killing all humans and starting disassemble planet becomes negligibly cheap. So I wouldn’t expect that “existing people would probably die” is going to change much under your model “AIs can be misaligned but killing all humans is too costly”.
(I also think AIs will probably be conscious in a way that’s morally important, in case that matters to you.)
I don’t think that’s either a given nor something we can ever know for sure. “Handing off” the world to robots and AIs that for all we know might be perfect P-zombies doesn’t feel like a good idea.
I think your summary is a good enough quick summary of my beliefs. The minutia that I object to is how confident and specific lots of parts of your summary are. I think many of the claims in the summary can be adjusted or completely changed and still lead to bad outcomes. But it’s hard to add lots of uncertainty and options to a quick summary, especially one you disagree with, so that’s fair enough.
(As a side note, that paper you linked isn’t intended to represent anyone else’s views, other than myself and Peter, and we are relatively inexperienced. I’m also no longer working at MIRI).
I’m confused about why your <20% isn’t sufficient for you to want to shut down AI research. Is it because of benefits outweigh the risk, or because we’ll gain evidence about potential danger and can shut down later if necessary?
I’m also confused about why being able to generate practical insights about the nature of AI or AI progress is something that you think should necessarily follow from a model that predicts doom. I believe something close enough to (1) from your summary, but I don’t have much idea (above general knowledge) of how the first company to build such an agent will do so, or when they will work out how to do it. One doesn’t imply the other.
I think the expected benefits outweigh the risks, given that I care about the existing generation of humans (to a large, though not overwhelming degree). The expected benefits here likely include (in my opinion) a large reduction in global mortality, a very large increase in the quality of life, a huge expansion in material well-being, and more generally a larger and more vibrant world earlier in time. Without AGI, I think most existing people would probably die and get replaced by the next generation of humans, in a relatively much poor world (compared to the alternative).
I also think the absolute level risk from AI barely decreases if we globally pause. My best guess is that pausing would mainly just delay adoption without significantly impacting safety. Under my model of AI, the primary risks are long-term, and will happen substantially after humans have already gradually “handed control” over to the AIs and retired their labor on a large scale. Most of these problems—such as cultural drift and evolution—do not seem to be the type of issue that can be satisfactorily solved in advance, prior to a pause (especially by working out a mathematical theory of AI, or something like that).
On the level of analogy, I think of AI development as more similar to “handing off control to our children” than “developing a technology that disempowers all humans at a discrete moment in time”. In general, I think the transition period to AI will be more diffuse and incremental than MIRI seems to imagine, and there won’t be a sharp distinction between “human values” and “AI values” either during, or after the period.
(I also think AIs will probably be conscious in a way that’s morally important, in case that matters to you.)
In fact, I think it’s quite plausible the absolute level of AI risk would increase under a global pause, rather than going down, given the high level of centralization of power required to achieve a global pause, and the perverse institutions and cultural values that would likely arise under such a regime of strict controls. As a result, even if I weren’t concerned at all about the current generation of humans, and their welfare, I’d still be pretty hesitant to push pause on the entire technology.
(I think of technology as itself being pretty risky, but worth it. To me, pushing pause on AI is like pushing pause on technology itself, in the sense that they’re both generically risky yet simultaneously seem great on average. Yes, there are dangers ahead. But I think we can be careful and cautious without completely ripping up all the value for ourselves.)
Would most existing people accept a gamble with 20% of chance of death in the next 5 years and 80% of life-extension and radically better technology? I concede that many would, but I think it’s far from universal, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if half of people or more think this isn’t for them.
I personally wouldn’t want to take that gamble (strangely enough I’ve been quite happy lately and my life has been feeling meaningful, so the idea of dying in the next 5 years sucks).
(Also, I want to flag that I strongly disagree with your optimism.)
For what it’s worth, while my credence in human extinction from AI in the 21st century is 10-20%, I think the chance of human extinction in the next 5 years is much lower. I’d put that at around 1%. The main way I think AI could cause human extinction is by just generally accelerating technology and making the world a scarier and more dangerous place to live. I don’t really buy the model in which an AI will soon foom until it becomes a ~god.
I like this framing. I think the more common statement would be 20% chance of death in 10-30 years , and 80% chance of life extension and much better technology that they might not live to see.
I think the majority of humanity would actually take this bet. They are not utilitarians or longtermists.
So if the wager is framed in this way, we’re going full steam ahead.
I yet another time say that your tech tree model doesn’t make sense to me. To get immortality/mind uploading, you need really overpowered tech, far above the level when killing all humans and starting disassemble planet becomes negligibly cheap. So I wouldn’t expect that “existing people would probably die” is going to change much under your model “AIs can be misaligned but killing all humans is too costly”.
I don’t think that’s either a given nor something we can ever know for sure. “Handing off” the world to robots and AIs that for all we know might be perfect P-zombies doesn’t feel like a good idea.