I agree it seems good to minimize total risk, even when the best available actions are awful; I think my reservation is mainly that in most such cases, it seems really important to say you’re in that position, so others don’t mistakenly conclude you have things handled. And I model AGI companies as being quite disincentivized from admitting this already—and humans generally as being unreasonably disinclined to update that weird things are happening—so I feel wary of frames/language that emphasize local relative tradeoffs, thereby making it even easier to conceal the absolute level of danger.
I agree it seems good to minimize total risk, even when the best available actions are awful; I think my reservation is mainly that in most such cases, it seems really important to say you’re in that position, so others don’t mistakenly conclude you have things handled. And I model AGI companies as being quite disincentivized from admitting this already—and humans generally as being unreasonably disinclined to update that weird things are happening—so I feel wary of frames/language that emphasize local relative tradeoffs, thereby making it even easier to conceal the absolute level of danger.
Yep that’s very fair. I agree that it’s very likely that AI companies will continue to be misleading about the absolute risk posed by their actions.