But the sentiment looks weak compared to e.g. climate change and nuclear war, where fossil fuel production and nuclear arsenals continue,
That seems correct to me, but on the other hand, I think the public sentiment against things like GMOs was also weaker than the one that we currently have against climate change, and GMOs got slowed down regardless. Also I’m not sure how strong the sentiment against nuclear power was relative to the one against climate change, but in any case, nuclear power got hindered quite a bit too.
I think one important aspect where fossil fuels are different from GMOs and nuclear power is that fossil fuel usage is firmly entrenched across the economy and it’s difficult, costly, and slow to replace it. Whereas GMOs were a novel thing and governments could just decide to regulate them and slow them down without incurring major immediate costs. As for nuclear power, it was somewhat entrenched in that there were many existing plants, but society could make the choice to drastically reduce the progress of building new ones—which it did.
Nuclear arsenals don’t quite fit this model—in principle, one could have stopped expanding them, but they did keep growing for quite a bit, despite public opposition. Then again, there was an arms race dynamic there. And eventually, nuclear arsenals got cut down in size too.
I think AI is in a sense comparable to nuclear power and GMOs in that there are existing narrow AI applications that would be hard and costly to get rid of, but more general and powerful AI is clearly not yet entrenched due to not having been developed yet. On the other hand, AI labs have a lot of money and there are lots of companies that have significant investments in AI R&D, so that’s some level of entrenchment.
Whether nuclear weapons are comparable to AI depends on whether you buy the arguments in the OP for them being different… but seems also relevant that AI arms race arguments are often framed as the US vs. China. That seems reasonable enough, given that the West could probably find consensus on AI as it has found on other matters of regulation, Russia does not seem to be in a shape to compete, and the rest of the world isn’t really on the leading edge of AI development. And now it seems like China might not even particularly care about AI [1, 2].
That seems correct to me, but on the other hand, I think the public sentiment against things like GMOs was also weaker than the one that we currently have against climate change, and GMOs got slowed down regardless. Also I’m not sure how strong the sentiment against nuclear power was relative to the one against climate change, but in any case, nuclear power got hindered quite a bit too.
I think one important aspect where fossil fuels are different from GMOs and nuclear power is that fossil fuel usage is firmly entrenched across the economy and it’s difficult, costly, and slow to replace it. Whereas GMOs were a novel thing and governments could just decide to regulate them and slow them down without incurring major immediate costs. As for nuclear power, it was somewhat entrenched in that there were many existing plants, but society could make the choice to drastically reduce the progress of building new ones—which it did.
Nuclear arsenals don’t quite fit this model—in principle, one could have stopped expanding them, but they did keep growing for quite a bit, despite public opposition. Then again, there was an arms race dynamic there. And eventually, nuclear arsenals got cut down in size too.
I think AI is in a sense comparable to nuclear power and GMOs in that there are existing narrow AI applications that would be hard and costly to get rid of, but more general and powerful AI is clearly not yet entrenched due to not having been developed yet. On the other hand, AI labs have a lot of money and there are lots of companies that have significant investments in AI R&D, so that’s some level of entrenchment.
Whether nuclear weapons are comparable to AI depends on whether you buy the arguments in the OP for them being different… but seems also relevant that AI arms race arguments are often framed as the US vs. China. That seems reasonable enough, given that the West could probably find consensus on AI as it has found on other matters of regulation, Russia does not seem to be in a shape to compete, and the rest of the world isn’t really on the leading edge of AI development. And now it seems like China might not even particularly care about AI [1, 2].