COVID and climate change are actually easy problems
I’m not sure I’d agree with that at all. Also, how are you calculating what cost is “necessary” for problems like COVID/climate change vs. incurred because of a “less-than-perfect” response? How are we even determining what the “perfect” response would be? We have no way of measuring the counterfactual damage from some other response to COVID, we can only (approximately) measure the damage that has happened due to our actual response.
For those reasons alone I don’t make the same generalization you do about predicting the approximate range of damage from these types of problems.
To me the generalization to be made is simply that: as an exogenous threat looms larger on the public consciousness, the larger the societal response to that threat becomes. And the larger the societal response to exogenous threats, the more likely we are to find some solution to overcoming them: either by hard work, miracle, chance, or whatever.
I’m not sure I’d agree with that at all. Also, how are you calculating what cost is “necessary” for problems like COVID/climate change vs. incurred because of a “less-than-perfect” response? How are we even determining what the “perfect” response would be? We have no way of measuring the counterfactual damage from some other response to COVID, we can only (approximately) measure the damage that has happened due to our actual response.
For those reasons alone I don’t make the same generalization you do about predicting the approximate range of damage from these types of problems.
To me the generalization to be made is simply that: as an exogenous threat looms larger on the public consciousness, the larger the societal response to that threat becomes. And the larger the societal response to exogenous threats, the more likely we are to find some solution to overcoming them: either by hard work, miracle, chance, or whatever.
And I think there’s a steady case to be made that the exogenous xrisk from AI is starting to loom larger and larger on the public consciousness: The Overton Window widens: Examples of AI risk in the media.