Even if Eliezer’s argument in that Twitter thread is completely worthless, it remains the case that “merely hoping” that the AI turns out nice is an insufficiently good argument for continuing to create smarter and smarter AIs. I would describe as “merely hoping” the argument that since humans (in some societies) turned out nice (even though there was no designer that ensured they would), the AI might turn out nice. Also insufficiently good is any hope stemming from the observation that if we pick two humans at random out of the humans we know, the smarter of the two is more likely than not to be the nicer of the two. I certainly do not want the survival of the human race to depend on either one of those two hopes or arguments! Do you?
Eliezer finds posting on the internet enjoyable, like lots of people do. He posts a lot about, e.g., superconductors and macroeconomic policy. It is far from clear to me that he consider this Twitter thread to be relevant to the case against continuing to create smarter AIs. But more to the point: do you consider it relevant?
Even if Eliezer’s argument in that Twitter thread is completely worthless, it remains the case that “merely hoping” that the AI turns out nice is an insufficiently good argument for continuing to create smarter and smarter AIs. I would describe as “merely hoping” the argument that since humans (in some societies) turned out nice (even though there was no designer that ensured they would), the AI might turn out nice. Also insufficiently good is any hope stemming from the observation that if we pick two humans at random out of the humans we know, the smarter of the two is more likely than not to be the nicer of the two. I certainly do not want the survival of the human race to depend on either one of those two hopes or arguments! Do you?
Eliezer finds posting on the internet enjoyable, like lots of people do. He posts a lot about, e.g., superconductors and macroeconomic policy. It is far from clear to me that he consider this Twitter thread to be relevant to the case against continuing to create smarter AIs. But more to the point: do you consider it relevant?