Worse than the current situation, because the counterfactual is that some later project happens which kicks off in a less race-y manner.
In other words, whatever the chance of its motivation shifting over time, it seems dominated by the chance that starting the equivalent project later would just have better motivations from the outset.
Can you say more about scenarios where you envision a later project happening that has different motivations?
I think in the current zeitgeist, such a project would almost definitely be primarily motivated by beating China. It doesn’t seem clear to me that it’s good to wait for a new zeitgeist. Reasons:
A company might develop AGI (or an AI system that is very good at AI R&D that can get to AGI) before a major zeitgeist change.
The longer we wait, the more capable the “most capable model that wasn’t secured” is. So we could risk getting into a scenario where people want to pause but since China and the US both have GPT-Nminus1, both sides feel compelled to race forward (whereas this wouldn’t have happened if security had kicked off sooner.)
Worse than the current situation, because the counterfactual is that some later project happens which kicks off in a less race-y manner.
In other words, whatever the chance of its motivation shifting over time, it seems dominated by the chance that starting the equivalent project later would just have better motivations from the outset.
Can you say more about scenarios where you envision a later project happening that has different motivations?
I think in the current zeitgeist, such a project would almost definitely be primarily motivated by beating China. It doesn’t seem clear to me that it’s good to wait for a new zeitgeist. Reasons:
A company might develop AGI (or an AI system that is very good at AI R&D that can get to AGI) before a major zeitgeist change.
The longer we wait, the more capable the “most capable model that wasn’t secured” is. So we could risk getting into a scenario where people want to pause but since China and the US both have GPT-Nminus1, both sides feel compelled to race forward (whereas this wouldn’t have happened if security had kicked off sooner.)