Big Picture AI Safety

I conducted 17 semi-structured interviews of AI safety experts about their big picture strategic view of the AI safety landscape: how will human-level AI play out, how things might go wrong, and what should the AI safety community be doing. While many respondents held “traditional” views (e.g. the main threat is misaligned AI takeover), there was more opposition to these standard views than I expected, and the field seems more split on many important questions than someone outside the field may infer.

This sequence summarises the main findings from these interviews.

Big Pic­ture AI Safety: Introduction

What will the first hu­man-level AI look like, and how might things go wrong?

What should AI safety be try­ing to achieve?

What mis­takes has the AI safety move­ment made?