Phil Tanny

Karma: −29

Phil Tanny Sep 1, 2022, 9:42 PM
5 points
0
on: Alignment is hard. Communicating that, might be harder
The current 80,000 Hours list of the world’s most pressing problems ranks AI safety as the number one cause in the highest priority area section.
AI safety is not the world’s most pressing problem. It is a symptom of the world’s most pressing problem, our unwillingness and/or inability to learn how to manage the pace of the knowledge explosion.
Our outdated relationship with knowledge is the problem. Nuclear weapons, AI, genetic engineering and other technological risks are symptoms of that problem. EA writers insist on continually confusing sources and symptoms.
To make this less abstract, consider a factory assembly line. The factory is the source. The products rolling off the end of the assembly line are the symptoms.
EA writers (and the rest of the culture) insist on focusing on each product as it comes off the end of the assembly line, while the assembly line keeps accelerating faster and faster. While you’re focused on the latest shiny product to emerge off the assembly line, the assembly line is ramping up to overwhelm you with a tsunami of other new products.

Phil Tanny Sep 1, 2022, 4:40 PM
1 point
0
on: How to plan for a radically uncertain future?
One way to plan for the future is to slow down the machinery taking us there to reduce the uncertainty about what is coming to some degree.
Another way to plan for the future is to do what I’ve done, which is to get old (70) so that you have far less chips on the table in the face of the uncertainty. Ok, sorry, not very helpful. But on the other hand, it’s most likely going to happen whether you plan it or not, and some comfort might be taken from knowing that sooner or later we all earn a “get out of jail free” card.
For today, one of the things we have some hope of being able to control is our relationship with risk, living, dying etc. In an era characterized by historic uncertainty, such a pursuit seems a good investment.

Phil Tanny Sep 1, 2022, 4:30 PM
1 point
−2
on: What is the best critique of AI existential risk arguments?
If we were to respond specifically to the title of the post....
What is the best critique of AI existential risk arguments?
I would cast my vote for the premise that AI risk arguments don’t really matter so long as a knowledge explosion feeding back upon itself is generating ever more, ever larger powers, at an ever accelerating rate.
For example, let’s assume for the moment that 1) AI is an existential risk, and 2) we solve that problem somehow so that AI becomes perfectly safe. Why would that matter if civilization is then crushed when we lose control of some other power emerging from the knowledge explosion? Remember, triumphing over existential risk will require us to win every single time, and never lose once.
If it’s true that 1) the knowledge explosion is accelerating, and if it’s true that 2) human ability is limited, then it follows that at some point we will be overwhelmed by one or more challenges that we can’t adapt to in time.
Seventy five years after Hiroshima we still have no idea what to do about nuclear weapons, nor do we know what to do about AI, or genetic engineering. And the threats keep coming, more and more, larger and larger, faster and faster.
If it is our choice to accept an ever accelerating knowledge explosion as a given, the best critique of AI existential risk arguments seems to be that they don’t really matter. Or, if you prefer, that they are a distraction from what does matter.