"Can you tell me exactly what you think is unrealistic about AI Doom?
I understand that doom scenarios are speculative but so what? How are they unrealistic?"
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Intelligent life has only evolved once on the Earth. We appear to be on the brink of evolving / engineering intelligent life a second time. Given N = 1, the predictions about what will happen when N = 2 are basically science fiction.
There's an infinite number of future scenarios that could play out, including many stories of hope. And a rational person doesn't just weight the costs/benefits of action, but also the costs/benefits of inaction.
However, humans are prone to pessimism bias. We find stories of doom to be more compelling than stories of hope. (Consider how watchable a Terminator movie about a robot sent back from the future to care for Japanese retirees would be.)
We're also not very good at weighting mundane risks well. Look at how much attention is given to deaths from mass school shootings, versus attention given to death from the diseases of aging, such as cancer and cardiac disease.
IMO, given N = 1, it's premature to heavily weight the "doom" stories over the "hope" stories. If doomerists confined themselves to blog posts and voluntary compliance, their fears wouldn't matter. However, many of the doomerists want to impose heavy regulation (complete permanent ban, rigorous regulatory controls) and hefty sanctions (bombing data centers) on those who disagree with them. And they seem to be getting much greater attention in the broader world (Time magazine article, national news interviews, etc).
Given the pessimism bias, ignorance, and irrationality of the general public, I'm afraid that the doomerists will significantly delay adoption of the technology, the same way that adoption of nuclear power, genetic engineering, and psychedelics have been delayed by irrational thinking, to the detriment of billions of people.
Rogue AI's _may_ kill us all, but aging _will_ certainly kill every single person on the planet in the next 135 years unless we cure aging. I personally only have 25 - 30 years left, if I have average luck. I don't think that the doomers give nearly sufficient weight to what will be lost if we delay AI development.
For example:
"Can you tell me exactly what you think is unrealistic about AI Doom?
I understand that doom scenarios are speculative but so what? How are they unrealistic?"
-----
Intelligent life has only evolved once on the Earth. We appear to be on the brink of evolving / engineering intelligent life a second time. Given N = 1, the predictions about what will happen when N = 2 are basically science fiction.
There's an infinite number of future scenarios that could play out, including many stories of hope. And a rational person doesn't just weight the costs/benefits of action, but also the costs/benefits of inaction.
However, humans are prone to pessimism bias. We find stories of doom to be more compelling than stories of hope. (Consider how watchable a Terminator movie about a robot sent back from the future to care for Japanese retirees would be.)
We're also not very good at weighting mundane risks well. Look at how much attention is given to deaths from mass school shootings, versus attention given to death from the diseases of aging, such as cancer and cardiac disease.
IMO, given N = 1, it's premature to heavily weight the "doom" stories over the "hope" stories. If doomerists confined themselves to blog posts and voluntary compliance, their fears wouldn't matter. However, many of the doomerists want to impose heavy regulation (complete permanent ban, rigorous regulatory controls) and hefty sanctions (bombing data centers) on those who disagree with them. And they seem to be getting much greater attention in the broader world (Time magazine article, national news interviews, etc).
Given the pessimism bias, ignorance, and irrationality of the general public, I'm afraid that the doomerists will significantly delay adoption of the technology, the same way that adoption of nuclear power, genetic engineering, and psychedelics have been delayed by irrational thinking, to the detriment of billions of people.
Rogue AI's _may_ kill us all, but aging _will_ certainly kill every single person on the planet in the next 135 years unless we cure aging. I personally only have 25 - 30 years left, if I have average luck. I don't think that the doomers give nearly sufficient weight to what will be lost if we delay AI development.
For example:
I understand that doom scenarios are speculative but so what? How are they unrealistic?"
-----
Intelligent life has only evolved once on the Earth. We appear to be on the brink of evolving / engineering intelligent life a second time. Given N = 1, the predictions about what will happen when N = 2 are basically science fiction.
There's an infinite number of future scenarios that could play out, including many stories of hope. And a rational person doesn't just weight the costs/benefits of action, but also the costs/benefits of inaction.
However, humans are prone to pessimism bias. We find stories of doom to be more compelling than stories of hope. (Consider how watchable a Terminator movie about a robot sent back from the future to care for Japanese retirees would be.)
We're also not very good at weighting mundane risks well. Look at how much attention is given to deaths from mass school shootings, versus attention given to death from the diseases of aging, such as cancer and cardiac disease.
IMO, given N = 1, it's premature to heavily weight the "doom" stories over the "hope" stories. If doomerists confined themselves to blog posts and voluntary compliance, their fears wouldn't matter. However, many of the doomerists want to impose heavy regulation (complete permanent ban, rigorous regulatory controls) and hefty sanctions (bombing data centers) on those who disagree with them. And they seem to be getting much greater attention in the broader world (Time magazine article, national news interviews, etc).
Given the pessimism bias, ignorance, and irrationality of the general public, I'm afraid that the doomerists will significantly delay adoption of the technology, the same way that adoption of nuclear power, genetic engineering, and psychedelics have been delayed by irrational thinking, to the detriment of billions of people.
Rogue AI's _may_ kill us all, but aging _will_ certainly kill every single person on the planet in the next 135 years unless we cure aging. I personally only have 25 - 30 years left, if I have average luck. I don't think that the doomers give nearly sufficient weight to what will be lost if we delay AI development.
For example: