[Article] “Anonymous advice: If you want to reduce AI risk, should you take roles that advance AI capabilities?” by Benjamin Hilton

We’ve argued that preventing an AI-related catastrophe may be the world’s most pressing problem, and that while progress in AI over the next few decades could have enormous benefits, it could also pose severe, possibly existential risks. As a result, we think that working on some technical AI research — research related to AI safety — may be a particularly high-impact career path.

But there are many ways of approaching this path that involve researching or otherwise advancing AI capabilities — meaning making AI systems better at some specific skills — rather than only doing things that are purely in the domain of safety. In short, this is because:

Capabilities work and some forms of safety work are intertwined. Many available ways of learning enough about AI to contribute to safety are via capabilities-enhancing roles.

So if you want to help prevent an AI-related catastrophe, should you be open to roles that also advance AI capabilities, or steer clear of them?

We think this is a hard question! Capabilities-enhancing roles could be beneficial or harmful. For any role, there are a range of considerations — and reasonable people disagree on whether, and in what cases, the risks outweigh the benefits.

So we asked the 22 people we thought would be most informed about this issue — and who we knew had a range of views — to write a summary of their takes on the question.

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Outline:

(01:11) So if you want to help prevent an AI-related catastrophe, should you be open to roles that also advance AI capabilities, or steer clear of them?

(02:39) Expert 1:

(05:17) Expert 2:

(05:44) Expert 3:

(09:09) Expert 4:

(11:09) Expert 5:

(12:36) Expert 6:

(18:25) Expert 7:

(18:38) Expert 8:

(23:09) Expert 9:

(25:36) Expert 10:

(26:57) Expert 11:

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First published:
October 2nd, 2022

Source:
https://80000hours.org/articles/ai-capabilities