Why Would AI Want to Kill Us? With Nate Soares
Om avsnittet
It has been a huge week for AI safety.
For those of us deeply concerned about this historically niche cause, it has felt a bit like one’s cult emo band has suddenly rocketed to the top of the charts. People suddenly care, a lot. And for good reason.
The principal reason is this tweet — the most viral tweet in recent memory — suggesting that the frontier labs do not have it figured out, and that we are on the edge of a dangerous precipice. (FWIW, I tend to agree with the tweet’s concerns.)
Calibrating risk is a difficult thing. We look for experts who can tell us how bad things are. With little evidence of our own we’re forced to look for proxies in knowledgable folks. In this case, the most knowledgable folks I know are desperate for a functioning governmental body that can effectively slow down the pace of AI development. No one has it figured out.
Beneath this, I am not convinced artificial minds will kill us imminently. But I do believe we need to have a clear and sober discourse on what types of AI alignment efforts may or may not be working.
In line with this, today I’m publishing a conversation on one (arguably very edgy) side of the debate — with Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Nate wrote the book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, along with his coauthor Eliezer Yudkowsky. I wanted to probe the dimensions of his views here, and I think it is a helpful part of the discourse. I do not believe, as he does, that AI is an inevitable doomsday device, but I do think his position is an important one to explore.
I plan to follow up with voices who might counter his particular perspective and legibly suggest the ways he might be wrong. Because I want him to be wrong.
As always, thanks for listening.
A small ask:
The irony is not lost on me in trying to critique the algorithms while still being dependent upon them to reach the right audience.
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