Notes on “ai”
1. It’s very telling that the default question in tech and journalism is “how worried are you about X” and fighting over what to worry about. There’s a deeply anxious cultural backdrop in Western Europe and North America that deeply affects how any technological development is interpreted; see for example news.gallup.com/poll/714593/op…. “Nervousness as seriousness” does seem to be a larger problem in tech/broader discourse at the moment. I think you can care about risks/externalities while remaining pretty optimistic about technology.
2. I’m tired of people who in private pretend to be uncertain or only care about tail risk but then go on media campaigns making all sorts of absolute claims. I think trying to stoke flames and get everyone to freak out is deeply unhelpful, and will come with costs. I also continue to think p(dooms) are bad, vibe-based measures: see x.com/sebkrier/statu…. People who should know better ignore that because they do the standard shortcut of acknowledging the caveat as sufficient for handling it. And this is coming from someone who does think working on catastrophic risks is important!
