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I don't think the point of the article is to make a complete argument for acting now, but rather to counter a particular objection to acting now. MIRI has a fai

I don't think the point of the article is to make a complete argument for acting now, but rather to counter a particular objection to acting now. MIRI has a fair amount of writing, which I would say in totality constitutes an argument for beginning work on AI safety ASAP. I don't think it's fair to expect them to reiterate the entire thing in every article they put out. That's what their FAQ is for.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
Equally, I don't think it's fair that I should be expected to read "a fair amount of writing" before I can read this article which, itself, is a fair amount of writing. I can see that the author has some prior history with specific counters to his line of reasonsing, but i don't think I should need to go over the entire history before I can understand what he's talking about (and I do need to do that, then that's a problem of his text, not my reading; I'm reading an article on the web, after all, not a scientific publicaiton with references). And I'm pretty sure I do understand what he's talking about. He's saying that the coming of AGI is entirely uncertain so we should act now. That's unreasonable in and of itself, and I don't need to go back and read all the history he's got with others to be able to tell that. Opinion, anyway. Edit: To reiterate why it's unreasonable- if we won't see AGI until it's already here, what, exactly, are we supposed to be preparing against? We won't know it even when we see it- so how will we know what to protect ourselves from? Reasoning with uncertainty requires at least some amount of knowledge and the article goes to great lengths to point out there isn't any, in the case of AGI. So there's no reasoning to be done, either. In that case, what are we talking about? "Beware of the unknown"? Well, OK. I don't know if the sky will fall on my head tomorrow so maybe I should stay home, just in case?

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

Equally, I don't think it's fair that I should be expected to read "a fair amount of writing" before I can read this article which, itself, is a fair amount of writing. I can see that the author has some prior history with specific counters to his line of reasonsing, but i don't think I should need to go over the entire history before I can understand what he's talking about (and I do need to do that, then that's a problem of his text, not my reading; I'm reading an article on the web, after all, not a scientific publicaiton with references). And I'm pretty sure I do understand what he's talking about. He's saying that the coming of AGI is entirely uncertain so we should act now. That's unreasonable in and of itself, and I don't need to go back and read all the history he's got with others to be able to tell that. Opinion, anyway. Edit: To reiterate why it's unreasonable- if we won't see AGI until it's already here, what, exactly, are we supposed to be preparing against? We won't know it even when we see it- so how will we know what to protect ourselves from? Reasoning with uncertainty requires at least some amount of knowledge and the article goes to great lengths to point out there isn't any, in the case of AGI. So there's no reasoning to be done, either. In that case, what are we talking about? "Beware of the unknown"? Well, OK. I don't know if the sky will fall on my head tomorrow so maybe I should stay home, just in case?