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Even if it's not likely to happen, I can imagine that the USA actually stopping AI research due to safety concerns would probably make China sit up and take not

Even if it's not likely to happen, I can imagine that the USA actually stopping AI research due to safety concerns would probably make China sit up and take notice, for example. If it takes an international agreement, then the rational thing to do is to work toward that. Maybe it will not happen fast enough and humanity is doomed already, but it's worth trying. "Mitigating harm" isn't really meaningful when you're talking about a super intelligence, I think. Once it is smart enough and out of the box, you are out of options to mitigate anything. I think at this point, the 2 effective things one can do are to learn enough about why AI risk is a thing to have educated conversations about it, and talk about it as much as possible to anyone who will listen. Write articles, call your congresspeople, get this into the national and hopefully international discussion. It's good that we can point to a lot of smart people involved in AI research as already having expressed these concerns. One mild ray of hope is that, unlike something like climate change where you can believe climate change is happening but also believe that due to having a privileged position of wealth you won't really be personally affected by it, with existential AI risk, there's no buying your way out of the issue. If you understand it and believe in the risk, you know that it's the same risk for everyone, from a third world villager without electricity to Bezos and Musk. It's just a matter of convincing enough powerful people of the urgency of the problem. For me personally, I'm trying to get through the grieving process early, as well, and move on to the productive acceptance phase.

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
I'm one that believes that super intelligence is not likely to happen any time soon. It's not likely to happen within any ones lifespan that's living now. But I do believe the current crop of AI will lead to some very scary weapons that will help us kill each other even better. The real harm is giving our monkey brains more powerful weapons. Harm mitigation is well within out reach and it will be for many years to come. Banning or voluntarily stopping it in one country will only fire up other countries to continue the development. We all know that AI brings with it both economic and military advantages. It may be wrong but no country wants to lose the AI race.
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  Why do you think super intelligence is not likely to happen within anyone's lifetime? Is there something about the problem that makes you confident in its difficulty? What other technologies would you put on a comparable ~100 year timescale of difficulty?
  - WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
    1st, there's no true definition of what intelligence is. Right now it's a moving target. Moving targets are hard to hit. Defining intelligence will take time. How can we create what we can't define? 2, we are getting close to processing speed limits and the amount of easy to process data. Yet, AGI is nowhere near. LLM's are remarkable but it's data processing at scale. It's no smarter than my word processor. It's useful but it's not AIG. 3, there's no defining theory that will get us to AGI.We don't know how to get there. What we have is wishful thinking that says we'll be there soon. In any project the early percentage towards our task is relatively easy. The last X% is hard. I think we are underestimating how much time and effort it takes to complete the project of AIG. We have only scratched the surface of it. The 80/20 rule is real. AIG reminds me of the search for ETs. We feel we are close to meeting an ET. Some even believe we have encountered them. But we have 0 evidence that they exist. It's been burned in to our culture by fiction writers but nothing in our real life experience says they exist. Similarly we feel we will meet AIG soon. We might get to AIG but I think we are kidding ourselves that it will be here soon. The real danger is the misuse of the AI we have by people. That really scares me.
    - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
      > How can we create what we can't define? We do it well enough with other things. ("I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it" -- Justice Potter Stewart) > Yet, AGI is nowhere near. I don't think we have a reliable way of measuring how far away AGI is. > It's no smarter than my word processor. Really? What word processor do you use? > there's no defining theory that will get us to AGI.We don't know how to get there. I'd argue we also didn't know how to get here. But we did. > The real danger is[...] There is plenty of room for more than one danger to be real.

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago

I'm one that believes that super intelligence is not likely to happen any time soon. It's not likely to happen within any ones lifespan that's living now. But I do believe the current crop of AI will lead to some very scary weapons that will help us kill each other even better. The real harm is giving our monkey brains more powerful weapons. Harm mitigation is well within out reach and it will be for many years to come. Banning or voluntarily stopping it in one country will only fire up other countries to continue the development. We all know that AI brings with it both economic and military advantages. It may be wrong but no country wants to lose the AI race.

mitthrowaway2 4y ago
Why do you think super intelligence is not likely to happen within anyone's lifetime? Is there something about the problem that makes you confident in its difficulty? What other technologies would you put on a comparable ~100 year timescale of difficulty?
- WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
  1st, there's no true definition of what intelligence is. Right now it's a moving target. Moving targets are hard to hit. Defining intelligence will take time. How can we create what we can't define? 2, we are getting close to processing speed limits and the amount of easy to process data. Yet, AGI is nowhere near. LLM's are remarkable but it's data processing at scale. It's no smarter than my word processor. It's useful but it's not AIG. 3, there's no defining theory that will get us to AGI.We don't know how to get there. What we have is wishful thinking that says we'll be there soon. In any project the early percentage towards our task is relatively easy. The last X% is hard. I think we are underestimating how much time and effort it takes to complete the project of AIG. We have only scratched the surface of it. The 80/20 rule is real. AIG reminds me of the search for ETs. We feel we are close to meeting an ET. Some even believe we have encountered them. But we have 0 evidence that they exist. It's been burned in to our culture by fiction writers but nothing in our real life experience says they exist. Similarly we feel we will meet AIG soon. We might get to AIG but I think we are kidding ourselves that it will be here soon. The real danger is the misuse of the AI we have by people. That really scares me.
  - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    > How can we create what we can't define? We do it well enough with other things. ("I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it" -- Justice Potter Stewart) > Yet, AGI is nowhere near. I don't think we have a reliable way of measuring how far away AGI is. > It's no smarter than my word processor. Really? What word processor do you use? > there's no defining theory that will get us to AGI.We don't know how to get there. I'd argue we also didn't know how to get here. But we did. > The real danger is[...] There is plenty of room for more than one danger to be real.